We set sail, with a faint breeze, at about eleven o’clock, with twenty-nine degrees Reaumur, towards south. I remained with the Frenchmen till noon. Thibaut was soon somewhat the worse for liquor, and uttered all kinds of stale witticisms. Although he has sojourned many years in these parts, he still remains while on his travels a genuine Parisian, who, wherever he goes, never divests himself of the Parisian atmosphere, and interests himself in nothing, properly speaking, but the doings of that city. To-day his brain was haunted with the Parisienne, which he was humming incessantly, although he had not seen the revolution to which it owes its origin.
The two other gentlemen are a perfect contrast: Arnaud affecting to be continually busy, without however producing anything, and throwing out continual bitter taunts against his young colleague Sabatier. The windows are covered with curtains: he does not venture out of doors to make the necessary inquiries; but merely now and then looks at the box-compass, although the vessels turn every moment, and go first to the right, and then to the left shore. The compass, therefore, affords no indication whatever of the course of the stream, for the boundaries of its shore generally decrease from the height of the water, and become undefined; and thus a correction of the compass might possibly be made on the return voyage. Sabatier, on the contrary, appears quite negligent and lazy, because he is not well, and will not endure the arrogance of Arnaud; so that these gentlemen engineers mutually accuse each other of ignorance. In other respects, he seems to me a frank and open youth, who might be taken for an American rather than for a Frenchman, from his having served in Texas.
I found the time hang heavy with these insipid men and the monotonous scenery, and was not a little glad, when the uniformity of the latter was broken by the luxuriant clump of trees on the island of Assal. The island, which is not large, is said to derive its name from honey (Assal), which is collected in great quantities from the trees on it, as also on those of the islands succeeding. This wild honey is blackish, and leaves in the mouth a bitter taste, derived from the wood, mostly sunt. Honey from trees is generally not so fine and palatable as that found in rocks; accordingly, the honey from the Hejaz, nearly white, and almost crystalized, is even preferable to the Grecian. Tree honey is said generally to have something narcotic in it, but then it must be eaten by spoonfuls, for I have not found it so. There is, indeed, a drink prepared from it, which is certainly intoxicating. The blossoms of the mimosa, blooming nearly throughout the whole year, afford the principal resources of the bees, although there is no want of flowers, which, in conjunction with the tanning-bark of the knot-holes, may contribute to the narcotic qualities of the honey. Those nests, hanging loosely, of a species of wasp, which give only a little honey, and are seen in Taka, do not appear here.
The village of Thebidube is next seen on the right shore; it belongs to the great race of the Hassaniës. I was surprised to observe, not far from the village, ruins, clearly the remains of larger buildings than Arabs huts. The place was called Mandjera or Docks, and I learned that the former governor, Kurshid Basha, had founded these extremely convenient docks, owing to the forest being near. They were, however, abandoned by Ahmed Basha, in accordance with the favourite Turkish system—because his predecessor was the founder.
Half an hour above, we lay-to at the village of Masgerag el Tair. Masgerag is said to mean the same as “street;” the whole word, therefore, is “Bird Street,”—but we did not see many birds. Here the Sheikh Mohammed of Wadi Shileï came to greet us. The Arabs of this place also call themselves Shileï, from a Sheikh buried here, although they belong to the main stem of the Hassaniës. An Arnaut of Suliman’s shot, in my presence, a hare whilst running; the ball entered in behind, and passed out in front. The Turks consider themselves the best shots in the world, as well as the best riders:—although they can do little when the animal is running and the bird on the wing, on account of their long and heavy guns.
Believe it or not, you may hear this boast every day, without being able to convince them to the contrary.
