Aboo Sammat, in the most complimentary way, had made me a variety of presents: by special messengers he had conveyed to me animal and vegetable curiosities of many sorts. He once sent me the munificent offering of a flock of five-and-twenty sheep; and at my own desire, but at his cost, he furnished me with a young interpreter to teach me the dialect of the Niam-niam. In the middle of November, on his return from the Meshera, he would take our Seriba on his way, and I resolved to join him.
The people at Ghattas’s quarters endeavoured, but to no purpose, to dissuade me; they represented in very melancholy colours the misery to which I should inevitably be exposed in the desert life of Aboo Sammat’s district, which was every now and then threatened with starvation. There would be no lack of monuments of antiquity (“antigaht,” as they called them), or of hunting, or of wild beasts, but I must be prepared for perpetual hunger. Against all this, however true it might be, I consoled myself with the reflection that Aboo Sammat would certainly manage to keep me in food, and the difference of one more or less in number could not be very serious.
Another important reason which weighed with me was the saving of expense in the way of travelling. The mere cost of bearers for a journey through the Niam-niam lands would be some thousand dollars, which, according to contract, would go into the pocket of Ghattas: this would entirely be avoided if Aboo Sammat fulfilled his promise, and there was nothing to induce me to suppose that he was otherwise than a man of his word.
Nothing now seemed longer to detain me in the Dyoor or Bongo countries: accordingly, resolved to make a start, I packed up my goods without delay, and made the Governor acquainted with my intention. A regular commotion followed in the Seriba: the clerks and notaries produced the contract which had been signed at Khartoom, and attempted not only to demonstrate that Aboo Sammat had no right to receive me, but that Ghattas had the sole responsibility of my weal and woe, and must answer, at the peril of his head, for any misfortune that might befall me while I was under the tutelage of Aboo Sammat. The distorted character of their logic was manifest as soon as the evidence was shown that Ghattas was under obligations to me and not I to him.
PASSAGE OF THE TONDY.
After I had made all my arrangements to store the collections which had accumulated since my last despatch, I prepared to quit my bountiful quarters and to start by way of Koolongo over the desolation of the wilderness towards the south. The baggage which I found it necessary to take, I limited to thirty-six packages. The Nubian servants, three slaves, and the interpreter, composed my own retinue, but Aboo Sammat’s entire caravan, counting bearers and soldiers, consisted altogether of about 250 men. I myself joined the main body at Kulongo, where preparations had just been completed for the passage of the Tondy, which was then at high flood.
The regular progress began on the 17th of November. A march of an hour brought us to the low plain of the Tondy, where four Bongo bearers were ready for me with a kind of bedstead, on which I reclined at my ease as they conveyed me upon their shoulders above the many places which were marshy or choked with rushes, till they reached the ferry that Aboo Sammat had arranged. This ferry consisted of a great raft of straw upon which the packages were laid in separate lots, and to which most of the bearers clung while it was towed across by a number of swimmers who were accustomed to the stream. The Nubians floundered like fish in the strong current, and had some work to do in saving many a “colli,” which, in the unsteadiness of the passage, was thrown out of its equilibrium. The river, by its right bank, was running at the rate of 120 feet a minute and was about 200 feet across. Nearly exhausted as I was by the violence of the stream, when I approached the further side I was grasped hand and foot by a number of the swimmers, who brought me to land as if I had been a drowning man.
Beyond the river the land was less affected by any inundation, and after a few minutes we came to a steep rocky highland which bounded the way to the south. Rising to an elevation of little more than 200 feet, we had a fine open view of the depressed tract of land through which the Tondy meanders. Its windings were marked by reedy banks; the mid-day sun gleamed upon the mirror of various backwaters, and the distance revealed a series of wooded undulations. Tn a thin dark thread, the caravan wound itself at my feet along the green landscape, as I have endeavoured to depict it in the annexed illustration. The height on which we stood was graced by a beautiful grove, where I observed a fresh characteristic of the region, viz., the alder-like Vatica, a tree of no great size, but which now appeared in detached clumps. In the foreground of the picture are represented some of the most charming types of vegetation in the bushwood; on the left is the large-leaved blue-green Anona senegalensis; on the right, the Grewia mollis, a shrub with long twigs that supplies an abundance of bast and string wherever it grows. The little tree of the pine genus is the willow-leaved Boscia, which is a constant inhabitant of the Upper Nile district.
It was getting late in the day before we had assembled our whole troop upon the plateau. Very short, consequently, was our march before we halted for the night. The spot selected for the purpose had formerly been a small Seriba belonging to Ghattas; but in consequence of the Bongo who had settled there having all deserted, and of the difficulty of maintaining any intercourse with other Seribas during the rainy season, it had been abandoned. It was a district of utter desolation, far away from any other settlements.