These Nuba are of a more amiable disposition than might be expected of a people in a state of semi-barbarity, and if they be only convinced that a traveller has no intention of doing them harm, he may make sure of the most hospitable reception, notwithstanding the ill-treatment and oppression they occasionally suffer from the neighbouring Turks, which has imbued them with an almost incontrovertible hatred towards all white men. The slave merchants greatly contribute to keep up this aversion by assuring the negroes, that all the captives who fall into the hands of the white men are fattened in their country for slaughter. When the Djelabi have reached Kordofan and set out on their journey to Cairo, they make the poor slaves understand that those white men who, like the Arabs and Turks, profess the true faith, do not eat the flesh of the negroes; but that the Giaours, or unbelievers, by which denomination they distinguish the Franks, follow that barbarous custom. This will account for the circumstance of slaves so frequently beginning to cry when purchased by a Frank at Cairo, they are, in fact, seized with the fear of being led to the shambles. A Nuba negro, who spoke Arabic well, said to me once very coolly: “We black men are far better than you white men, for when our children come into your country you slaughter them; we could do the same with you, but we are charitable and do not act thus, therefore we are better than you.” With kindness every thing may be obtained from these children of nature, whilst harshness and severity produce the opposite effect; for as soon as they perceive that force is about to be employed, they become passionate and malicious and obstinate to a degree, for they are children of freedom, and will rather forfeit their lives than tolerate coercion. In requiring a service of them it is necessary to make considerate representations to them, and to use the utmost caution to keep them in a good humour, for in the contrary case evil consequences are alone to be expected; they will, indeed, rather suffer death than allow themselves to be forced by ill-treatment to the performance of even the most trivial office.
Polygamy is not a general custom, each man takes to himself only one or two women; the sheikhs alone have several wives. When a man is about to lead a girl away as his wife, he treats first with the father concerning the price at which he will deliver her up. The amount of course varies much, and depends on the youth, beauty, and other advantageous qualifications of the chosen bride. The dowry consists generally in a certain number of cows, goats, or sheep, which become the personal property of the newly-married woman. As soon as the agreement and business transactions are settled, the bridegroom proceeds, accompanied by all the young men in the village, to the hut of his selected wife, who is delivered by the mother and nearest relations, with some simple ceremonies, to the bridegroom; and he now leads her with song, drums, and fifes, into his own hut, where a feast is prepared for all his guests. In conclusion there is a ball at which all assist, and thus the marriage festivities terminate. In their family circles these negroes live very peaceably, and if a case ever occur that a husband for any reason separate from his wife, she goes back to her parents, keeps her marriage portion, and takes every thing she has received from her husband away with her.
Their agricultural pursuits are very profitable to them, and require very little labour, as the soil is uncommonly fertile; hence their occupations in the fields during the time of sowing and of the harvest are terminated in an incredibly short space of time, and they have nothing to do but to rake up the weeds with the hasseiaseh, in the intermediate space between the two former seasons. After the first fall of rain they hasten to the fields and plant the dockn; this is done in the same manner as in Kordofan, and will be explained hereafter in the twelfth chapter. Tobacco is largely cultivated, for they are inordinately addicted to smoking. When the plant has arrived at its full growth the leaves are gathered and dried, and after having been subjected to a process of damping, are formed into the shape of a cake. When the negroes are about to smoke they break off a piece of the size required, rub it to powder between their hands, and fill their pipes. Their tobacco is very potent, so that an European is, in fact, obliged to soak it in water for twenty-four hours before he can use it to render it more mild; and even then he will find it too acrid, and it almost amounts to an impossibility to smoke two of their short pipes successively. They barter away this product. The whole of their husbandry is comprised in the cultivation of these two articles, and in the interval between the sowing season and the harvest their occupation consists merely in rearing cattle, in hunting, and throwing spears.
