Corn-magazine of the Golo.
The Seriba we had just quitted was situated on the watershed between the Kooroo and the Pongo. We crossed the last stream in the Pongo system just beyond Kaza’s hamlets; it was called the Abbuloh, and was now thirty-five feet wide and two feet deep. Farther on the path gradually rose through a shady wood until we reached an eminence strewn over with blocks of gneiss; then descending, still through woods, we came to a copious brook of about the same dimension as the Abbuloh. This was the Bombatta, which flowed in a north-western direction and joined the Kooroo. The next brook, the Abeela, moved in the same direction, and was composed of a connected series of deep basins. Two more rivulets of the same character followed, the second of which, named the Ngoddoo, flowed past a flat bare elevation of gneiss and joined the Kooroo only a short distance to the west. Amongst the autumn flora of this region the Hydralia was very conspicuous, its brilliant sky-blue blossoms blending with the grass so as to form a charming carpet over the depressions of the brooks.
THE BAHR-EL-KOOROO.
An hour after crossing the Ngoddoo we arrived at the bank of the Bahr-el-Kooroo, as this important affluent of the Bahr-el-Arab is called by the Mohammedan settlers; the name is probably borrowed from the Baggara Arabs, as amongst the Golo (whose territory it divides from that of the Kredy on the west) it is sometimes called the Mony, and sometimes the Worry; by the Sehre it is called the Wee. At the place of our transit it was flowing towards the N.N.W., and the current was rather rapid. The entire breadth of the bed was between ninety and a hundred feet, but of this only sixty feet was covered with water, the depth of which nowhere exceeded two feet. At one spot the river flowed over blocks and layers of gneiss that were overgrown with mossy Tristichæ. The banks stood fifteen feet high, and although there were woods on either side that grew right down to the water, many indications remained of their being subject to a periodical inundation: a canoe left high up on the dry ground was an evidence how full of water the river must be during the rainy season.
We kept continually meeting small companies of slave traders, mounted on oxen or on donkeys and having their living merchandise in their train.
The long tracts of one species of forest-tree reminded me very much of the masses of the alder-like Vatica on the Tondy. Beyond the west bank of the river the path led up the steep side of a valley, and the level of the soil rapidly increased. Then we came to a series of ruts like deep ditches, some quite dry and some still filled with running water. We counted six of these before reaching the Beesh, or Khor-el-Rennem, which is an affluent of the Beery and the largest of the three tributaries of the Babr-el-Arab, which I had the opportunity of seeing.
The Khor-el-Rennem, or goats’ brook, received its name from the circumstance that once, during the period of the annual rains, a whole herd of goats had made an attempt to cross the stream and had all been drowned in the rushing flood. It was shut in by trees and bushes of many kinds, and these cast a gloomy shade over the chasm which was worn by the waters; it was now only a foot deep and fifteen feet wide.
Here, again, the land on the western shore rose suddenly like a wall, a peculiarity in the topography of the country that testified to the continual increase of its level above the sea.
Two easy leagues forward, generally over cultivated country and past several hamlets belonging to the Kredy tribe, the Nduggo, and I reached what I designed should be my resting-place for awhile at Seebehr’s Seriba, which was also the Egyptian camp. The distance of seventy miles from the Pongo had been accomplished in four days. By this time I had become quite accustomed to the habit of counting my steps. I had become my own “perambulator,” and could not help thinking, as I marched along, of Xenophon and his parasangs in the expedition of the Greeks. One day of our ordinary marching would accomplish about four or five parasangs.