The present Seriba of Kurkur is situated in a flat bushy region, rich in every variety of game. I was told that the former Seriba, visited by Petherick, stood eight miles to the south-west, on the Legbe, an important affluent of the Dyoor. Twelve miles further to the south, and parallel to the Legbe, is the Lako, which is another tributary of the Dyoor.
I remained at Kurkur for three days. Whilst I was there the natives killed a couple of giraffes. The controller had in his possession several of these animals alive, which had been caught in the neighbourhood, and for which he hoped to find a sale at Khartoom.
The spotted hyæna dogs (Canis pictus) are very common in this region. These dangerous animals have a partiality for the steppes and open brushwood, and, congregating in herds, hunt down the smaller antelopes, especially bushbocks. No case was known where they had attempted to attack men. Some of their skins are most brilliantly marked, and exhibit such a combination of red, white, yellow, and black spots that the hyæna dog may fairly claim to be the most particoloured of all mammalia. I saw one specimen in the Seriba that was perfectly tame, requiring no other restraint than a cord, and yielding to its master with all the docility of an ordinary dog. This fact appears to corroborate the assertion of Livingstone (which, however, he makes with some reserve, not having personally witnessed the circumstance), that the natives of the Kalahari Desert are accustomed to break in this animal and train it for the chase.
DANGAH.
Twelve miles to the north of Kurkur was another subsidiary Seriba, belonging to Aboo Guroon, and called Dangah, after a Bongo chief who lived there at the time when Petherick was in the country; another surviving chief named Dyow, also mentioned by Petherick, had his abode five miles further to the west; he came to pay me a visit, and retaining the recollection of the condition of the country under an earlier aspect now passed away, he made the usual lamentations over the destitution of the land and its present deficiency of game.
The Nyedokoo, enclosed by dense jungles of bamboo, passes close to Dangah, and in the rainy season is about thirty feet wide and ten feet deep. The inmates of the Seriba were supplied by its bright and sparkling waters, and I rejoiced at having an opportunity to send my stock of linen that it might be properly washed. Of the forty Seribas that I visited I saw scarcely more than three that were situated in immediate proximity to running water, the supply obtained from the wells being generally impure, besides being obtained in quantities too limited to be of much service for washing clothes.
The Khartoomers seem to have a very wonderful faculty for picking out the worst possible places for the formation of their settlements. Although they are excellent swimmers, they are so accustomed to the dust and dirt of their own home and to the turbid floods of their beloved Nile, that even here, where streams are so abundant, they have a morbid prejudice against all pure water whatsoever. They forget that the waters of the Nile are wholesome in spite of being turbid, and make no distinction between them and the waters of the noisome swamps of Central Africa; while they heap imprecations upon the insalubrity of the climate, which, they say, gives them pestilence, guinea-worm, fever, skin disease, syphilis, and small-pox, they take no pains to avoid the very spots which are the primary cause of all their suffering.
After leaving Dangah I turned back towards the east, and, having called at Agahd’s subsidiary Seriba Dubor on the way, I soon re-entered my own headquarters. The circuit I had thus completed was about sixty-five miles.
During my brief absence an event had transpired in Ghattas’s Seriba that had alarmed the whole community, and which furnished a topic of anxious speculation for some weeks to come. It appeared that two of the Nubian soldiers belonging to the Seriba had betaken themselves to a Dyoor smith in the neighbourhood for the purpose of getting him to forge them some rings. While they were sitting in the smithy quietly watching the operations, all at once they were surrounded by a troop of Dinka warriors, who were scouring the country. The sight of a couple of unprotected “Turks” had suggested to the Dinka the idea of taking revenge for the last raid that they had suffered, and the unfortunate victims were attacked, cruelly tortured by lance-wounds, and carried back dead to the Seriba. The entire force turned out to punish the aggressors if they could; but the Dinka had had so good a start, that they were far beyond pursuit. The occurrence gave a general feeling of insecurity to the whole Seriba; the people were afraid to move about unarmed, and even in their ordinary domestic engagements carried their guns under their arms. This excessive prudence on their part, involving, as it did, a large increase of danger from firearms, was far from agreeable to myself. The risk of being burnt out was still greater than it had previously been, and not relishing my position in close proximity to so many straw-huts, I was anxious to set up my quarters at some little distance away; but Idrees, the controller, declared that he should have to answer for my safety with his head, and would not permit me to build outside the palisade.
On the 15th of September Mohammed Aboo Sammat passed through the Seriba on his way to the river, with his store of ivory. It was a good opportunity for me to send intelligence of myself to Europe; and, under his care, my letters were despatched by the speediest route, so that in the course of five months they were in the hands of my friends. A fortnight sufficed for the indefatigable Mohammed to reach the Meshera, start off his boats on their way to Khartoom, and return to our Seriba.