One occupation which engaged my attention continuously consisted in my supervision of the arrangement of my miscellaneous collection, which had increased very largely. It was necessary that everything should be put into a condition ready for its long transport.
Another demand upon my time arose from my having my correspondence for the ensuing year to complete and my journal to transcribe. My industry at this period had its full reward. The documents that I then copied and the outline maps that I dotted down were all preserved, and were the only compensation I had to make good the subsequent melancholy loss of all my other papers.
It will easily be understood how delighted I was, on the 23rd of August, to receive my new consignment of supplies. Although a good many articles had either been damaged by damp or devoured by insects, yet a sufficient proportion of them remained so uninjured that I was perfectly satisfied, and could venture with the utmost confidence to make my preparation for another journey. I was able to distribute a good number of presents of garments, pistols, and guns amongst the controllers of the various Seribas, whose acquaintance I had made, while the replenishing of my store of beads and stuffs gave me an opportunity of making certain acknowledgments of the good offices of my attendants. But the services which Mohammed Aboo Sammat had rendered me were far larger than all, and for these I had no return in my power to make.
Furnished thus afresh with a number of conveniences and luxuries which the interior did not supply, I found myself enjoying an amount of comfort that reminded me of Europe, and in the improvement of the quality of my daily food I almost forgot the hardships I had suffered.
By a somewhat circuitous route I had received several cases of wine. This was a gift which was especially acceptable, as being redolent of my distant home. That of which I had dreamed as I tarried by the banks of the Nabambisso was now within my reach; it was no longer tantalizing to think of the “mountain port,” for I had not only my bottle of wine, but a plentiful supply of other good things in addition; and nothing would have been a pleasanter task than to be able to entertain some lonely traveller like myself whom chance might have thrown across my path. To be able to open a bottle of wine at all in the heart of Africa was such an inexplicable piece of luck that it involuntarily brought to my mind the revenge of the gods and the ring of Polycrates, and to say the truth it was but a passing pleasure.
I was desirous of devoting the remainder of 1870 to the further and more complete investigation of the Dyoor and Bongo lands. With this intention I betook myself next to the Seriba of Doomookoo, and spent the first half of September in an interesting excursion to Kurkur, a district which, if ever the history of this land should be properly written, will have a claim to one of its most prominent chapters.
KURKUR.
Kurkur, just at present a Seriba of Aboo Guroon’s, twenty-eight miles to the W.S.W. of the chief Seriba of Ghattas, is a name already known, having been mentioned by Petherick, who, as the first explorer of the district, in 1856, had established a mart somewhere in the neighbourhood, making it the extreme point to which he advanced in his search for the ivory of the productive region.
Upon my route I crossed and re-crossed a number of small affluents which, coming westwards from Bongoland, joined the Dyoor. I gave, however, a particular attention to the course of the Molmul, which hitherto had been regarded merely as an arm of the Dyoor, but which I ascertained beyond a question to be an entirely independent stream. I crossed it close to Doomookoo, and again on my return at another place eight miles further to the north. It bears among the Bongo the name of Maï.
Between Doomookoo and Kurkur the scenery was pretty and undulated, wooded eminences alternating with extensive tracts of cultivated plain. The rises in the ground are made by low ridges of hills that run in a north-west direction on either side of the Nyedokoo, an affluent of the Dyoor that is always full of water. I looked in upon two little Seribas belonging to Agahd, called Kehre and Neshirr, and just before reaching Kurkur I called at Nguddoo, one of Kurshook Ali’s settlements. The various territories of the different traders are quite confusing, as they lie scattered about in little enclaves like the petty Thuringian dukedoms in Germany.