The heart of Africa, Vol. 2 (of 2)

by Georg August Schweinfurth

DIFFICULTIES OF TRANSPORT.

On the 4th of March 200 of Ghattas’s Bongo bearers arrived at the Seriba on their way to carry corn to the Turkish camp. All their loads put together would hardly have amounted to twenty ardebs. Hopelessly stupid are the people; it roused my indignation to think how, in spite of the hard and level roads that were established during the dry season, they had never introduced a single vehicle of any description into the country. Thirty hand-barrows or three bullock-waggons would have amply sufficed to convey the whole of the corn, and yet they employed these 200 bearers, who, during the twenty-four days that they would be on their journey to their destination and back, would, at the very lowest computation, consume as much as forty ardebs of durra, just double the quantity they had to deliver. The extortions of the Government are thus, in the course of the year, three or four times as great as they need be; the troops may require some 600 ardebs of corn, but in procuring this, at least another 600 ardebs would be wasted, to say nothing about the reckless and lavish expenditure of time and strength which is thrown away upon the proceedings. I cannot help repeating these details, in order to show to what a senseless system of robbery these negro-countries are exposed as soon as ever they come within the grasp of Mohammedan rule.

In March the natives employ themselves in fishing. Towards the middle of the month the numerous backwaters and swamp-channels that have been left by the Dyoor are separated into independent basins by means of dams, that may be seen thrown up in all directions across the intricate ramifications of the water; when these basins have been thoroughly drained, the fish are left lying above, or just embedded in the mud and slime, and may easily be taken with the hand. All the inhabitants of the district were in some measure concerned in the fishing of the Dyoor, and it afforded me a pleasant diversion, when I was out on my hunting-excursions, to stop awhile and watch the artifices by which they contrive to entrap the fish.

At the part of the river which, being deep, was frequented by hippopotamuses, the right-hand bank was more than fifteen feet high, and rose perpendicularly from the water; the upper section of the soil of the bank was a ferruginous clay which went down to a depth of eight feet, below which was a broad white stripe some four feet thick, resting upon the gneiss that apparently was the substratum of the entire alluvium of the river-valley. The white stripe of the soil had a chalky look, and contained fragments of quartz; it consisted of a crumbling product of felspar, such as may frequently be seen, under similar circumstances, in the hollows of other river-courses and brooks throughout the country.

In all parts of the dry sandy bed may be found the shells of the river-oyster (Etheria Cailliaudii), which is wanting in none of the affluents of the Upper Nile, and is known to the Niam-niam as the “mohperre.” In the deeper parts of the bed of the Dyoor these oysters exist in groups, adhering firmly to blocks of swamp-ore that, having become detached from the top of the banks, have fallen into the river, and so are permanently under water. While the Etheria is young, the shell is almost circular, but as it increases in age, it becomes elongated and irregular, and occasionally attains the extraordinary length of eighteen inches. The flavour of this mollusk is rather sweet and mawkish, and to me particularly unpleasant.

On the 20th, my temporary abode was very considerably enlivened by the arrival of Soliman, the owner of the Seriba, the eldest son of the late Kurshook Ali. He was quite a young man, and entirely inexperienced in the management of the extensive property that he had recently inherited from his father. It is matter of notoriety that whenever an Oriental proceeds on his travels he takes a large supply of his luxuries with him; thus it happens that his valuable baggage, consisting of clothes, weapons, and harness, as well as his horses, makes it especially worth while to waylay him and plunder him of his wealth. From this disaster Kurshook Ali had been spared during his life, but no sooner was he dead than, as I have already had occasion to mention, his successor in office appropriated all his effects and proceeded to dispose of them in the open market to the best bidders. It was on this account that the son of the deceased Sandjak had been induced to undertake this laborious journey in person, and he arrived at the Seriba with the double purpose of saving whatever residue there might be of his father’s property and of exacting an account from Ahmed Aga of what already had been sold.

SOLIMAN.

With much pleasure I still remember my first meeting with Soliman, and can yet recall the eager curiosity with which I turned the conversation to the position of the European Powers. As he was the chief of a great mercantile firm, and consequently associated with the more educated class of Khartoomers, I quite hoped that he would be able to give me some decisive political intelligence; but all the information that I could obtain from him was that when he left Khartoom in January, no announcement of peace had reached that town.

Old Khalil, who had never been out of the negro-countries for fifteen years, was just as ignorant of political matters as the lowest of his countrymen; not only had he to ask what was the name of the Governor-General of Khartoom, but he seemed to be quite unconscious that Egypt was in any degree an independent country. Most of the people were quite unacquainted with the name of the Khedive in power, and I heard some of them ask what the Pasha was called in Cairo; of one thing, however, they said they were perfectly sure, namely, that Abdul Aziz was the sovereign who ruled over all the believers, and that all the kings of the Franks were his vassals; it was true, they confessed, that the Emperor of Moscow, some years ago, had the audacity to pretend that he was independent; but now, thanks to the fidelity of the great Sultan’s vassals, he was very glad to eat humble-pie, just as it had happened before with Buonaparte, the “Sultan-el-Kebir.”

Such was the ignorance of the Soudanese; and the few sentences that I have recorded will serve for an epitome of their political knowledge. When they heard me talking to Soliman about peace and war in the land of the Franks, they wanted to learn what sort of people the Prussians (the “Borusli”) were. Soliman answered them with the greatest naiveté. He described Prussia as a “country with very few people,” meaning to imply that it was about the smallest of the great Powers. “And have these few people,” they went on to inquire, “made the great Emperor of the Franks a prisoner? Do you mean that they have taken the Emperor, whose likeness is stamped on all the gold money?” “O yes,” answered Soliman, “he was a big rascal; and heaven has rewarded him according to his deserts.”