The business attended with the greatest trouble to them is the collection of honey, for though they are in a state of nudity and totally uncovered, they use no means of defence against the sting of the angry bees. In taking a hive, therefore, they must endeavour to drive the bees away as far as this is practicable with branches of trees, before they can get at their produce; but notwithstanding these and other precautionary measures, the little animals, infuriated at the invasion of their peaceful dwellings, generally beset the uninvited guest in swarms, and vent the whole force of their anger on him; the intruder has no alternative but to throw himself on the ground and writhe in the sand, but the effects of the punishment inflicted are always severely felt for several hours afterwards.
The military exercise of the Nubas consists chiefly in throwing spears, and covering the body with the shield in defence. For this practice they make use of the stalks of the dockn, which they throw at each other with much accuracy, seldom or never missing their aim; but they are, on the other hand, so well versed in the use of their shields that they generally ward off the missile and receive the blow on it, or rolling themselves almost into the form of a ball, cover the whole body with their shields. Their attacks are always attended with a frightful noise, augmented by the shrieks of the women in the back ground, and follow with such rapidity that the party attacked has but little time for consideration, or for placing himself on his guard. If the first shock, however, be well sustained, and a bold front be offered, they retreat as rapidly as they advanced, and do not so soon again venture on a second charge, but confine themselves to skirmishing. Their battles amongst each other are always terrific, nor do they terminate until the one or other party is brought to subjection, whereupon the prisoners are all sold as slaves. But these Nuba negroes have, in addition to their own tribes, two classes of far more dreaded enemies, namely, the Turks and the Bakkara; the former take them away by force as slaves, and the latter by stratagem; they are, therefore, continually prepared for an attack, and keep up their watchfires all night long, to avoid being thrown into confusion during darkness.
Their fires even are frequently a source of annoyance and trouble to them, for as they possess no means of generating this element, they must be very careful never to allow it to go out. In cases of this disastrous occurrence, or when engaged in hunting, or in other occupations, at a great distance from their villages, they resort to the following primitive method for striking a light. They take two dry pieces of wood, in the one of which they cut a hole with a knife, or sharp-pointed stone, barely large enough to admit the other; they then lay the former on the ground, holding it firmly in that position with their feet, fit the second piece into the perforation, and rub the two together with extraordinary rapidity, throwing a few grains of sand occasionally into the hole to augment the friction. This is a labour demanding great exertion, and two persons are always necessary for its performance. A handfull of dry grass, or an old piece of cotton rag, is placed beneath the wood to catch the sparks, and glows as soon as the wood is converted into coal. Dried grass and sticks are now added, when the combustible materials are fanned into a living flame. In Kordofan the same custom prevails. If all the fires be extinguished in a small village during the rainy season, the inhabitants are indeed put to the greatest embarrassment, especially where the distance to the nearest village is great, because all the grass and wood is then very wet. A Shilluk told me that in his village, which was situated at a distance of ten hours’ march from any other inhabited spot, they were once not able to produce a fire during twenty days. The inhabitants had made frequent attempts to transport a burning branch from the nearest locality, and had lighted more than fifty fires in the intervening space, in order to bring it gradually into their own village; but the showers had, on four different occasions, frustrated their endeavours when they were on the point of succeeding. Soft wood is useless for procuring a light, and there was no hard wood in that neighbourhood. I was myself once put to a very great inconvenience whilst at Lobeid for want of a flint, for there was not one to be purchased in the bazaar at any price; my servant, however, soon invented a remedy: he went up to a soldier, a Shilluk of course, and bought the flint of his musket, which he unscrewed whilst on duty, and delivered at the high price of four-pence halfpenny.
The dominions of Takele are situated at a distance of about five days’ journey to the south-east of Kordofan; they are governed by a sultan, who is an absolute monarch, and has his residence at Tassin.
