[60] Vide Chapter V.
[61] The Egyptians call them simply “Barãbra.”
[62] ‘Travels in Nubia,’ by the late John Lewis Burckhardt. London, 1822.
[63] Burckhardt gives copies of two of these amulets in his ‘Travels,’ pp. 210 and 211.
CHAPTER XXI.
Fresh wanderings, Dyoor remedy for wounds. Crocodiles in the Ghetty. Former residence of Miss Tinné. Dirt and disorder. The Baggara-Rizegat. An enraged fanatic. The Pongo. Frontiers of the Bongo and Golo. A buffalo-calf shot. Idrees Wod Defter’s Seriba. Golo dialect. Corn magazines of the Golo. The Kooroo. The goats’ brook. Increasing level of land. Seebehr’s Seriba Dehm Nduggoo. Discontent of the Turks. Visit to an invalid. Ibrahim Effendi. Establishment of the Dehms. Nubians rivals to the slave-dealers. Population of Dar Ferteet. The Kredy. Overland route to Kordofan. Shekka. Copper mines of Darfoor. Raw copper.
The third New Year’s Day that I passed on African soil now dawned, and it was precisely on the 1st of January, 1871, that I found myself starting off upon my long-projected tour to the west. I left my little Tikkitikki to the temporary guardianship of Khalil, and set out accompanied by two of my servants, the negro lads, and the few bearers that were necessary to carry the little remnant of my property.
My scheme was first of all to pay a visit to Bizelly’s Seriba, thirty-two miles to the north-west, the same that had been Miss Tinné’s headquarters seven years previously; and as the controller happened to be passing through Kurshook Ali’s Seriba on his return from a business tour, I was glad to avail myself of the chance of travelling in company with one who was well acquainted with the country. The name of this man was Bakhit Yussuf; he was a negro by birth, and had formerly been in the service of Kleincznick, a Hungarian, who at the time of Miss Tinné’s expedition had owned a Seriba in the Kozanga mountains, and who by the shameless way in which he had prosecuted the slave-trade, had fallen under the censure of the Khartoom authorities.
We crossed the Wow at the same wooded spot as we had done in April 1869. This river, the Nyenahm of the Dyoor, the Herey of the Bongo, during the rainy season has a depth of fourteen to sixteen feet without ever overflowing its banks; even at this date the bed of the noble forest-stream was still quite covered with water, the depth of which near the banks was three or four feet, decreasing in the middle of the current to less than two feet. The varying depth, however, did not affect the velocity, which was uniform throughout and about ninety-eight feet a minute. The width of the Wow I found by careful measurement to be 132 feet.
AN UNCOURTEOUS VOKEEL.