There is certainly no river in the world the shores of which are, for so great a distance, so uninterruptedly covered with habitations of human beings. We cannot conceive whence so many people derive their nourishment. There are some negroes on the left shore, lying without any clothing on them, in the grass; therefore the ground cannot be covered to any height with water. They made gestures, and greeted us with uplifted arms; but our people thought that we could not trust such a friendly welcoming, for they might have concealed their spears in the grass, in which, perhaps, a whole troop of men were hidden.
Neither these Shilluks nor the Jengähs, up the river, possess horses or camels, but merely sheep and cows. When they take a horse or camel from the Turks, they do not kill it—probably not eating the flesh of these animals,—but put out its eyes as a punishment for having brought the enemy into their country. Those animals, being introduced from Asia, may indeed, with difficulty, withstand the marshy nature of this land, as may be inferred from what usually takes place in Taka, where, on account of their great mortality during the damp season, they are driven to the more elevated parts (Gallas). Whether a kind of animal worship lies under their not killing these beasts, I do not venture to determine. Towards the south the shores contract, and the villages also approach nearer to the river.
At half-past nine o’clock the left bank, close at hand, presented a real forest of tamarinds, which also traverses the lower covered pasture-land, or follows, in an irregular form, the newer line of the shore, caused by the descent of the stream. An incredible number of birds appear on all sides; these airy attendants of the marshes devour terrestrial animals, which perish through the overflow of water, and would otherwise entirely poison the air, as in Egypt. The trees, standing singly, are, for the most part, quite white, from the excrement of the birds, and naturally die away. On the old undulating left shore are as many as eight villages; to the left hand, two long rows of the peaks of tokuls, distant, perhaps, about two hours’ journey; those on the right hand being half an hour from our course. The old banks, however, do not come close to the river, as we at first thought, but appear to have their main direction towards S.W. The stream winds in two arms through the grass, marshy meadow-land, which is at least two hours’ in breadth, and seems once to have formed the bed of the primitive stream. The right shore is bare, without trees, and possibly, from its higher situation, prevents the Nile from producing any green land. On the contrary, we see in the hollow on the right hand, five or six heads of palms, appearing to be dome-palms.
About twelve o’clock, we remark in the bare horizon, on the left hand, nine villages of the Dinkas; and on the right, immediately behind the trees of the low country, generally on a level with the river, only raised here and there, seven villages of the Shilluks, on the borders of the green vegetation lying in front of them. The meadows before these villages are skirted indeed by trees, but between them, and in the background, no vegetation, except copsewood on parched grass-land, is discerned; whereas on the right shore, where the villages may be from two to two hours’ and a half from us, not a tree is to be seen on the enormous grass plain,—not even near the huts themselves. We sail S.W., half-past twelve o’clock, where to the right of the left shore, some groups of huts extend in a bamien field, which is already parched, and bounded in the back-ground by trees in full verdure. When the inundation takes place, it is impossible that these huts can be inhabited, from their low situation. An island, with two hills, extends to the right side of the shore.
Whilst Suliman Kashef’s vessel was making a bend before us, in order to sail on the other side, Feïzulla Capitan, who was standing aloft, on the cabin, determined to keep on his course. Suliman Kashef no sooner remarks this, than he sends two shots at Feïzulla Capitan, so close that I myself, who was standing before the door of the cabin, heard the balls whistle. The latter remained quietly standing, although, according to his own assertion, as well as that of the sailors who were aloft repairing the sails, the balls flew by within a hand’s breadth of his head: he merely said, “Malesh—hue billàb” (it is nothing—he is jesting). Feïzulla also shot twice; pointing, however, the gun in an opposite direction, that so Suliman Kashef might see that he took the friendly greeting as a Turkish joke, and being a bad shot did not dare to aim at him.
On the left side of the river, six small villages, of from twenty to fifty huts, between groves of sunt-wood; at the right side, in the distant horizon, ten villages, some of them long and large, and having treeless, immeasurable, Nile-meadows before them. We see also now on the left shore, behind the trees, habitations as far as which the water appears to reach. Therefore the river, including the marshes under water, which are its limits, must be at least three hours’ broad. The villages denoting best the direction of the old shore, and between which the present stream arbitrarily winds, extend now (about two o’clock) from east to west. We counted in the space of an hour, seventeen large and small villages.