Nov. 27th.—Here, on the borders of the Arabian dominions, we waited in vain for a courier from the Basha, fearing lest he should have changed his intention with respect to the expedition. I passed a very bad night. In the middle of the most profound sleep, I was awakened by a fall in the cabin. My good Feïzulla Capitan, the commander of my vessel, had tumbled on the ground from his tolerably high place of rest opposite to me. I thought I heard the death-rattle, and saw by the light of the lantern, that the froth was standing in his mouth, which was firmly closed. The servant very coolly said to me, “Mabegaff!” (don’t be afraid). It was the first time that I had tried to open the hands of a person struck with epilepsy, but upon my doing so, he soon came to himself, to the astonishment of the crew; towards morning, however, he had two more fits. I now learnt, not to my great consolation, that he had from youth upwards suffered this affliction, and that it frequently returned. But my night’s rest was disturbed, and I sat myself on my Bamber before the door, where the sentry very quietly slept. When this fit came on Feïzulla, I sprang to him, without any one else having troubled themselves about him, because he was too good and indulgent to the men. Hard drinking, together with the heat, had contributed perhaps, chiefly to the violence of this attack.
The air was cool, compared with the heat of the day, and the profound stillness of the night was very impressive, through the soft uniform rippling of the water on the stern of our ships; but the snoring of the crew, who were lying pell-mell, was insufferable. I had a peculiar feeling of loneliness and abandonment, not lessened by the reflection that I was on the White Nile,—this stream, the source and course of which had appeared a riddle for centuries to all cultivated nations. As a half-forgotten tradition descending to our days from the infancy of the human race, impels us to explore the Nile, so our expedition is, in the main, nothing but a continuation of the endeavours of the Priests of the Nile, the Pharaohs, the Phœnicians, the Greeks under the Ptolemies, and the Romans under Cæsar and Nero. It is as if mankind in general, like a single individual, were ever seeking anew, with unabated desire, the sources with which the first awakening to intellectual consciousness is connected.
The sun rose to day magnificently behind the old high trees on the brink of the river, when we sailed further to the south. I remarked that the trees standing quite in the neighbourhood of the water or in it, were mostly withered. These, therefore, had had too much of a good thing, and soon died away through the sudden change, when the water left them, although they surpassed in size the older trees behind them. Passing by the village of Damas on the right shore, and the three luxuriantly wooded islands (the most important of these is called Tauowàt), where the vessels made, certainly, many windings, without the course of the shores of the river being ascertained, except that they had a southerly direction. We came towards noon to the mountain group of Areskell, which elevates extremely picturesquely its six or seven rocky peaks on the left shore, although at some distance from it. At their foot lies the large village of Tura, up to which the ships from Khartùm and Sennaar come, for from this place two main roads lead to Kordofan. At two o’clock in the afternoon we were for the first time, with a faint breeze, opposite the mountain, and landed at the village of Masgerag Debasa. We sent our Sandal across to Tura, which, because our fleet and Abu Daoud were dreaded, brought us back wethers and butter. The village itself was not to be seen; it lies, like most of the villages (of which, several in this route are dissimilar, though nothing to signify), as concealed as possible, and further inland on account of the inundation.
At sunset, the country presented a truly charming landscape. The stream, which might have been here about an hour broad, glowed like liquid gold, whilst the sun hid itself behind the Araskòll, and the slender sickle of the moon shone clearer in the west, with Venus, in the cloudless sky. The three islands of Genna, Siàl, and Schèbesha, stood out, with their thick forests, from the tranquil water; and on the other side the pointed peaks of the mountains grew dim in the deep blue, over the dusky woody foreground of the left border of the river, with the charms of an island in the Ægean Sea. Close to me, the shore is enlivened by the coloured and black forms of the crew; some play and wrestle, with songs to the sounds of the pot-drum, (Tarabuka); others lie and squat round the fire, stir and cook by it; others hunt, while some throw themselves into the stream, pursue each other in swimming, dive, and run again to the fires, which, in the increasing darkness, throw magical streaks of light on the water, and repeat themselves in it, with the strange groups illuminated by them. So long as the flesh-pots of Egypt, distributed among them by Suliman Kashef, hold out, they are all of good cheer, and appear to have no other wish than to spend the time agreeably according to their own fashion; to play nonsensical pranks, and make jokes for the amusement of the Turks, and when that is no longer practicable, to return as quickly as possible. With respect to the real design of our expedition, I see on all sides, a negligence and indifference which nearly make me mad. The latitude is 14° 5′.