The soil of this region was once more broken by deep clefts, and was alternately a series of gentle undulations and of deep-cut ravines. Beyond Ghitta’s village the road turned towards the south-east and crossed a brook; further on it passed through a district enlivened by numerous farmsteads and where some sorghum-fields testified to the influence of their neighbours on the east upon the industry of the inhabitants. The district was named Madikamm, being called so after the second brook to the east of Ghitta’s hamlets. The majority of men capable of bearing arms had accompanied Mohammed on his campaign; consequently the huts had hardly any other occupants but women and children, who retreated shyly as we advanced, and shut themselves up in their pretty dwellings.
The votive pillars adorned with many a variety of skulls demonstrated that at certain seasons the hunting booty must be very large; the diversity of antelopes, however, was far smaller than amongst the Bongo and Mittoo, a circumstance that recalled to my mind an observation made by many travellers in South Africa who have affirmed that wherever there are many elephants there is comparatively a scarceness in the number of antelopes: the greater beasts, doubtless, make too much commotion in the forests, and in their wanderings by night disturb the haunts and hiding-places of the more timid game.
Leaving the villages of Madikamm in our rear, we found ourselves on the edge of a great swamp a thousand feet wide, which moved its insidious course northwards in the direction of the adjacent territory of the Babuckur. It was covered in its entire width by a huge, half-floating mass of papyrus, which, called “Bodumoh” by the Niam-niam, gives its name to the marshy waters. This was the first specimen of the papyrus that I had seen in the depth of the interior at so great a distance from the two main affluents of the Upper Nile, and it gave a new character to the locality; it is, however, a characteristic of the swampy region on the upper course of the Sway, where the reduced and meagre remnant of Babuckur, sorely pressed on every side, drag out their miserable lives; their frontiers were only a league to the north of the spot where we crossed.
After leaving the Bodumoh, our road took an E.S.E. direction, which it retained as far as Tuhamy’s Seriba. At the first hamlets we reached, the inhabitants viewed us with considerable distrust, as the soldiers from the nearest Khartoom settlements, and those who intended to pass through Mohammed’s territory, had most arbitrarily levied some heavy taxes upon them.
Beyond the huts were open steppes covered with towering grass which shadowed many shrubs that were entirely new to me, and excited my liveliest interest. Not a few of them were in full bloom, and I walked along carrying a bouquet that it was no exaggeration to call magnificent. The natives might seem fully justified in reviving amongst themselves my name of “Mbarik-pah.”
I may mention that careful as was the method which I have described of our wading over the marshy swamps it was not uniformly attended with success. More than once in attempting to cross without assistance at the head of my little troop I had come to grief; and now once again, at the very next swamp we came to, it was my fate to have an involuntary bath. The dilemma caused us some delay. I was proceeding leisurely along, but coming to a deep hole concealed completely by the long swamp grass I suddenly fell in and was fished out again by my people thoroughly drenched and plastered over with an envelope of mud. It took an hour while I changed my clothes and while the filth was cleansed from the articles I was carrying.
Although the temperature was really as high as that of a July day in our northern clime, the sky nevertheless was overcast and the weather windy, so that it was with chattering teeth and an inward chill that I continued my march along the steppe. All prospect of the surrounding country was obstructed by the towering grass. There was no distant vision to fill the eye, and there was little to relieve the monotony but the radiant blossoms, red and blue, of the flowering shrubs.
A ROMANTIC BRIDGE.
After a while our course was interrupted by a brook fifteen feet in width called the Kishy. This was too deep to ford; the method therefore was adopted of bending down the boughs of the largest shrubs upon the banks, thus forming a fragile bridge, over which, by dint of caution, we contrived to make our tottering way without the misadventure, only too probable, of losing our balance. The Kishy speeds swiftly along over the level steppe in the Babuckur country, and, after receiving the Bodumoh, contributes materially to the volume of the Sway, which in that region has already assumed the dimensions of a considerable river.
The country beyond the Kishy retained the same character as that along which we had been passing. By the side of a little spring called Nambia, that went rippling between the bare gneiss flats, we made a halt for the purpose of following up some guinea-fowl, of which the notes could be heard at no great distance; the whole district teemed with these birds, and I could now again anticipate a daily meal such as I had not had for months.