We go W.S.W., and a little before two o’clock W.N.W. One of the vessels chose another road to the left of us, and is separated an hour’s distance from us by the grass. About two o’clock, every tree (being the sign of firm ground) on the left also vanishes, and we see, therefore, nothing but the sky and grass sea, surrounded or intersected by the arms of the Nile. We sail N.W. with two miles and a half rapidity of current, and probably in the larger central arm, although it is scarcely four hundred paces broad. We conjecture that the main stream is to the right side of the shore, from whence the vessel before mentioned has returned, fearing to lose us altogether from the horizon.
My servants had given some durra to the female slave of our first lieutenant, Abd-Elliab, to prepare merissa from, of which drink the rest of the crew partook. The Paradise-Stormer,—formerly, according to his own confession, a staunch toper,—had no sooner learned that his slave had set to make this liquor, than he ordered this unfortunate creature, who was kneeling just before the murhàka, and grinding the corn, so that the perspiration was pouring off in streams from the bared upper part of her body, to remain quiet where she was: whereupon she crossed her arms over her naked breast. At the very same moment he drew forth the kurbàsh from under his angereb, and swinging it backwards and forwards, brought it down with fearful violence upon her back. As he did not attend to my call from the cabin, but struck so furiously that her skin broke and blood poured down in streams, I jumped out and pulled him backwards by his angereb, so that his legs flew in the air. However, he sprang up again immediately, bounded to the side of the ship, and shouted, with a menacing countenance, “Effendi,” instead of calling me “Kawagi,” which is the usual title for a Frank and a merchant. I had scarcely, however, returned to my cabin, ere he seized his slave again to throw her overboard. I immediately caught up my double-barrel, stood in the doorway, and called out “Ana oedrup” (I’ll fire), whereupon he let her go, and said, with a pallid countenance, that she was his property and he could do as he liked with her. He at last suppressed his anger, when I explained to him that his own head as well as all his Harim, belonged to the Basha. Subsequently he ventured to complain of me to the commandant, who, knowing his malignant and hypocritical character, removed him to the little sandal, to the great delight of the whole crew. On our return to Khartùm he was cringing enough to want to kiss my hand and ask my pardon, (although he had become a captain in the Basha’s guard), because the Basha distinguished me.
A few days previously I had had an opportunity of gaining the affection and confidence of our black soldiers. One of them, a Tokruri or pilgrim from Darfùr had, in a quarrel with an Arab, drawn his knife and wounded him. He jumped overboard to drown himself, for he could not swim, and was just on the point of perishing when he drifted to our ship, where Feïzulla-Capitan no sooner perceived him than he sprang down from behind the helm and saved him, with the assistance of others. He was taken up and appeared nearly dead, and on intelligence being conveyed from the other vessels that he had murdered a Muslim, some of our people wished to throw him again immediately into the water. This, however, being prevented, they thought of making an attempt to resuscitate him, by standing him up on his head. I had him laid horizontally upon his side, and began to rub him with an old ferda belonging to one of my servants. For the moment no one would assist me, as he was an “Abit,” until I threatened the Captain that he should be made to pay the Basha for the loss of his soldiers. After repeated rubbing, the tokruri gave some signs of life, and they raised him half up, whilst his head still hung down. One of the sailors, who as a faki, pretended to be a sort of awakener of the dead, seized him from behind, under the arms, lifted him up a little, and let him, when he was brought into a sitting posture, fall thrice violently on his hinder end, whilst he repeated passages from the Koràn, and shouted in his ears, whereupon the tokruri answered with a similar prayer. Superstition goes so far here, that it is asserted such a pilgrim may be completely and thoroughly drowned, and yet retain the power of floating to any shore he pleases, and stand there alive again.
On the right we noticed N.W. by W., at a great distance, a considerable chain of mountains, to all appearance, over the invisible left shore. According to Selim-Capitan’s declaration this must be called Tickem. The crew even think that it is either the Tekeli or the Tira, which, however, is impossible, as we have long ago left them behind in the North. Both mountains are well known by our Kawass Màrian, and belong indeed to the mountain chain of Nuba. This mountain, however, is called, according to Màrian, Morre, and its high rocks are inhabited by a valiant, pagan, Negro race; they lie beyond the Nuba chain, and far isolated from it. Màrian had more than once travelled through the country, and had also been into these parts, when Sultan Fadl fled to them from Kordofàn, on the invasion of the Turks. Half-past three o’clock, W.N.W. Still in the grass-sea. We halted at sun-set, where the arm of the Nile goes from E. to W. The far distant and scarcely visible mountain lies now to the N. of us, and appears to be nearly twenty hours’ distant; this agrees with Màrian’s statement. Neither land nor tree to be seen, even from the mast; but back on the right shore, large clouds of smoke, which we have seen in many places throughout the day, and which I rather take to be signal-fires, than kindled for the purpose of driving away the gnats that first make their appearance towards evening.
