METAMMAH — DIFFICULTY OF FINDING CAMELS TO CROSS THE BAHIOUDA DESERT. — WRETCHED STATE OF THE PEASANTS WHEN ATTACKED BY ILLNESS. — INTERMITTENT FEVERS. — COSTUMES OF METAMMAH. — WOMEN OF HIGH RANK. — THEIR LONG NAILS, MANNER OF INCREASING THEIR LENGTH. — BAHIOUDA DESERT. — WELLS AT ABOULAY. — REFLECTIONS ON THE DESERT LIFE. — SHAGEEA TRIBE. — WELLS CALLED GAGDOOL. — SIGNOR B. UNWELL. — HASSANYEH TRIBE. — ANIMALS OF THE DESERT. — GREYHOUND DOG. — WELL OF MAGAGA. — DANGEROUS ILLNESS OF SIGNOR B. — WELL OF DELICIOUS WATER CALLED HALESS. — BEAUTY OF THE SCENERY. — SHEPHERD BOYS. — CHARACTER OF THE ROCKS. — WELLS OF GOOD WATER CALLED HANNEK AND PRASOLI. — THE MANNER THE SHAGEEA SALUTE. — COPTIC CHRISTIAN CHURCH. — ARRIVAL AT THE TOWN OF MEROUEH. — HIEROGLYPHICS ON A SLAB IN THE CASTLE.
Metammah.—March 13. A sufficient number of good camels, or rather dromedaries, being difficult to find, I was detained the whole of the day near this miserable little town, where there is nothing to be seen. The country, even at this season, is not free from malaria. Several peasants suffering from intermittent fever applied to me for relief. Some I saw wretchedly ill, lying on their angoureebs, without any advice, or, apparently, any person to attend them, left to live or die according to the violence of the attack or the strength of their constitutions. When the rains extend to this place, which is not always the case, fevers are very prevalent: dysentery also is very common: I have had an attack myself, and two of my servants suffered severely from it. I used successfully a powerful dose of opium and calomel. To my servant, who was very ill, I gave six grains of calomel and one of opium at a time.
Once a week, in each of these small towns and villages, there is a bazaar; a curious scene, on account of the different costumes of the Arabs who resort to them from the country. At Metammah many of the inhabitants have adopted the fashion of their conquerors, and shaved their heads. The costumes of some of the women of high rank are said to be very beautiful, but it is difficult to obtain a sight of them; and I must confess I have not enjoyed that good fortune. My dragoman, however, an impudent fellow, contrived, upon some pretext, to enter the harem of the present melek of Shendy, whose wife is daughter of the celebrated Nimr, who murdered Ismael Pasha. Her husband has gone to the war with Hourshid Bey. The intruder found this queen, as he called her, in a large room reposing in a most dignified manner on a beautiful angoureeb, covered with the fine mats of the country. She was reclining at full length; her head was supported by a wooden pillow of about the width of a hoop, and of a semicircular form to admit the head, and sustained by a column 4 to 6 inches high with a broad flat base,
. They are almost exactly similar to those often found in the ancient tombs of the Egyptians, and which, notwithstanding their apparent discomfort, are now very generally used in every part of Upper Nubia. The ladies of Shendy, however, value them highly, since, being so narrow, they do not disarrange their hair; a serious consideration, if it be true, as I am informed, that the coiffure of the Shendyan beauties requires nine hours’ work to be quite comme il faut. This lady’s hair was very curiously dressed, beautifully plaited, and bushy at each side, projecting behind and flat above the forehead. On this flat part were two plates of gold, one above the other, and in the centre of her forehead was a large gold ring. She wore two handsome gold earrings, and bracelets of massive gold on her arms, and the same above her ankles. She wore the cotton dress of the country, but finer than usual, and over her neck was a beautiful shawl of Souakim with a broad silk border. He represented her features as being extremely small and delicate; her eyes very large and fine, and her complexion much fairer than that of the women of the country in general. He described her as the most beautiful woman he had seen since leaving Cairo, and doubted if, in his life, he had observed any one superior to her. She looked, he said, like a queen.
