Yumma, the controller of the Seriba, had returned home late in the evening. No sooner was he informed of my arrival than he had had all his retinue of cooks aroused from their night’s rest to give me an entertainment worthy of his rank. He was more than half a Turk, and acquainted far beyond the other superintendents of the Seribas with the elegancies and comforts of a Khartoomer’s household. Everything he possessed in the way of valuable vases or tasteful table ornaments was brought out and exhibited in my honour. He set before me bread of pure white flour, maccaroni, rice, chickens served with tomatoes, and innumerable other delicacies which I could hardly have supposed had ever found their way to this distant land. It was quite midnight before the preparations for the impromptu banquet were complete, and then, whether I wanted or not, I was bound to partake. My tortures were the tortures of Tantalus; however eagerly I might covet the food, the inflammation in my gums put an emphatic veto upon my enjoyment, and it was only with the acutest suffering that I could get a morsel of meat or a drop of fluid between my lips. As soon, however, as I was somewhat better, the improved diet told favourably upon my constitution, and after a few days I was ready to start afresh upon my travels with renovated energy and recruited strength.
A LINE OF HILLS.
The environs of the Dehm are inhabited partly by the Golo and partly by the Sehre. Amongst the natives the town itself is known by the name of Dehm Dooroo, called so after a deceased chieftain of the Golo. The present native overseer of the Golo population is called Mashi Doko. To the south and south-west of the town, the ground gradually rises, and in the main might be called hilly in all directions, as right away to the horizon there are continued series of hill-crests and ridges. Above the general undulation of the land these rise high enough to form conspicuous landmarks, and afford the wayfarer considerable assistance in the direction of his journey; many of them present an appearance that is quite analogous to that of the hill-caps which have been mentioned as characteristic of southern Bongoland; generally they consist of bright masses of gneiss. The shape of these hills is defined in the Arabic of the Soudan as “Gala;” the Bongo call it “Kilebee.” They are quite isolated, and are always rounded elevations of grey gneiss projecting, sometimes like flat plateaux and sometimes like raised eminences, from the swamp-ore around, and they give the landscape the aspect so characteristic of Central Africa. They may readily be supposed to be associated in character with those gneiss flats which are scattered all over the land in every variety of shape and size, and any one must involuntarily become subject to the impression that they indicate a spot where in bygone ages there were the summits of mountains that have long since been worn down by the tooth of time, and that these elevations were the ridges that had separated the channels of the very rivers that I had discovered, which by various agencies, chemical and mechanical, were now conspiring to carry off the débris of the mountain mass and convey it to the distant ocean. All along the way there were the most striking evidences of how, in the operations of nature, it had been brought about that every valley should be exalted and every mountain and hill made low. The problem over which antagonists may wrangle and refuse to be reconciled has been successfully solved by Nature, whose function has ever been to establish a balance between opposites ever since the days of her own early youth, before as yet a living creature existed to give animation to the scenes of earth. As instances to illustrate the certainty of these earlier chains of mountains, I may mention the following, which the reader will easily trace upon the map: The Taya, between the Beery and the Kooroo; the Bakeffa, the Kosanga, and the Ida, between the Kooroo and the Pongo; and the Kokkuloo, the Yaffa, and the Atyumen, between the Pongo and the Wow.
On leaving Dehm Bekeer, a mile south from the Seriba, we reached a small stream called the Ngudduroo, and on the farther side of it, after traversing a hilly tract for about two miles, we came to another stream which in winter could only boast of a very weak current, although even then the breadth of its bed was fifteen feet, thoroughly covered with water. The banks were about eight or ten feet in height, and stood out dry above the stream. Yumma, who accompanied me, declared that it was the upper course of the river of Damoory and Dembo, consequently that it was the Pongo, and he affirmed that, in his frequent marches along its banks, he had distinctly followed it right into that district. Both the Golo and the Sehre throughout the environs called it the Djee, and as I proceeded along my way I derived fresh confirmation for Yumma’s statement about the river from the circumstance that it is also called the Djee by those Sehre who reside on the farther side, at Dehm Adlan. All along my route back, moreover, towards the east, I did not come across any river large or small which could possibly be identified as the upper portion of what is the Pongo at Damoory.
MOFIO AND SOLONGOH.
