I cannot either participate in the views of Mr. Ayrton respecting the points of culmination of the Ethiopian highlands, but I assume that there are three independent mountain-chains in the interior of Africa:—the eastern one in Habesh, the western in Darfûr, and the southern being the Mountains of the Moon, in Anjan, near the equator; which place I have mentioned several times in this discourse. These form also partly the watersheds, as I will explain more clearly. I also will allow myself here a play upon words. According to D’Abbadie, the moon is called in Kafa “Agane” and “Agina,” and the name of my moon-country is “Anjan.” What more therefore do my African etymologists require? The two countries cannot lie very far asunder, and the analogy of their languages is certainly possible, without even consulting Mezzofanti,[7] but the pronunciation is always difficult to reach. “Angan,” however, is not the word for moon in Bari. If we wish to retain the expression of “Mountains of the Moon,” we must go back to a primitive word of the language of the place, as Dr. Beke thinks with regard to his “Mono Moezi.”
Once more I must return to Freind Arnaud, and his insipid account, for we could not expect anything else from him, as he did not keep any descriptive diary wherein he could note down his dreams about Làkono’s body-guard of women, and things of the same kind; but he has filled up his journal with lion and elephant hunts, and other fabulous circumstances, like a pictorial newspaper. He says (Vide Bulletin de la Société de Géographie deuxième série, t. xviii. p. 376) that the Nile is navigable from Bari for thirty hours further, but forms here different arms, the most important of which comes from the east, and flows past the great country of Berri, which is fifteen days’ journey towards the east, from the mountain-chain of Bellenia (Pelenjà). I also am of opinion that the river, one arm of which, where we lay near the island of Tshànker, was three hundred metres broad, and afforded only a shallow stream of about three feet in depth to the vessels, which had become light by reason of the provisions being consumed, notwithstanding it had two miles’ rapidity, may be navigable for a considerable distance further when the high water covers the rocks, provided no cataracts of consequence oppose the course. Therefore he gives thirty hours for the southern direction of the river before he makes an arm go to the east. We could only have settled how far the river was navigated, by proceeding on our course, if that had been possible at the time.
However, there has never been any talk of these thirty hours; and Arnaud has, of his own will, reduced the distance of thirty days, repeatedly given to us by the king of Bari and his attendants, as the time required for navigating the different arms, in order to pretend that he was closer to the sources. But the division of time into hours must be known on the White Nile first, before such a flippant substitution can take place. It seemed also incredible to me that Anjan should be a month distant, but thirty days were plainly represented to us. If we reckon only eight hours to be a day’s journey, the distance would be eight degrees, half of which we should have to deduct naturally for local impediments, to bring the geographical position of Anjan under the equator. That we had not misunderstood the word “month” was proved besides by Làkono clenching his fist three times, to denote thirty days, and also by the expression that after two months (therefore at the end of March or beginning of April) the rains commenced. Lastly, the circumstance that several other tribes were said to dwell on the shores towards the south, bespeaks a considerable distance. It is, however, still a question, whether the country of Berri is ten or thirty days’ journey off. Làkono, in whose eyes the copper so abundant there has an extraordinary value, might have feared, at the commencement of our acquaintance, that we wanted to spoil his trade with Berri, and to enrich ourselves with its treasures: from this supposition he increased the distance threefold.
But when Arnaud arbitrarily reduces that first statement to fifteen days’ journey, it shews a thoughtless disposition; for he was not only present at the conversation with the king, but we have spoken of it among ourselves. He has, therefore, either entirely forgotten it, and his recollection has not been assisted by any notes written down at the time, which is quite necessary in these countries, notwithstanding the illness to which we are constantly liable; or he wanted to give a greater air of probability to his account by fiction, namely, by substituting thirty hours for thirty days.
When I find marked on his map above Bari, “Country of the Pulunchs,” it recalls clearly to my recollection how he believed every thing without investigation, and noted down what Thibaut told him. I was sitting one day sketching on the rocks of the island: some natives stood by, who understood very well what I was doing, and I still see them—how they extended their arms horizontally, and made undulating movements, which was meant to denote a continuation of the mountains lying before us to the south, and then mentioning several names, held up their hands together, and by the thumb indicated to me that there was one mountain exceeding all the others in height, whilst they looked contemptuously at the other chain of mountains. At the same time they bawled in my ears, because I did not speak, and still less could answer, so that I was nearly deaf, under which affliction they probably thought I was labouring. I got up and went down to the shore, where I saw Thibaut standing. He stretched his hand towards the south, with an enquiring look, and the people said “Pulunch,” whereupon he burst out into an Homeric laugh, and said, “that is something for Arnaud.” The latter has made a country out of this observation, and perhaps with justice.
