An excellent reception awaited me in Dimindoh. The hunting-village had been lately built of straw and bamboo at a large outlay, and there were regular straw palaces, of which the new domes and roofs gleamed with all the golden glory of Ceres. To say the very least, our rest was quite undisturbed by rats, and the idyllic abodes still retained the pleasant aroma of the meadows. I had no cause to complain of the entertainment in any of the smaller Seribas. I was always supplied with milk and with all kinds of meal. The traditional spirit-distillery of Ghattas’s people was here also in full swing, and they brought to me, in gourd-shells, a concoction which was not so utterly bad as that at Gurfala.
TREATMENT OF WOUNDS.
I was, however, much bewildered by the constant solicitations for my medical advice. Amongst other cases they brought me a Nubian, who, on his excursions, had received such cuts from the grass that his feet had completely rotted away, leaving the tendons still hanging. These people have no rational way of treating their wounds, but when there is any inflammation they endeavour to allay it by corn-poultices and hot water, a proceeding which always aggravates the evil. I saw some who had lost several toes, and others who had the most revolting sores on the shins and insteps, and in nearly every case these had arisen from insignificant cuts which, simply from mismanagement, had terminated in disease.
“It is a strange thing,” I said to them, “that the grass is only bad here; it must be something more than that; it is a punishment from God.”
“But God,” they answered, “does not give us such grass in Dongola; this is a bad country.”
“Do you mean to say then,” I replied, “that God is kind in Dongola, and unkind here? No; I tell you, God is Himself punishing you for all your thievery, because there is here no other ruler to look after your misdeeds.”
I felt that I was quite justified in talking in this fashion to a people who, under the cloak of religion, are as unscrupulous rascals as any in the world, and who, misinterpreting the mottoes on their banners which incite them to war against the infidel, consider all plunder perpetrated on defenceless savages as heroic actions bearing them onwards to the palms of Paradise.
The chief Seriba of this eastern section of Ghattas’s establishments lies only a league and a half to the north-east of Dimindoh, and was called Dangadduloo, after a certain Danga, who had been appointed the head of the Mittoo of the district. In 1863 the brothers Poncet of Khartoom had ceded to Ghattas their settlements amongst the Agar, on the Rohl, in order to found fresh establishments in the following year near the cataracts of that river, among the Lehssy. The Agar, as I have already mentioned, had managed to obtain possession of a considerable quantity of firearms and ammunition, and had made themselves so formidable that the Khartoomers had not ventured to rebuild the Seriba that had been destroyed: for that reason, the settlements of Ghattas had receded southwards to the region in which I now found myself. Our road lay often across wide gneiss flats, which not unfrequently exhibited the same uniformity for several hundred yards together. From the surface the stone broke off in smooth laminæ, often as thin as the cover of a book, and afforded me a convenient material for pressing my packets of plants. We had crossed the Wohko for the second time at Dimindoh, where its bed was about fifteen feet deep: its course is generally due north, but here it bends at a right angle to the east, as if seeking the shortest route to join the Rohl. The little river abounds in shells, especially in Anodontæ, which are turned to many domestic uses by the natives, while the massive Etheria Cailliaudii, not unlike the oyster, forms continuous banks in all these minor streams.
In Dangadduloo I found two applicants both eager to obtain the appointment as superintendent of the Seriba. One of these had accompanied the last caravan of supplies from Khartoom, and now was not acknowledged in the Seriba by the soldiers, who reproached him for having acted fraudulently. He was a Copt, and, as far as I know, the first and last Khartoom Christian who ever ventured amongst this set of fanatics. The other agent, named Selim, was a negro over six feet high, and by birth a Dinka; he had the majority of the inhabitants of the Seriba on his side, and lived in continual contention with his rival about the surrender of the stores brought from Khartoom. Both of these men received me with a great show of friendship, and each strove to outdo the other in politeness; they considered that a great deal might depend upon the answer that I should give their master on my return to Khartoom, when he would probably ask my opinion of their respective merits. Each maligned the other, and almost in the same terms; they were both, moreover, throughout the two days which I spent with them more or less in a state of intoxication.
COLD CUP.