10th December.—A dead calm throughout the night. Gnats!!! No use creeping under the bedclothes, where the heat threatens to stifle me, compelled as I am, by their penetrating sting, to keep my clothes on. Leave only a hole to breathe at; in they rush, on the lips, into the nostrils and ears, and should one yawn, they squeeze themselves into the throat, and tickle us to coughing, causing us to suffer real torture, for with every respiration again a fresh swarm enters. They find their way to the most sensitive parts, creeping in like ants at every aperture. My bed was covered in the morning with thousands of these little tormenting spirits—compared with which the Egyptian plague is nothing—which I had crushed to death with the weight of my body, by continually rolling about.
As I had forgotten to take with me from Khartùm a mosquito-net, or gauze bed-curtains, for which I had no use there on account of the heat, to keep off these tormentors, there was nothing for it but submission. Neither had I thought of leather gloves, unbearable in the hot climate here, but which would have been at this moment of essential advantage, for I was not only obliged to have a servant before me at supper-time, waving a large fan, made of ostrich-feathers, under my nose, so that it was necessary to watch the time for seizing and conveying the food to my mouth, but I could not even smoke my pipe in peace, though keeping my hands wrapt in my woollen Burnus, for the gnats not only stung through it, but even crept up under it from the ground. The blacks and coloured men were equally ill-treated by these hungry and impudent guests; and all night long might be heard the word “Bauda,” furious abuse against them, and flappings of ferdas to keep them off; but in spite of this, the face and body were as if bestudded, and swollen up with boils. The Baudas resemble our long-legged gnats, although their proboscis, with which they bore through a triple fold of strong linen, appears to me longer. Their head is blue; the back dun-coloured, and their legs are covered with white specks, like small pearls. Another kind has shorter and stronger legs, a thicker body, of a brown-colour, with a red head and iris-hued posteriors.
The crew are quite wearied from sleepless nights, and rowing must be given up if the calm continues, although we find ourselves in a canal whose water propels us so little that we do not cast anchor. Here I got a specimen of the gigantic rush (papyrus antiquus) before mentioned. The stalk is prismatic, somewhat rounded, however, on one side; it runs in a conical form, to the length of from ten to twelve feet, and bears on the top a corolla like a tuft of reeds, the ray-formed edges of which branch out, and are more than a span long: the greatest thickness of the stem is one inch and a half, and never less than half an inch thick, and under the green rind there is a strong pith. Subsequently, however, I saw this papyrus, which our Arabs were not acquainted with, from fifteen to twenty feet long, and two inches thick, so that the longer reeds on the top shot forth from their little clusters of flowers and seeds, five to six new spikes, the length of a span. The Ambak was known to the old Egyptians; there is no doubt, therefore, that it, as well as this rush, was split, glued to one another, and used for a writing material, because it afforded the advantage of a greater extent of surface.
We row again a little, and wait till ten o’clock for Hüssein Aga’s clumsy kaiàss, although a slight N.E. wind has set in. We then sail N.W. and make two miles and a half. At three o’clock we go W.S.W. slowly into the great lake, wherein the Gazelle river (Bahr el Gasáll) disembogues itself. This river is said to flow here from the country of the Magrabis (Berbers), as some soldiers affirmed, who had served under Mustapha Bey, and pretended to have pressed forward to its shores. Touching this lake and the river, the name of which we could not learn, for its borders are entirely covered with reeds, and therefore cannot be inhabited, the declaration of the soldiers was only a confirmation of what Mustapha Bey told me in Khartùm. On account of the dead calm, we halt on the right reedy shore of the stream, in the lake itself, beyond which we do not yet distinguish land, any more than to the left. Over a yellowish tract, there, which the water may have left, like an island, green grass and the ascending smoke, announcing human life, shew themselves again and denote a firm shore. The lake may be from eighteen to twenty sea miles square.
In the evening, the smoke appeared like long-extended peculiar fireworks, rising equally high; and there was no doubt that this was ignited high grass, a sight which, from Sennaar to this place, was no longer new to me. The Gazelle river glimmered far beyond, the grasses impeding its mouth; and I distinguished plainly, from the elevated poop, that it emptied itself into two arms, S.W. by W. and S.W., forming a delta, obtuse at the top. My servant, who was at the mast-head, confirmed me in the opinion of this more extensive direction, by stretching out his arm to that region.
Dead fish, of the species called garmùt (Heterobranchus, bidorsalis Geoff.), real monsters in size, had already previously floated towards us; they were said to have been harpooned by the inhabitants of the shore, as very probably was the case. Our angling, however, procured us few or no fish. It was not so much the north wind, as the abundance of food brought by the inundation, that kept them away from our bait.