CHAPTER VI.
Laying out a garden à l’Européenne. Hunting adventure with a bastard Gems-bok. Death of Arslan. Physiognomy of the vegetation. Character of the soil. Geography of plants. Destruction of a Seriba by natives. Seriba law. Cattle-raids on the Dinka. Tour round Ghattas’s Seribas. Geography at Geer. Fish of the Tondy. Fear of ghosts in Koolongo. Caves of Gubbehee. Cental African jackal. Bamboos in blossom. Triumph of Nature over her traducers. Joint-stock distillery in Gurfala. Nubian love of drink. Petherick’s Mundo. Unsuccessful chase in the long grass. Two bush-antelopes. Cultivated plants of the district. Cereals. Large growth of sorghum. Leguminous fruits. Oily fruits. Tubers. Vegetables. Tobacco. Smoking in Africa.
I was again in Ghattas’s Seriba on the 13th of May. The arrival of an ivory caravan on its return journey had brought an unwonted animation. But for me very soon the ordinary routine of life came back, and one day passed on just like another in the closest intercourse with Nature. Except during some temporary excursions to the Bongo, this Seriba would be my residence for some months to come, and I set to work to make my quarters as comfortable as I could in a good-sized hut which had been vacated for me.
The first thing I did was to lay out a large vegetable garden, a task which engaged not only all my own people, but gave occupation to not a few of the black slaves of the place. I had not only brought with me a good supply of pickaxes and spades, but I had likewise a capital collection of seeds. Thus I hoped at once to provide for my own necessities, and to prove to the natives the productiveness of their soil. The plot of ground was nearly 200 paces square, and the next thing was to enclose it with a hedge of straw, and to lay it out with a series of parallel beds. The larger number of these beds I planted with the best sorts of maize, of which I had procured the original ears from New Jersey.
Seventy days after sowing I reaped the crop, and the ingathering did not simply answer ray highest expectations, but surpassed in quality the original stock; the kinds which seemed to succeed best being those which after they are dry are horny and transparent.
Tobacco from Maryland grew to an immense height, and I gathered several hundredweights of it. There was not altogether so much of a deficiency of tobacco in the country as of the larger leaves, of which use could be made for rolling into cigars. In Egypt the Virginian tobacco can be made to grow leaves as large as the palm of one’s hand, but in the negro districts the whole produce is quite diminutive. Negroes always sow tobacco under cover before they plant it out; the midday sun of Central Africa is too powerful for the seed, which infallibly perishes in a parched soil. I had always to guard against the same difficulty with all my European vegetables, especially in July, or at other times, when five or six days without a drop of rain would come in succession, and I only saved my young sprouts by having water brought twice a day by the women in their great pitchers. Worms did a vast amount of mischief amongst the germinating seeds, and no devastator was more destructive than the great millipede (Spirostreptus), which, as long and thick as my finger, penetrated the soil in every direction. The havoc made in this way amongst the beans before they were set was very considerable.
GARDEN VEGETABLES.
The hard, yet fertile soil, I feel certain, is quite suited for our cucumbers, cabbage, turnip-cabbage, and radishes. Of radishes, the European sort succeeds better than the Egyptian, which belongs to quite an anomalous variety. Melons and water-melons can only be ripened during the winter months, when they are artificially protected and supplied with moisture. Any attempt to grow them in the rainy season always results in failure; either the fruit is eaten by worms long before it is mature, or the leaves are devoured by grubs. Here, too, I trained some tomatoes and sunflowers, which ever since have been quite naturalised in this part of Africa. Had my sojourn been longer, I should have made an attempt at establishing the plantain, of which indeed I saw some isolated plants now and then in the Seriba. This is a natural production of the land of the Niam-niam; it would doubtless thrive here, but the indolence of the Nubians is so great, and their indifference towards all produce that must be gained by toil is so indomitable, that garden culture amongst them remains fitful and unprogressive.
When I had seen all the labours of the kitchen-garden complete, I was free to abandon myself to the full delights of the flora. Up with the sun, I used to take one or two of my people with me to carry my portfolios and my arms, and in the safe proximity of the Seriba I explored the woods for hours together, returning about noon with a whole treasury of floral wealth. My table at meals never failed to be well supplied, and I was treated as bountifully as in Africa I could be. I enjoyed sitting in the shade of some spreading tree, while I proceeded to analyse, to classify, and to register, the various novelties which I was perpetually finding. Later in the day I was in the habit of wandering out alone over the plains, whilst my servants at home busied themselves in renewing the paper for my hortus siccus, and in pressing out the plants afresh. This labour of the day was often carried on till quite late at night: it was repeated so often that my collection increased to a very considerable extent; roll was piled up after roll; everything most carefully stitched up in hides ready to go along with me on my farther journey, and to be carried across deserts and seas until they could finally be deposited in the magazines of science.
BASTARD GEMSBOK.