Ahmed Basha perceived all this very well, when we travelled together on the Nile to Tomaniàt below Halfaia, where he had taken the best fields from the Shaïgiës, in an illegal manner, and had ordered fifty sakies (or chain of buckets, for raising water) to be constructed upon it, and where the sesame was standing majestically, higher than a man, and might yet grow another foot. For this purpose—to obviate the danger which might arise to the future royal city—the bend of the right shore near Tuti was to have been broken by a deep canal, in order to carry away the sand from Hubba, and to deepen there the bed of the river. A favourite plan of the Basha’s, however, was to make his residence a fortress, to erect works on Tuti, and to place Khartùm upon an island by a canal, to be opened from the Blue to the White Nile; for such a canal formerly existed from Soba to the White Stream. Old people relate, to be sure, but only as a rumour, that the White and Blue Stream met together there. The ruins of Soba already known (which place one hears pronounced likewise Suba and Seba), consists of heaps of burnt bricks, without any other cement than the Nile slime, which have supplied the surrounding country for the vaults of the reputed holy Sheikhs, as well as in more modern times, Khartùm with materials for its mosque: they extend over a considerable space on the right shore of the Blue River. I heard the country opposite these ruins called likewise “Dar Soba;” therefore a contra-Soba, or perhaps once united to it, since the burnt and fused masses of brick, the wide-scattered bricks and fragments, even the ditches, if there had not been clay or foundations and vaults dug out, indicate, at all events, an old place. A small village on the edge of the river, under shady mimosas, and called Soba, extends to this. I have found just as slight traces of that canal, or of the bed of a river in this woody country, as in the other Soba on the right side of the river; and, therefore, I cannot assume, with regard to the last-mentioned ruins, that they were once situated on the land of Sennaar, although the right shore might indicate the violence of an irruption of water through the city itself.
Before I forsake the Blue Stream, I must yet remark that, besides the usual name of “Bach’r asrek,” it is called in this neighbourhood, “the Nile, or Bahr el Nil,” as I have often convinced myself. If it be asked why it is called the Nile, the answer is, because it has beautiful and good water: the old expression for this river is therefore identical with its properties. It is just the same in Egypt, where, as I found from experience, especially in Káhira, Bahr el Nil expresses the material properties of the water, for even the sakkah (water-carrier) interprets the Nile water with hellue (sweet), in opposition to cistern and brackish water. The Basha calls it also nothing but Nile, and says that certain Sheikhs have declared to him, that ignorant people call it after its blue colour. Nile means in the Arabic language indigo; otherwise this word is no longer used for a blue colour. I had an opportunity of hearing the word Nile used for inundation, together with Ba Kebir, or ruga tossiga (great water), denoting the same thing. The old expression of Nile awakes here, therefore, at the moment when it discloses itself as a divinity, a protector, and a nourisher of the country and people. Only the large pastoral Arab tribe of the Shukuriës, in the so-called Meroë, between the Blue River and the Atbara, has the peculiar name of “Adehk,” in its Aggem language for this stream, whilst the other nations in their name for it, indicate its colour. Those of Dongola, and Mahass, who both boast to be Gins betal Thin (people of the soil), call it Amanga Arumga, and Essige Rumege, and the united stream, Ruga; even the far distant Nuba negroes, the old support of the family of the Ethiopian mixture of blood, from Assuan to Rossères, call it Blue Water (Tè Uri). It is the Blue River, therefore, which possibly has imposed the name of Nile on the united stream, and might have formed the road of cultivation to nations wandering down and back again, whilst the mouth of the White Stream, retarded by lake-like shallows and swamps, was far less known. As, in addition to this, it is denied, with some justice, that fertility and good water are the property of the White River, it might have been, in the ages of antiquity, despised so much the more, and looked upon as a subordinate stream, not to be spoken of: not a single burnt brick, or other memorial, points to an earlier intercourse with it.
Before we entered the mouth of the White Stream, we conferred the last honour on the sacred water of the Blue River, by filling the large earthern water-vessels, (Sirr, like the ancient Amphora) with a great noise, and cursed the White River as being stinking (affen.) The sails were worked amid prodigious confusion; the north-east wind blew gently in them, and we bent our course from the Mogren, (denoting equally conflux and mouth, confluentia et ostium,) round the northern point of the land of Sennaar, (Ras el Khartùm, head of the neck of land,) and sailed slowly to the south over the rocks, overflowed with water, into the White Stream. There we heard the last kulle-lullu-lulu of the women, who raised, with both hands, their handkerchiefs in an arch over their heads, as in funerals. This made most of us laugh, especially my men, who thought that they had as good teeth as the Njam-Njam, so much feared by many, particularly by well-fed Egyptians, but whose country no one could point out.
CHAPTER III.