We sail S.S.E. into an arm of the Nile, which continues to become narrower, and where we at last stick fast on the grass, for it contracted itself to the length of our bark. Happily the river here is not so deep but that we could make use of our long poles, whilst the wind helped us, in some measure, to break through this short passage. We did this in order to gain a wider arm in W.S.W. and S.W., wherein the principal stream seems to flow, the water, shortly before, being entirely stagnant. The sailors, who had jumped into the water on this little error in our course, came again on board with leeches sticking to their bodies, the first and only ones I have seen in the land of Sudàn.
A calm set in; but towing on ground of such a nature was not to be thought of. Besides, we had no wood, so we landed in the country of the Shilluks, near large sunt-trees; amongst them one was distinguished by a circumference of fifteen feet. Some houses lay there upon a low island, still surrounded with water, from which the people had fled; we found in one of them a dog, which I protected from the wanton cruelty of the crew, by laying claim to him as my property. This faithful beast was of the shepherd-dog breed, similar to those seen in Turkey. The tokuls have the already-mentioned arched roofs of meadow-grass (called Halfa), and their walls are of reeds and poles, as thick as a man’s arm, and plastered inside and out with a clay-like under layer of the Nile slime. It appears that they try to harden this circular wall before placing on the roof, by a large fire lighted in the interior, as is the custom also in the mountains near Fàzogl, for the walls displayed an extraordinary solidity, considering they were of burnt clay. The door is an oval hole, through which we stooped to enter, and it is also of good service when poking such a fire. We found here several household utensils, none of which I ventured to lay claim to, although they could have no other value for the people than that of momentary use. My three servants no sooner remarked that I was pleased with these things, than, laughing at my scrupulous conscience towards these “Abit,” they stole some of the utensils behind my back, whilst we were sitting and eating together, and carried them to the ships. They said afterwards that the Shilluks must have left these things lying in their houses for us to take them. On this excuse, I remembered what the Bedouins (Beduàn, sing. Bedaùi) did, when Mohammed Ali forbade them to take tribute from the pilgrims travelling to Jerusalem and Mecca; they forced the pilgrims to drop upon the ground as much money as they thought sufficient, and then, pretending to find it after the caravan had passed, took possession of it.
Besides some pretty platted mats, we found here larger and more beautiful clay vessels, in the form of the Burma, than in Sennaar. They were extraordinarily light, and of a black colour, for the slimy clay there, piled up in strata, and kneaded together into balls, as thick as the fist, displayed a dark colour, and must undergo an excessive cleansing before being used for that purpose. As there are no stones here, between which meal can be ground, they make use of a murhàka of clay, a plate three or four fingers thick, blunted at the four corners, having a rough, solid crust, and on which they grind their corn off hand with an artificial stone. In the land of Sudan they use for a murhàka a block of granite, presenting above a flat surface, so that the corn poured on it, by handfuls, rolls off neither to the right nor to the left. A female slave kneeling triturates the corn to a meal, with an oval stone, which she holds in both hands. From the sloping position of the granite block, this meal runs off, and is received in a piece of leather or cloth, laid under this simple mill. I saw a Murhàka of this form in the Museum at Berlin. These last-mentioned stones are found on the Island of Rügen, and have a hole in the middle, owing to the continual rubbing, exactly as we see in Inner Africa. This grinding is a very troublesome process, and the arms of the poor creatures condemned to it acquire an unusual form.
As bread is the mainstay in these lands, in the form of flat cakes, often as fine and thin as wafers, a slave can only make meal for eight persons, if she works from morning to evening; and this is even taken as a standard. Besides that murhàka of clay, which is mixed with slime and roots, although the pure blue clay lies at a small depth, I saw also large broken mortars in the earth, made of the very same materials. In order to repair these, they make a hole in the ground, smearing the inside with clayey thick slime, and light a fire in it, when the mortars become as smooth and dark as if they were made of cast iron. A pestle of hard wood is used to prepare an oil from the simsin and garrua (ricinus).