The few Europeans who ever really opened transactions in these countries did indeed pay their people in hard cash, and refused to have anything to do either with the slave trade or cattle-stealing, limiting their operations exclusively to the purchase of ivory and to elephant-hunting in the districts adjacent to their settlements. Just as might be expected, however, they were soon compelled to withdraw from their undertaking—either because, on the one hand, the stock of ivory in their immediate vicinity was exhausted, or, on the other, because they found that they could not compete with the native firms, who were backed by the illegal means I have mentioned. Since their withdrawal, no new speculator has attempted to follow in their steps; and as year by year the Khartoom trade loses its European representatives, it appears as though, in course of time, the export business will pass out of European hands. Nothing will prevent this, unless some important modifications should occur in the southern provinces of Egypt. Sanguine of success, Ismail Pasha has projected the formation of a railway to Khartoom; and, considering the general aspect of affairs as I have related them, this great undertaking deserves the unqualified support of all who do not despair of the ultimate victory of right.
A mere slave when at home, Ghattas’s plenipotentiary, Idrees, was here an important personage, invested with absolute power, and swaggered about like an autocrat. By birth a negro, he had not on that account less influence over the Nubians than any other official—for it is not according to the law of Islam to allow national enmity to be antagonistic to personal rank. I was received with all the courtesy due to my credentials, and for the first few days found myself literally loaded with presents. Provisions of every sort were placed at my disposal, whilst my people had free board for a month in Idrees’s quarters. Two neatly-built huts of moderate size, within the palisade, were prepared for me, but these were not nearly sufficient to accommodate me with all my baggage. The actual Seriba, about 200 paces square, was so crammed with huts, that not a spot could be discovered where it was possible to erect a more spacious residence. Outside the enclosure, where the buildings were more scattered over the fields, I was not permitted to lodge. I was told how it had happened, and was likely to happen again, that the natives skulked about at night and murdered people in their sleep. This statement I was forced, whether I would or not, to accept, and temporarily, at all events, to content myself with my cramped abode, eighteen feet across.
ACCOMMODATION IN THE SERIBA.
The huts are built of bamboo and straw; the conical roof rests on a kind of basket-work of bamboo, which is daubed inside with clay, in a way that is imitated from the almost petrified erections of the white ants. The pagan negroes lavish far more care upon their huts than the Mohammedan inhabitants of the Soudan, who, although the bamboo grows so abundantly among them, do not succeed in giving their “tokkuls” nearly so much symmetry. Here they possess the art of erecting roofs which are perfectly water-tight, and which are so light that they do not require heavy posts to hold them together on the walls. The covering for the roof is formed, in the first place upon the ground, with handfuls of stalks laid side by side and knotted together. These are afterwards plaited into long strips, which are then laid one above the other, like the flounces of a lady’s dress—a comparison which is further the more appropriate, because the structure of the frame-work is exactly like a hooped petticoat.
I would not allow the walls of the tokkul, in which I generally passed my time, to be cemented with clay, partly because I liked the airiness of the basket-work, and partly because light was necessary for my daily occupations. There seemed to me two other advantages—first, on dry days, my goods would more rapidly recover the effect of the wet to which they had been exposed; and, secondly, I should be less plagued with rats than those who occupied the plastered huts. In stormy weather, it is true, I had to suffer a certain amount of discomfort. To increase my storage-room I contrived some shelves and stands out of bamboo-canes; I had also brought from Khartoom some deal planks, expressly for the manufacture of the tables which were necessary for my botanical pursuits. A traveller who is in possession of bamboos, cow-hide, bladder, and clay, will find himself not very inadequately supplied with representatives of nearly all the building materials of Europe.
My excursions about the neighbourhood soon began, and these, with the arrangement of my daily collections, occupied the greater part of my time. In unfailing good health, I passed the first few weeks in a transport of joy, literally enraptured by the unrivalled loveliness of nature. The early rains had commenced, and were clothing all the park-like scenery, meadows, trees, and shrubs, with the verdure of spring. Emulating the tulips and hyacinths of our own gardens, sprang up everywhere splendid bulbous plants; whilst amongst the fresh foliage gleamed blossoms of the gayest hue. The April rains are not continuous, but nevertheless, trees and underwood were all in bloom, and the grass was like a lawn for smoothness. In Tropical Africa, after long continuance of rain, the grass may be considered more as a defect than an ornament in the landscape: the obstructions which it interposes to the view of the traveller considerably mar his enjoyment of the scenery; but throughout the period of the early rains its growth is remarkably slow, and it takes some months to attain a height sufficient to conceal the numerous flowering weeds and bulbs which display their blossoms at the same season.
The territory of the Dinka includes nearly the whole low ground, extending right away to the Gazelle. It is a vast plain of dark alluvial clay, of which the uniformity is not broken by a single hill or mass of rock, any tracts of forest being of very limited extent. As they approach the districts of the Bongo and the Dyoor, the Dinka steppes lose much of that park-like aspect which they here present. Indeed, very marked is the contrast in the character of the scenery which appears on entering those districts; for to the very borders of the Dinka reaches that enormous table-land of ferruginous soil which, unbroken except by gentle undulations or by isolated mounds of gneiss, gradually ascends to the Equator. This plain appears to cover the greater part of the centre of the continent, even if it does not extend as far as Benguela and the shores of the Niger. From my own experience, I can certify that the general geological features of the soil, as exhibited as far south as the latitude of 4°, are identical with those which were conspicuous here, where the latitude was between 7° and 8° N.
THE RIVER TONDY.
At the end of a fortnight I made a trip to the south-east, the first of a series of excursions to Ghattas’s different Seribas, which lay four or five leagues apart. On this tour I learnt something of the river Tondy, on which is established the Seriba known as Addai. The river was now at its lowest level, and was flowing north-east in a tolerably rapid current, between precipitous banks fifteen feet in height. In depth it varied from four to seven feet, and it was about thirty feet in breadth; in the rainy season, however, for three miles, the adjacent steppes are covered with its floods, which are always very prolific in fish. Before the Tondy joins the Gazelle, as it does in the district of the Nueir, it spreads irregularly over the low-lying country and leaves its shores quite undefined. In this way it forms a number of swamps, all but inaccessible, to which the Dinka, whenever they are threatened by plundering excursions from the Seribas, lose no time in driving their herds.
Although the Tondy is nearly as long as the Dyoor, it is very inferior in its volume of water. Like several of the less important rivers of this region, it flows for a long distance without any appreciable increase either in size or speed. These streams intersect the country and cut it up into narrow sections, which are rarely designated on the maps.