Midday, between the Kulloo and the Horroah, we had come upon a gigantic fig-tree (Ficus lutea), one of those memorials of the past that are so often seen in Bongoland, marking, as they do, the site of an earlier native village. The name of the place was Ngukkoo. The enormous tree had a short stem enveloped in a perfect network of aerial roots, struck downwards from the branches, whilst at the summit it spread out into a crown of foliage that under the vertical midday sun formed a shadow on the ground of which the circumference, as I proved by actual measurement, was not less than 230 feet.
During the latter portion of the march we had seen a considerable number of candelabra Euphorbiæ and Calotropis. The appearance of the Calotropis (called in Arabic “el Usher”) was indicative of a more northerly type of vegetation, as the plant is characteristic of the steppes of Nubia, Arabia, and the frontiers of India: this was the first time I had seen it in the territory of the Seribas; the “el Usher” had evidently been introduced into this part of the country by traders from the north, and the solid stems of the plants, which elsewhere are little more than shrubs, bore ample witness to the long-established traffic on this commercial highway. The explanation of the extensive diffusion of this plant may be found in the fact that the silky down that covers the seeds in their large plump pods is used as a material for stuffing cushions. In the northern steppes its appearing in sight is ever hailed by the traveller as a happy omen, as it enjoys the reputation of always having either a well or a hidden spring of fresh water in its immediate vicinity.
Damury was situated close to the right-hand bank of the Pongo, as the Bongo call this affluent of the Bahr-el-Arab. On earlier maps the river was marked as the Kozanga, but this I found to be merely the designation of a small mountainous ridge that extended for several leagues along the left bank of the river to the south-west of the Seriba. On the 17th of July, 1863, Theodor von Heuglin[68] had visited the spot for the purpose of selecting a dry and rocky eminence in the woods where a camp might be erected for the headquarters of Miss Tinné’s expedition. If this scheme had been carried into practice the melancholy sacrifice of life that resulted from the unwholesome atmosphere of Bizelly’s Seriba might happily have been spared; but the difficulties of properly organising so large a party of travellers were insuperable, and the project of removal to that healthier resort fell to the ground.
The transitoriness which seems to be the characteristic of all the institutions of this land prevented me from ascertaining the exact site of the dwelling-place of the deceased Bongo chief Kulanda, mentioned by Heuglin in his account of the visit he made to the place; but from the comparison of certain points of correspondence, I entertain no doubt but that my footsteps were then upon the very spot.
In its upper course through the district inhabited by the Sehre, the Pongo, as already noted, bears the name of the Djee; it flows towards the north-east, and after leaving the Bongo territory beyond Damury passes through that of the Dembo, a tribe of Shillook origin related to the Dyoor: on this account the Khartoomers call it the Bahr-el-Dembo.
The Dembo are under the jurisdiction of Ali Amoory, whose territories extend far beyond the river to the north-west, and join the country of the Baggara-el-Homr, his most remote Seribas being on the Gebbel Marra, in the locality of a negro tribe called the Bambirry, probably also a branch of the great Shillook family; but it should be stated that, according to some accounts, these Bambirry are true Zandey Niam-niam who have immigrated from the south and settled in their present quarters.
THE RIVER PONGO.
The scenery about Damury was extremely like that around Awoory in the Mittoo country; in fact it altogether reminded me of what I had seen on my trip to the Rohl, especially as the Pongo exhibits not a few points of resemblance to that river. Damury is built on rising rocky ground, thickly covered with wood, and close to the eastern or right-hand bank of the river. The slopes that enclosed the river-bed were about fifteen feet in depth, and between them and the actual stream there was, on either side, a strip of soil subject to inundation during the rainy season and now broken up with numerous pools and backwaters. At this date (January 7, 1871) the water was moving sluggishly along between clay banks, some 10 feet down and 70 feet apart; but the water did not cover a breadth of more than fifty feet and was nowhere more than four feet in depth. Its velocity was the same as that of the Wow; but whilst both the Wow and the Dyoor rolled along, even at this season, in considerable volume, the Pongo was comparatively empty, and, as I saw, it must have offered a very striking contrast to its appearance during the Khareef, when no doubt it could make good its pretensions to be a river of the second class. On the other side of the Pongo there was a low tract of steppe, at least 3000 paces wide, which, of course, represented the territory subject to inundation on the left bank. I subsequently found that the entire length of the river, from its source to Damury, could not at the most exceed 200 miles, and thus became able more completely to realise the very remarkable periodic changes which occur in the condition of the stream.
In various parts of the depression the vegetation of the open steppe is replaced by close masses of stephogyne: these form marshy clumps, and from their general habit very strongly resemble our alder-beds of the north.
Close to the Seriba a deep chasm, called Gumango, opens out into the valley of the river; it is one of the landslips, so common in this region, caused by springs washing away the ferruginous swamp-ore from below, and an inexperienced traveller might easily be led to mistake it for the bed of a periodical watercourse of considerable magnitude. It is thickly overgrown with brambles and creepers. The shrub Tinnea plays a prominent part in the underwoods all around Damury, and many of the plants that are found growing on the dry sand of the bed of the Pongo may be considered as true representatives of the flora of the black Nile-earth, and prove the hydrographical importance of the stream.