With every disadvantage of collecting, preserving, and bringing home from so great a distance, and over so dreary a desert of twelve hundred miles, specimens of natural history, it will be seen, by reference to the Appendix, that this department of science has not been neglected.
JOHN BARROW.
JOURNAL
OF
AN EXCURSION,
ETC. ETC.
SECTION I.
FROM KOUKA TO MURMUR, WHERE DR. OUDNEY DIED.
From our first arrival in Bornou, we intended to avail ourselves of the earliest opportunity of exploring Soudan. Our preparations being at length completed, and the sheikh having consented to our departure, although with some degree of reluctance, Dr. Oudney, notwithstanding the infirm state of his health, and myself, were ready to set out on the 14th December, 1823. Accordingly we sent off our camels and servants in the morning, and went in person to take leave of the sheikh. On this occasion we found him in an inner apartment, attended by two or three servants only. He asked us, as he had often done before, if, in the course of our travels, we proposed going to Nyffee. We answered, yes, if the road was open. He replied, it was a great distance; and he feared we were not likely to return to Kouka. We told him we hoped to return, if possible, before the rains set in; but however that might be, we assured him we should ever retain a grateful sense of his exceeding great kindness towards us. He bade us farewell in the most affectionate manner. About noon we left the town, accompanied by our comrade, Major Denham, and most of the principal inhabitants. Even Hadje Ali Boo Khaloom, with whom we had frequent occasion to be dissatisfied, joined the train: they attended us to the distance of four or five miles, and then took leave; our friend, the cadi Hadje Mohamed Zy Abedeen, having first repeated the Fatha, or first chapter of the Koran. We halted at the village of Fuguboo Thorio, where our servants had pitched our tents, being distant from Kouka about ten miles.
Our party consisted of Dr. Oudney and myself, two servants, Jacob the Jew, a sort of major domo, and three men of Fezzan. We had three saddle horses, and four sumpter camels; the servants, except Jacob, were on foot. There were also in the kafila (commonly pronounced goffle) twenty-seven Arab merchants, two of whom were shreefs, or descendants of the Prophet, one from Tunis, the other from Houn, near Sockna, and about fifty natives of Bornou. The Arabs were mostly mounted on horses, which they intended for sale; some having besides a led horse. The Bornouese were on foot; one of them, a hadje or Mahometan pilgrim, who had visited Mecca, would on no account stay behind at Kouka, but persisted in accompanying us, for the express purpose of having his hand regularly dressed by Dr. Oudney: he had been wounded by the accidental bursting of a gun; he invariably pitched his tent close to that of the Doctor, whom he always regarded with the utmost respect.
Dec. 15.—We started at seven o’clock. The road was the same we had travelled on a former visit to Old Birnee. We were no longer annoyed with the noise and confusion in pitching the tents, or with the clamours of obstreperous camel drivers; which we had formerly experienced when under the guidance of Boo Khaloom. The weather too was clear, cool, and pleasant. A little after mid-day we halted at the wells of Budjoo; distance, north-west by north, seventeen miles.
Dec. 16.—We met several kafilas from Gubsharee and the surrounding country, going to Kouka. Their heavy goods were carried on bullocks; the smaller packages, weighing from twenty to thirty pounds, were borne on men’s heads. The bearers poise their burdens with much dexterity and ease to themselves, by cords hanging from the sides of the packages, which are carried lengthwise on the head; by this simple contrivance they avoid the fatiguing posture of keeping the arm raised. We halted about three o’clock in the afternoon.