April 7. We passed this morning the village of Handak, situated on the western side near the base of the river, and the small Island of Marouerti, which resembles rather the ancient name of Meroe, and must, I think, be a corruption of it. Names analogous to that of the ancient capital of Ethiopia seem to be given indiscriminately to villages on the banks and the islands.
I saw this evening a number of slaves going to Cairo. The manner in which they were clogged, to prevent their escaping or rebelling against their owners, was disgraceful and revolting in the extreme. Each slave wore a clog made of a wooden pole, four feet long, with a collar, of a triangular form, large enough to admit his head: this triangular collar rests upon their shoulders, and is so contrived with straps that it is impossible for them to throw it off. When they walk, they are obliged to carry it before them; and at night their hands are tied to the centre of the pole, and their feet to the bottom of it. The owners of the slaves showed me, with the malicious grin of fiends, the effects of the cords, and the weight of the machine on the hands, necks, and legs of their victims. They confessed that they were often obliged to free their slaves entirely from this torture, in order to preserve their lives: I saw several in this situation, who seemed to have suffered severely from being previously loaded with this machine.
I attempted to reason with one of the owners; and urged, that, as he was obliged to leave them free occasionally, and run the risk of their escaping, he might as well do so always, and that he would find it his interest, as many actually died from this treatment. I told him he ought, as a good Mahometan, to adopt a more humane method of securing them. He told me, that he could not liberate them all at once; for they had recently threatened that, if ever they had the opportunity, they would kill him, and dye a red tarboush (Turkish cap) with his blood. The slaves understood this part of our discourse, and some laughed at this expression; but in general they appeared in a dreadful state of apathy and torpor, quite indifferent to the interest they saw me take in their situation.
They were all negroes, with high cheek-bones, triangular faces, eyes sunk deep in the head, thick lips, complexion a cold bluish black colour, an expression heavy and unpleasing, and without a spark of talent in their countenances. They were continually demanding fire. After the extreme heat of the day, when the sun has set, there follows a degree of cold, which, though slight, and to me most agreeable, is no doubt felt severely by the slaves, who are quite naked, and accustomed to a hotter climate; and they feel it more sensitively, having been exposed the greater part of the day to the burning sun. We make very little progress, the wind being always strong against us.
April 8. We passed to-day the village of El Urub. Nothing can be more tedious and uninteresting than this voyage: we have scarcely seen any cultivated ground since we left the town of Meroueh, except the islands; the desert has almost entirely overspread the banks of the Nile; and where there was once, perhaps, a happy and numerous population, a people acquainted with the arts, rich cities and villages, now no other track is to be seen but that of the timid gazelle, which finds a secure pasture on the bushy acacias which on each side border the river. The glaring reddish yellow sands have supplanted the rich cultivation, and waves of sand have swallowed up the vestiges of the temples and palaces which adorned the cities. Where were the numerous towns whose names we read in the itineraries? Are there no monuments remaining of their magnificence, no traces of their habitations? The vessel buried in the fathomless deep leaves but fragments which are soon covered by the waters. Thus the Libyan and great Nubian deserts, ever active and incessant in their attacks, have concealed entirely from our view the little, perhaps, which the hand of time, and more destructive ravages of war and religious fanaticism, had spared.
“No trace remains where once thy glory grew:
The sapp’d foundations by thy force shall fall,
And, whelm’d beneath thy waves, drop the huge wall:
Vast drifts of sand shall change the former shore—
The ruin vanish’d, and the name no more.”—Pope’s Iliad, book vii.