VILLAGE OF OMDURMAN. — MOHAMMED EL NIMR, THE BURNER OF ISMAIL, MOHAMMED ALI’S SON. — MEROE AND THE PYRAMIDS. — SENNAAR. — WANT OF DISCIPLINE ON BOARD THE VESSELS. — SCENERY OF THE RIVER. — TOMB OF MOHA-BEY. — DIFFERENT ARAB TRIBES. — HILLS OF AULI MANDERA AND BRAME. — SOLIMAN KASCHEF. — REMARKS ON HIS GOVERNMENT. — AQUATIC PLANTS. — THE SHILLUKS AND BARABRAS. — LITTLE FEAST OF BAIRAM. — CHARACTERS OF THIBAUT, THE FRENCH COLLECTOR, AND OF ARNAUD AND SABATIER, THE ENGINEERS. — HONEY. — MANDJERA OR DUCKS. — FEIZULLA CAPITAN’S EPILEPTIC FITS. — WOODED ISLANDS. — THE HEDJAZI.
We find ourselves in the gulf, properly speaking, of the arm of the White Nile, whose waters now extend majestically, and form an elliptic bay towards Sennaar. The trees of the village of Omdurman, lying upon the left shore opposite the neck of land, still stood in the water, as evidence of that forest which Khartùm in its neighbourhood is said to have absorbed, and by that act to have forfeited the blessing of rain in an almost incredible manner, excepting the slight showers which are usual at this season. Omdurman lies upon the rocky edge of the Desert of Bajuda, and is inhabited by the Gallihn or Djalin. This people is not of importance on the left side of the Nile, for it does not possess, except Metemna and some villages, any settlements; on the east shore of the Nile, however, it makes up the principal population between Abu Hammed and Abu Haràsk. Mohammed el Nimr, the burner of Ismail Basha, was the Sheikh of this people, and was called by them Sedàb. He has founded for himself, principally through his courage and hatred of the Turks, which were shewn near Nasùb, a new kingdom on the borders of Habesh, above Sofi, where the two little rivers of Settiel and Bassalahm flow into the Atbara: he lives in league with Wud Aued, the Sheikh of the Dabaina Arabs, and is on the other side connected by marriage with a Ras of Makada. Immediately beyond the village of Omdurman, there are found upon the bare, washed-away rocky ground strown over with pebbles, some foundations and burnt bricks, which we ourselves saw, were used in the building of the bazaar, and which were without any admixture of lime, although they lie upon chalky rocks, from which lime has been burnt for the Djami and the Bazaar. So, also, the bricks of Gos Burri, where the traces of a very great colony are extant, travelled to the banks of Hubba, the bricks of which are of uncommon goodness.
The land of Sennaar, to the west side of which we are now sailing, is called through the whole country par excellence Gesira, the Island, for it is taken for one by the people, and is designated also a land by the latter word, as Meroë was once, and indeed from the very same cause. But if we speak of the city of Meroë, the ruins of which we may assume to be in the plain on the Nile under Shendy, where the villages of Gebelabe, Marùga, Dengèla, and Bahr-auie are—this place was certainly situated upon an island. The low country towards the pyramids down to the village Maruga, where a canal filled with mud now disembogues into the Nile, would plainly shew this, if a bed of rocks, perhaps intended to separate the sacred city from the great churchyard, were not just before that heap of rubbish, on which is pointed out the forge, or the heavy scoriæ of metals, said to have been wrought by the powerful Kafr Ibn Omàli el Kebir. The names also of the two villages Bahr-auie, (not Begrauie and Bigrauie, as the Egyptians and Kenuss pronounce it,) and Ma-ruga, refer to water, in the same manner as Dengela perhaps does to a fortress; Dongola, also, is called in old writings Dengela, or Tongul, (according to old Sheikh Hampsa in Hannak, who is well read.)
The hills of ruins of Meroë in complexu, are called Geb’l Omàli, and the Pyramids, which the ass-drivers in Kahira call Piramill and Paramill, are called here Taralib, and Tarabill, as at Geb’l Barkal. In the latter place, I heard from the Faki Mohammed in Abhdom, who has inherited rare manuscripts from his father in Meraui, that the true name is Tarable, indisputably from Turab, sing. Tura, a grave; if not from Troab, a stone. Lastly, as to the Pyramids of Assúr, as those in Meroë or Geb’l Omali are called in Europe, the Sheikh of Maruga knew them only as Chellal el Aschùr above Metemma. With these people we are always right, if whilst asking one of them we chose to fit some name to a place where ruins are found, however corrupt it may be. This is partly politeness, as I have seen again and again in “Piramill;” partly, they believe, also, that we, as the descendants of those Kafirs who built such towers, must know better than they, where we have to seek for the buried treasures.
Let us ascend, therefore, from the island city of Meroë to Sennaar, to follow the course of the White Stream up to the Equatorial country, after some ideas have been first suggested about the origin of the denomination of this Mesopotamia, which may lead us back into those times when, according to the notions of the Egyptians, the Nile separated the Asiatics from the Afers (or Kafirs.) Sennaar (Σενναάρ, שנְער LXX.) means a land in which Babylon and other cities lay; Sennaar, better, however, Sennarti, means a little island near Ambukoll, where, in the language of the Baràbras, “Arti” denotes an island, and is always appended. “Wachet-sin,” or “sen el har,” (a hot tooth, or throat,) was a piece of soldier’s wit, which I heard in the city of Sennaar.