Some four or five leagues to the north-west of Dehm Bekeer there is stationed one of Kurshook Ali’s subsidiary Seribas. The natives of the district are Golo, and the Seriba has been established upon the banks of the Hahoo, a little stream that subsequently joins the Kooroo. Two leagues to the south-west of the Dehm rises a hill, steep in every aspect, it is designated the Kokkuloo, and commands a wide view of the country around. I found a number of intelligent people in this locality whose information about the neighbouring Niam-niam was of considerable service to me in ascertaining various facts, and by comparing and combining their separate accounts I was able to gain a fairly accurate idea of the country. The particulars that I gathered were for the most part appertaining to the territories of the two Niam-niam chieftains Mofio and Solongoh. Mofio’s residence was described as being situated to the W.N.W. of our present position, and that, in consequence of the number of streams that had to be crossed and the deserts that had to be traversed, it could not be reached in less than twelve days, even if the march were urged on with all possible speed, whilst at an ordinary pace it would take fifteen days at least; there was, however, a way from Dehm Nduggo which was less circuitous, and did not offer the same difficulties in furnishing the bearers with supplies: this could be accomplished in about eight days. The home of Solongoh, who was a son of Bongohrongboh, was not distant more than a five days’ march to the S.S.E., and only separated from the domain of Kurshook Ali in the lands of the Golo and Sehre by one of the desolate frontier wildernesses. There was a third independent Niam-niam chief, whose territory, however, was of insignificant extent. He was called indifferently Yapaty or Yaffaty, and was the son of Mofio’s brother Zaboora: he had his mbanga three days’ journey to the south-west of Dehm Bekeer.
At the period of my visit Yumma was on terms of open enmity with Solongoh, his territory being constantly threatened by that powerful prince, whose sway extended as far as the Bellandah, who are bordering upon the land of Aboo Shatter. Just before this, in fact only a few days previously to my arrival, Solongoh had been repulsed in an attack which he had made, although he had summoned his full force and had advanced within a couple of days’ march of Dehm Bekeer. As Yumma foresaw that another engagement was imminent, he would not permit me to remain any longer in his Seriba, because he saw he could not be responsible for the issue, and it was in vain that I begged him not to have any apprehension on my account. But the audacity of the Niam-niam was so gross that it was intolerable, and must be suppressed at all hazards. To such a pitch had this shameless daring grown that even the arms of the soldiers had been stolen by people sent by Solongoh into Dehm Bekeer for the purpose. Under cover of night they had contrived to get into the Seriba, and had managed to purloin several guns whilst the unsuspecting owners were sound asleep.
My researches in Dehm Gudyoo enabled me to gather certain information which is of some consequence as affecting the proper hydrographical delineation of the countries through which I was travelling. Six days’ journey south-west by west from the spot at which we were sojourning stood a Seriba, which was Idrees Wod Defter’s principal repository of arms and ammunition; it was situated, as I was informed, upon the banks of a river that flowed to the north-east, and afterwards joined another river that was so much larger that the passage over it could at all seasons only be effected in boats. To this river the Khartoomers give the name of Bahr Aboo Dinga; it is said to be about two and a half days’ journey beyond Dar Benda, where Idrees maintains another Seriba. It is a river that is likewise well known to the company of Seebehr Rahama, which makes a yearly visit to the country that is inhabited by the Aboo Dinga, a distinct negro people, quite different alike to the Kredy and to the Niam-niam. The direction of the stream Aboo Dinga was reported to be E.N.E. or due east, and all the statements concurred in making it identical with the Bahr-el-Arab, which intersects the country of the Baggara-el-Homr.
THE BAHR ABOO DINGA.
No one seemed able to decide the question where the Bahr Aboo Dinga came from. I suspect its source is somewhere amongst the mountains of Runga, to the south of Wadai, a spot of which various travellers have given such reports as they have been able to gather. Barth,[76] in the itinerary which he gives of his eastward route from Massena in Baghirmy to Runga, makes an entry which may contribute something in the way of elucidating the question. He says that he came “on the forty-second day (i.e. one day’s journey to the south of the residence of the prince of Runga) to Dar Sheela,[77] a mountainous district with a river flowing to the east, beyond which lies Dar Dinga.” No one is more conscious than I am myself how little stress is to be laid upon a mere resemblance in the sound of names. Hundreds of times, and in every diversity of place, I have found that any conjecture based upon the apparent similarity is utterly worthless; but in this case the resemblance was not a chance coincidence, for the assigned bearings and distances (as reckoned from the two starting-points of Barth and myself) so thoroughly correspond as to suggest the sense of a mutual agreement between the scenes that we explored; it seems also very probable that Barth’s river Kubanda is identical with my river Welle.