In a circle, squatted on the ground beneath, were about twenty female slaves, some very beautiful, busily employed in pounding and preparing spices for the ointment with which they perfume their persons and soften their skins. Her nails were extremely long; a decided indication, in this country, of high rank, as proving that the person never condescends to employ her fingers in any work. To promote their growth, they are held over small fires of cedar wood. This is an ancient custom, and Cailliaud mentions having observed, at Naga, a representation of a queen with long nails; and it still prevails among the Chinese of the highest rank. This wife, or queen, of the melek, possesses a large fortune, said to amount to 50,000l. sterling; an enormous amount for a country like this. She increases it daily by commerce, keeping constantly in her employ Arab merchants, who trade in caravans on her account to Abyssinia, Kordofan, Sennaar, and Cairo. Their chief traffic now is in slaves. Two of her merchants were in the room when my dragoman entered. She eyed him at first fiercely and haughtily, and asked him whether he was one of the Christians just arrived, and how he dared to enter there? Being a clever insinuating fellow, with the advantage of being a Mahometan, he soon ingratiated himself into her favour, and had some dinner ordered for him. As she was the first queen he had ever seen, and the daughter of the celebrated Nimr, he examined her very attentively. The reader will perhaps be dissatisfied with a description thus given upon hearsay; but I should state that, from numerous enquiries, I have found it perfectly applicable to the great ladies in this country; and my dragoman, although an Arab, is the most intelligent clever servant I have met with any where. The account of this great lady may remind the reader of Bruce’s Sittina.
March 14. We started this morning at noon; and now, thank Heaven, my face is toward the north, and every day will bring me nearer England. I have still a journey of nearly 1600 miles before I even reach Alexandria, with deserts to pass and hardships to undergo.[23] We have suffered already very severely from heat and fatigue. For some time past the thermometer, between eleven and four, has been 96° to 100° in the shade; on one day as high as 104°, and another, 110°. The wind blows almost every day very strong from the north; but in the interior deserts of Africa, the atmosphere soon becomes so heated, by the scorching sun, that the wind which, in other regions, braces and invigorates man, is felt as hot and oppressive. It is refreshing at night, and near the river; but in the desert, for a great part of the day, almost insupportable. Our umbrellas, with which we sheltered ourselves from the sun, have been all broken by the wind, and others we had constructed met to-day a similar fate; but we protect ourselves with our sheets as well as we can. There is no apparent ascent from the Nile into the desert. After five hours’ journey we encamped for the night. The desert is slightly covered with sand, but not so much as to impede the camels: in other respects it almost resembles a park, covered, to a great extent, with trees and herbage, though the latter has rather a burnt appearance. The trees are chiefly acacias, bearing full yellow flowers, and in their forms sometimes resembling small oaks, others the tops of the Italian pine trees.
March 16. We have been ten hours en route this day. As we advanced into the desert, I observed not quite so many trees, and also less herbage. After five hours’ journey—that is, ten after leaving the Nile—we arrived at a spot called Aboulay, where numerous wells occur. The Arabs filled their water-skins; and, had I not been well provided from the Nile, I should have drunk of it without hesitation, as it seemed tolerably sweet and wholesome.
On this journey I could not escape from some serious and even painful reflections. However the traveller may be fascinated with this kind of life,—free from the restraints and passions of the world; living in the patriarchal style; mounted on his dromedary; sleeping under a tent, and sometimes without one; covered with no other canopy than the blue sky;—exquisite as may be the pleasure of exploring unfrequented lands, treading unbeaten paths, and leading his caravan over these terrible wildernesses; still, there are thoughts, not to be resisted, which crowd upon the mind, and unnerve even the strongest. This is not the land of our birth; we are strangers to the customs, manners, language, and religion of the people: their hospitality and civility are merely the effort of their benevolence, and the performance of a duty. No tie of relationship, no chain of affection, no sympathy of ideas, no bond of union, exists between us. The dissimilarity of our colour, of the climate and aspect of the country, as compared with ours, is not more complete than that of our habits and feelings. All that we love, all that we care for, is separated from us by immense tracts of desert sands; and we have to pass rivers, seas, and several thousand miles before we reach the land of our home. I can also assure my fair countrywomen that it is no trifling deprivation to see and converse with none but these swarthy savage beauties, from whose society no man of any refinement can derive the slightest gratification. My Italian artist, who sings remarkably well, entertains me sometimes with the favourite airs from Rossini’s and Bellini’s operas, and he talks to me so much of “la bella Italia,” that I long to be again there—but on my way to England.
My camel-drivers, with the exception of two Ababdes, whom I met and engaged as they had passed the Nubian desert with me, are of the tribe of the Shageea—fine tall warlike-looking fellows, with their hair dressed almost like the Ababdes; but the Shageea generally wear beards and mustachios. Their complexion is decidedly darker than that of the Ababdes, which is a dark brown; but theirs is a darker brown, and sometimes approaches almost to a black, but still very different from the cold colour of the negroes. The Shageea have occasionally wider nostrils than we should think correct, and rather thick lips, otherwise their features would resemble exactly the European. We have seen numbers of gazelles, and several flocks of sheep, and passed many isolated hills: the sand is firm, and not fatiguing for the camels. Six inches below the surface is sandstone rock.