Large quantities of the Ashantee pepper are found on the Kobbokoio, and just at this season the stem of the trees were so beautifully decorated with its red clusters that they gleamed from amongst the thickets almost as brightly as a flame of fire. The Kredy might in this place alone, without any difficulty, gather hundredweights of this pepper, which amongst them bears the name of Dehre. The Nubians who had taken up their quarters here had not the least idea of the useful properties of the plant, and it had never occurred to them that the red berries, after they were dried, would become black pepper-corns. My disclosure seemed to give them the greatest delight, and without delay they set to work to gather the pepper, which they designed to be sent off to Khartoom, a novelty in the way of their commerce. In the bank-woods I found some muscat-nuts which, in the previous year, I had not found on the Assika until the month of March. The straight growth of its stout stem never failed to attract attention.
At Dehm Gudyoo I learnt a great many details about the aspect of the land still farther west that had been traversed by the various companies of Agahd, Bizelly, Idrees Wod Defter, and Seebehr Adlan. When we took our departure I found that our road had a decline. In order to reach the Bongo territory again I proposed to proceed in a kind of arc towards the south-east down to the Dehm Bekeer, where the extensive establishments of the Gellahbas, stretching away for miles, were collected, and where Kurshook Ali was in possession of one of the most important strongholds which he had inherited from his father-in-law. In a straight line the distance between Dehm Gudyoo and Dehm Bekeer would not exceed five-and-thirty miles, but our deviations were so frequent and so long that it took us two days of exceedingly hard marching to reach our destination. The entire district, a thoroughly unbroken wilderness, was the true source-land of the Beery and the Kooroo, both of these rivers at the points where we crossed them being in the incipient condition of mere brooks; nor did they seem to surpass the other streamlets, thirteen in number, which we had to cross, in their supply of water.
A SERIES OF STREAMS.
The universal direction which the streams took was from south to north. Reckoning them in their order after leaving Dehm Gudyoo, the first was the Domwee, quite a little channel filled with a flowing current: after a considerable rise in the land, we came to the Ghessy Beery (i.e., the Little or Upper Beery), with its broad water almost stagnant and shadowed over by an extensive gallery-wood; then came a dried-up channel at the bottom of a broad and outspread valley, of which the western slopes were marked by crests of hills some 400 or 500 feet in height; to this succeeded an uphill march, which led to a soil so elevated that it opened an ample prospect into the far distant east, embracing at least the chief landmarks for some eighty miles round; next succeeded a brook called the Yagpak, of which the waters, still deep, were hemmed in by thick shrubberies; next came a little watercourse with languid stream; and then a rivulet twenty feet wide, full of water, and named the Gulanda, where we spent the night, the direction of which was indicated by the bushes on the banks. The level of the soil was here about 400 feet lower than it had been at Dehm Gudyoo. Farther on, close following upon each other, came two dried-up khors; after which the land once more began to rise again in alternate flats of gneiss and lofty eminences of swamp-ore, hills named Bakeffa and Yaffa lifting themselves up conspicuously on the east; next we reached a small dried-up course that intersected a valley made up of gneiss flats, bounded on the west by the elevation of a hill, called the Fee-ee; then, at about equal distances one from another, were crossed four khors, now dry, that gave an undulated character to the ground; proceeding onwards we came to the half-dry, half-swampy depression known as the Ohro; and last of all we arrived at an inconsiderable water-channel of which the stream was deep, but apparently stationary, and was described by the Kredy as being the upper course of the Kooroo, distinguished here by the name of the Mony.
The district over which we thus had travelled very much resembled the northern regions of the Kredy lands in its wooded character and in the absence of meadow-lands and steppes; only it was utterly wanting in that distinctive abundance of springs which is so marked in latitudes below lat. 8° N. The deficiency of water, in comparison to what we had before experienced, made itself very obvious. The flora offered some few novelties; in particular I was surprised at the cabbage-like Euphorbia (Tithymalus), which, though common in our zone, is quite a rarity in Tropical Africa.
In the dried-up watercourses I frequently saw one of the rodentia which had hitherto been little known to me: this was the reed-rat, called by the Foorians the “Far-el-boos.” I had the good fortune to bring down three of them, and, after having been limited for three days to a diet of soaked sweet potatoes, I very much appreciated a meal from their delicate and tender flesh.
Never shall I forget the hospitable reception which Yumma, Kurshook Ali’s Vokeel, showed me at this Seriba, nor the circumstances under which it transpired. My gratitude was all the more keen because the discourtesy and inhospitality which I had experienced from Mangoor were still fresh upon my memory. I was really worn-out by the fatigue of marching, and very much debilitated by my compulsory abstinence in consequence of my scorbutic attack, when in the early evening we reached the Dehm. We wandered about for a considerable time amongst the scattered homesteads, and had some difficulty in discovering the palings of the Seriba. After we succeeded in getting inside, we found all the huts perfectly quiet, and it appeared almost as if invisible hands had prepared the coffee which was handed me as soon as I had taken my seat upon the “angareb” in the reception-hall. The ruler of the Seriba happened that evening to be absent somewhere in the environs, and it was not known for certain whether he would return that night. Feeling that it was quite a matter of speculation what kind of entertainment I should have on the following day, I threw myself down without taking any supper, and composed myself for my night’s rest.
A TRAVELLER’S DREAMS.
Whoever has wandered as a lonely traveller in the untrodden solitudes of a desert likes to tell his dreams: in them the true situation of a man often mirrors itself; for, unrestrained by any control of reason, images arise from the obscurity of the past, so that, at times, it seems as if a painful vividness was being stamped upon recollections, which, as reproduced, are really very contradictory to the actual facts. It happened to me very much in this way at Dehm Bekeer, only I had the compensation that the visions that I saw were not disproved, but confirmed, by my experience.
Weary and worn-but as I was, and no longer master of my faculties, I seem very soon to have fallen asleep. Memory, unshackled from the guardianship of reality, began to revel in the ideal delights of a material world. I fancied that I was in a spacious tent that was glittering with the radiancy of countless lamps, that the tables were groaning under the most tempting viands, and that troops of servants in gorgeous livery were in attendance upon the guests, to whom they brought the mellowest and rarest of wines. And then it was race-time at Cairo, and the entertainment was sumptuous with all the splendour of the fairest imagery of ‘The Arabian Nights,’ the host no less than the Governor of Egypt himself. And then I seemed all at once to wake, and was quite bewildered in trying to decide whether I was in the smoke-clouds that envelop the interior of an African grass-hut or whether in truth I was reclining under the shelter of a royal marquee. My frame of mind enhanced the force of my fancy: but soon the delusion took a more distinct phase, and I seemed to divine that there was really about me a group of well-dressed servants, and that whilst some were bringing in various dishes and sparkling goblets which they placed beside my lowly couch, others were running about with tapers and lamps, and others with embroidered napkins under their arms were conveying the choicest dainties in lordly dishes or offering lemonade and sherbet from the brightest crystal. I rubbed my eyes. I took a draught of what was offered me. I surveyed the scene deliberately, and came to the surprised conviction that what I had been dreaming was a reality!