In the glimmer of dawn we were aroused by the accustomed signals. Two of the Bongo in Mohammed’s service had learnt at Khartoom how to blow their trumpets and beat their drums for this important function, and they sounded the Turkish réveil admirably, giving it the full roll and proper compass. In particular, Inglery the trumpeter was superb in his execution, and the astonished woods could not too often re-echo back his clanging notes. The Niam-niam were quite delighted with the strain, and frequently could be detected humming the melody to themselves. Wando and Munza alike were never weary of urging the request that Aboo Sammat would either make them a present of his trumpeter, or allow them to purchase him at any price he might elect to name; but Inglery was the joy and pride of Mohammed, and in his way was quite unique throughout the district of the Upper Nile as far as the banner of Islam had been borne.
NIAM-NIAM DIGNITY.
Our caravan was accompanied by a large number of guides and natives who were eager to show the way, as a stiff day’s march was before us, and a passage over several difficult water-courses had to be accomplished. The morning toilette of the Niam-niam guides was singular enough. In order to protect themselves against the chilly damp of the early dew as they marched along the narrow pathways of the steppes, they covered the entire front of their body with some large skins, which made them look as if they wore coopers’ aprons. For this purpose there is no skin that looks more picturesque than that of the bush-bock, with its rows of white spots and stripes upon a yellow ochre ground. The bearing of the Niam-niam is always chivalrous as becomes a people devoted to war and to the chase, exhibiting a very strong contrast to the unpolished nonchalance of the Bongo, the Mittoo, and even of the finicking Arabians. The Niam-niam might be introduced straight upon the stage, and would be faultless in the symmetry with which they would go through their poses.
Our way took a turn beyond the Atazilly across the same steppe over which we had passed yesterday. After an hour we arrived again at the Lindukoo, which here forms a considerable cataract of some thirty feet deep, falling over the worn and polished gneiss. A thick bank-wood shaded the rocks, which were charmingly adorned with the rarest ferns, and a regular jungle of tangled foliage canopied the depth beneath which the rosy blooming ginger-bushes grew as tall as a man and scented the air with their fine aroma. Just for half-an-hour we halted upon the high and dry levels that we found, and regaled ourselves with refreshment from our store of provisions.
An early rest like this was quite common with us, for in the confusion of our starting at the dawn of day there was seldom any leisure at all to think of breakfast. Our leader, neither proud nor upstart, but like all Nubians, whose finest quality is their sense of equity and brotherhood, munched away amidst a circle of his more intimate associates, to which my Khartoom attendants were admitted, at some cold fowl seasoned with pimento, which was the choicest morsel that the country could supply. With the flowery yams, the sweet-potatoes, and the colocasiæ, which appeared such an invaluable boon to the country, the Nubians could do nothing, so unaccustomed were they in their native place to vegetables of any sort: what they missed most was plenty of their flat cake of kissere; quite voluntarily they renounced all meat. They carried with them a supply of the capsules of the Hibiscus esculentus, dried before they were ripe, and by the aid of the indispensable red pepper and some fat or oily substance, they manufactured a slimy sauce in which they soused their kissere. They were epicures enough to carry with them in a horn their own “duggoo,” which is a kind of pot-pourri composed of every condiment they can procure, being a combination of salt, pimento, fœnum græcum, basilicum, coriander, mustard, dill, and a variety of other ingredients of the kind.
But now for a time the days of kissere and sorghum-pap were over. Now for awhile they had to put up with eleusine, that tiny, scaly, black and bitter grain of which Speke declares that it is sown, because the spades, which do such an amount of mischief to other seeds, leave this uninjured—the same Eleusine coracana (called teleboon in Arabic and raggi in the West Indies) which on account of its extreme bitterness was condemned by Baker as being putrid and unfit to eat. Leaving it for the people who seemed to enjoy it well enough, he made the remark that “the lion dies of hunger where the ass grows fat.”
There was a general belief in magic. One day, my servant, Mohammed Ameen, would get it into his head that I had found a plant from which I could extract gold; on the next day it would be some wonderful skull that I had found, and from which I knew how to extract the subtlest poison; the day after and I had the luck to kill an antelope because I was in possession of some marvellous root. With plain matter-of-fact these good people cannot get on at all: that every herb must have some medicinal properties and use would appear never to have entered the minds of any but Europeans. “Knowest thou the herb that gives perpetual youth?” is the question that the Oriental asks; and mysterious secrets are yet to be unfolded to the African.
FATALISM.
No one clings more than a Niam-niam to the superstition that the possession of certain charmed roots contributes to the success of the chase, so that the best shots, when they have killed an unusual number either of antelopes or buffaloes are usually credited with having such roots in their keeping. The fatalism, which is exhibited just as decidedly by Mohammedans as by heathens, is such that it does not attach the least importance to the skill with which an arrow or bullet is aimed. This is a reason why the Khartoomers are never practised in the art of shooting; they do not doubt but that whatever is designed for the unbeliever is sure to hit its mark.
The direction which the river Lindukoo was taking appeared to me to be exactly the reverse of that in which flowed the current of the Yubbo; and, in spite of the positiveness on the part of the guides, all their statements left my mind unconvinced, and in a state of considerable perplexity. But two months later when I had again to cross the river some distance further to the East, my presentiment was thoroughly confirmed. The formation of the land just here is very uneven and irregular; quite in contrast to what it was observed to be both previously and subsequently upon our progress. With the Lindukoo, then, I was bidding farewell to the district of the Nile. Many as there had been before who had undertaken to explore the mighty river to its fountain-head, here was I, the first European coming from the north who yet had ever traversed.