The extensive wilderness derived a weird aspect from the strange stillness that pervaded the deserted dwellings. There was not a song from a bird, there was hardly the humming of an insect; it seemed as if Nature were revelling in her undisputed sway, or as if the curse of a prophet had been wreaked upon the abodes of violence and of plunder.
By the end of July all the bamboos were in full blossom. The grains are not unlike rye, and are edible, and, in times of dearth, have been known to form a substitute for the exhausted corn. When the fruit is mature, the long, ramified panicles have a very remarkable appearance, and the ears, clustered together at their base, radiate like an ancient whirlbat. Very rarely, however, does the African bamboo bloom, so that it is not often that it supplies the place of ordinary corn.
At an equal distance of about a league and a half from Kulongo and from Geer lies the village of Gurfala. The way thither led through perpetual marshes and was so interrupted by deep masses of mud that I had repeatedly to change my clothes. When the naked skin is exposed to the filth of the bogs, it is not only annoyed by a number of insects, some of them harmless enough, many of them most disgusting, but it is terribly cut by the sharp edges of the grass. This not merely causes considerable pain, but the wounds inflicted in this way are often very troublesome and slow to heal; they not unfrequently result among the Nubians in serious sores, and have been known to entail the loss of a foot. At every Seriba there will be found some who are suffering from this cause, and Baker observed the recurrence of the same evil amongst his people. As the same consequences do not occur in Nubia itself they are probably to be attributed to the effect of the climate. The backs of the negroes are not available for transport over any long distances of this fenny land, because of the insecurity of the footing; and in another respect this mode of conveyance offers little attraction; to mount one of the negroes is almost as disastrous to one’s white summer garments as an actual tumble into the marsh. Soap is not a common article hereabout, and must be used economically, and the traveller has to put up with a general wash about once in two months.
All the minor Seribas are really established for the purpose of overlooking the Bongo, and the sub-agents are always in trepidation lest there should be a sudden disappearance of all their negroes. It has not unfrequently happened that whole communities of the Bongo, quite unawares, have taken up their baggage, started off from their state of subjection, and, escaping the hands of their masters, have established themselves amongst the neighbouring Dinka. If they wish to cultivate corn for themselves, who could venture to blame them?
AFRICAN DISTILLERY.
The Bongo name for Gurfala is Ngulfala, which indicates an earlier tribe of this race, which is no longer separated into various clans. Gurfala, I found, had its amusing associations. As in Kulongo it was the fear of ghosts for which the people had been conspicuous, so here it was the effect of a great brandy-distillery upon the inhabitants that entertained me. This distillery was kept by an old Egyptian, one of the few of his race who resided in the district of the Seribas. Out of an “ardeb,” or about five bushels of sorghum, he managed, with his rude apparatus, to extract about thirty bottles of watery alcohol. The sallow old Egyptian, whom the enjoyment of his vile liquors had tanned till his skin was as dry as parchment, was, as it were, director of a joint-stock company, of which the sub-agents and the soldiers in the Seriba were the shareholders, contributing their quota of corn to the concern. The apparatus for distilling consisted of a series of covered clay retorts, connected by tubes made of bamboo; the establishment for working was made up of a party of fat-bellied, swarthy women slaves, who had to pound away at the grain in a mortar; and as often as they paused for a moment to recover their breath, after their grinding exertions, they invariably panted till they reminded one of exhausted Cybeles. The chief material used was sorghum; the produce was a vile spirit. All the Nubians who settle here would abandon themselves very much to the use of brandy, if it could be more readily procured and if a continual superabundance were at their disposal; their fanaticism, however, is irreproachable; they rigorously follow the prescription of their law, and most scrupulously observe the Fast of Ramadan.
Together with the fresh relays arrived rows of spirit-flasks in their original packing (mostly made at Breslau), which are stored away in the magazines. These find their way from Alexandria and Khartoom to this remote corner of traffic. The agents drink their spirits neat, and cannot get it strong enough to please them; everybody else dilutes it with two-thirds water or mixes it with his merissa. In their drinking-bouts they used to besiege me with applications for some of the sharp radishes from my garden, which on these occasions they seemed especially to relish. What was most revolting to me about their intoxication was that they always preferred the early hours of the morning for their indulgence, and for the rest of the day became incapable of standing upright. After they were tipsy they were just as pugnacious as Europeans, but the excitability of the South would break out, so that manslaughter and death were not of unfrequent occurrence.
After a couple of days I took my departure from the huts of Gurfala, where a number of the Gellahba also have settled themselves, and I made my way over a short two leagues towards the west to Doomookoo, the fifth of the Ghattas Seribas. The route was over a firm soil, alternately bushwood and open steppe. The grass on the rocky level seemed to have a permanent character. All of one kind, and covering large tracts of country, it reminded me of the waving ears of our own cornfields. Although the region seems to be destitute of any continuance of trees, it far surpasses the European plains and meadow lands in the variety of its permanent grasses.
About half-way there was a pond made by rain on the rocky ground, which was covered with the large red-headed geese of the Gambia and a number of widow-buntings. Only during the rainy season do these birds quit the waters of the great Nile and find their way to the interior.
MUNDO.