With regard to the time of the winds and rains in Central Africa, I have tried several times, but find myself incapable of explaining these magnificent natural phenomena. It appears certain, that the monsoons of the Indian, the trade-winds of the Atlantic Oceans, and the north winds from the Mediterranean, are subject to different natural laws in the interior of Africa, where it is comparatively cooler than on the sea-shore; for the winds were never constant during our course: they changed continually from side to side, and all the observations and calculations of our sailors, accurate as they are in other places, failed in ascertaining the tide and quarters of the moon. As to the mutual swelling of the two Niles near Khartùm (called by the Turks Khàrdùm), the sources have nothing to do with the first rising of the water, but the succeeding ones give a quantity of water to the countries subject to tropical rains, together with their gohrs and tributaries, among which the Sobàt is the most considerable for the White Stream. This mass of water immediately becomes imperceptibly level, excepting certain disproportions, with the head of Sennaar, conformably to hydrostatic laws.
It would be an idle attempt to endeavour to speak out clearer and more strikingly touching the formation of the soil of Central Africa; for a master like Professor Carl Ritter has already done this in his “Glance at the Source-territory of the Nile.” In order to set aside many preconceived opinions, and again to give the true imprint of my own views, I do not hesitate to annex the report of Dr. Girard, whom I have several times mentioned, and which was contained in the above instructive little work, being partly founded upon my geognostical collection; because this learned young man has discovered and ascertained, with acuteness rarely to be found, the quality of the soil in Africa, so far as I am able to judge from my expedition. He says:—“There are three great mountain chains in the eastern part of Central Africa, one extending to the east, the other to the South, and the third to the West. The eastern one surrounds the large Tzana-lake, and contains the sources of the Tacazze and the Blue Nile, and ascends easterly from the latter to a height of more than 10,000 feet. The southern and south westerly, respecting the elevation of which nothing is known, forms the water-shed between the tributaries of the Nile and the territory of the streams flowing westerly, and is that region formerly called the Mountains of the Moon. Lastly, the north-westerly, the centre of which is in the Jebel Marra, from which some tributaries wind towards the south, to the Bah’r-el-Abiad; but the most of these subordinate streams flow towards the west, the centre of Africa. Between the eastern and southern mountain-stock, there is another chain of high mountains, not extensive but lofty, which, forming the westerly part of Enarea, appears to spread to the kingdom of Bari, and attains in Enarea a height of more than 7000 feet.[8]
“A marsh-land extends to the south of this mountain, and the Goshcop flows into it: if it be permitted to carry our surmises so far, we should say that not any high mountains are to be expected further to the south, for coffee and cotton are cultivated on the other side of the Goshcop-valley, because we conceive that there is a salt-lake, and, lastly, a land producing gold. The former may be considered to lie on a dry table-land, the latter on a low plain, wherein the auriferous loam and sand may be deposited.
“A similar auriferous foreland seems to extend in the centre of these regions, between the highlands of Enarea and Bari, to the upper course of the Bah’r-el-Abiad, and the mountains of Kordofàn, Sennaar, and Fàzogl.[9] It is a country which is inhabited partly by negroes pursuing agriculture. Another part consists of wide plains, covered with high grasses, wherein many elephants pasture, and which is bounded on the north by a girdle, thirty miles in breadth, of a ground containing gold-sand. These are the plains through which the Sobàt (written in French Saubat) flows with its tributaries to the Bah’r-el-Abiad.[10] The specimens from the shores of the Sobàt are composed partly of a micaceous sand, of a brown black ochrous clay, of chalky sand, and partly of a conglomerate, which is baked together and composed of small fragments of limestone. The sand, when it is pure, consists of several little yellowish grains of quartz, a small portion of reddish feldspar, some brown iron-stones, tombac, brown mica, and little grains of a black mineral, the nature of which cannot be accurately ascertained. This composition denotes that the sand derives its origin from a mica slate, and gneiss chain of mountains, not very distant; for if the sand were far from the mountains from whence it sprang, it would not contain coloured mica. The sand of the shore of the Bah’r-el-Abiad, in the kingdom of Bari, is perfectly similar to this sand, only somewhat coarser in grain, and, moreover, merely attaining to the size of millet. It contains principally quartz, then the same brown mica, only in a larger quantity than in the preceding sand, and, in addition, several more of those black grains, proving that there is hornblende here. This comes probably from syenite and diorite masses, as they are frequently seen in gneiss and mica-slate mountains. They might, however, be of volcanic origin, for they contain, in great abundance, the lava of the Jebel Defafaungh (written in French Tefafon) on the north boundary of the said plain. The mountain is clearly an extinct volcano. It rises probably from a basaltic plateau, for basalt with olivine and pyroxene are seen in it, and red-brown porous lava, with large rounded hornblende crystals and dark-grey tophus, formed of clear little porous fragments of lava and fine ashes, seem to cover its declivity. The tophus, as well as the lava, does not contain any vitreous feldspar, nor is any pumice-stone observable among them, but all the products of the volcano shew that it is a converted basalt.
“The volcanic activity appears not to have extended far, and is only discovered on the northern margin of this cauldron, which was probably, at one time, a large sweet-water basin, for the stones of Sennaar in the north, those of Fazògl and Bertat in the east, of the country of Bari in the south, and of Kordofàn and Jebel Tira in the west, are of a different nature.