This sultan, and the greater part of his subjects, are of the Mahommedan persuasion. In former times, when Kordofan and all these realms were subject to Darfour, Takele paid tribute to that government, and even after Mehemed Ali had taken possession of Kordofan, sword in hand, the fine was annually paid, it being taken for granted that the conquerors should enjoy the same rights as the former administration. But when the Turks, not contented with the tribute, subsequently sought to put their golden rule of raising the taxation into practice, looking upon everything in the country as their own property, the Sultan of Takele refused to submit, and opposed their claims in person with an armed force. Mehemed Ali undertook three ineffective campaigns against this country, and was at last obliged to give up the project, after having lost more than half of the forces employed in the expedition. Takele possesses many irregular troops, which proved very galling to the Egyptians; for they always took the unsuspecting Turks by surprise, and, after having put them to the rout, fled again into their hills, where the former dare not venture to pursue them. The commander-in-chief of the Egyptian forces revenged himself by destroying all the crops which happened to be standing at the time, by fire, and thus the war terminated; for when the Turks saw that nothing was to be gained by plunder they retreated, and no attack has since that period been made upon Takele.
The Djelabi, from Lobeid and Bara, are allowed to carry on their trade with the country without interruption, as are also those of Takele with Kordofan; for several Dongolavi from Kordofan have settled in this country, as it affords them many advantages. Takele is hilly in its whole extent, and is said to be traversed by a chain of mountains, two full days’ journey in length, considered there as one hill. The natives of Takele, in forming an estimate of the magnitude of their dominions, generally reckon by the number of hills which are inhabited; thus they say that Takele has ninety-nine inhabited hills, and that the Nubas have one hill more, and reckon one hundred; hence we may conclude that Nuba is larger than Takele. These numerals, however, must not be taken literally, for they denote every large number, if it exceed thirty, by the term ninety-nine; and say (e. g.), instead of forty or eighty sheep, ninety-nine heads of cattle. I have myself met with negroes from distant parts, whose whole knowledge of arithmetic was limited to “five,” named after the five fingers; thus the thumb was one, the forefinger two, the middle-finger three, and so forth. A question put to men of this limited knowledge, entailing a definite number, is an affair attended with great difficulty, and it is indeed impossible to obtain a satisfactory answer.
The natives of this country are far more industrious than those of Kordofan, and pay much greater attention to agriculture, and the cultivation of cotton, than their neighbours; they also manufacture the cotton themselves into stuffs, and produce other articles of commerce. They have few, but very beautiful horses; and a man must be a bold as well as an excellent rider to keep his seat on these spirited animals, which the natives prize very highly, for they will not readily part with them. In fact, an opportunity only offers itself of purchasing one of their horses when, in a depredatory invasion by the Bakkara, or in a conflict with their neighbours, a man of Takele has been killed, and his horse becomes the booty of the conqueror. I believe that the pedigree of these horses must be sought in Darfour. These negroes hunt elephants, and carry on a trade in ivory with Kordofan. In those parts of the country where there are no horses the elephants are caught in pits, but where the inhabitants possess horses the following plan is pursued:—Two men, mounted on horseback, go hunting together, and generally pick out a full-sized elephant, because the larger animals prove the more profitable. When they have discovered an elephant, one man rides at a distance of about a hundred paces in front of him, so that he keeps in full view of the beast. The other rider approaches to within a hundred paces of the animal from behind, dismounts from his horse,—for he is sure that it will stand quietly,—stealthily approaches it from the rear, and with one cut with a sharp sabre, severs the back sinews of its heel-joint. Infuriated to the utmost by the violent pain, and seeing the rider before it, the animal rushes instantly in pursuit of him, whilst the man who inflicted the wound gains time to vault upon his horse, and make off. The elephant cannot follow the rider far, partly because the latter has the advantage of a start,—and the horse is, moreover, fleeter than the elephant,—partly because he is, in a certain measure, lamed; thus he ultimately treads off his foot, and sinks exhausted with the loss of blood, an easy prey to the huntsman.