Notwithstanding our boatmen had a very bad character at this time, we passed with our camels and baggage without loss or accident. They seemed indeed to shew a very indifferent countenance at first, but good words, and a promise of recompence, presently rendered them tractable. By half past twelve we were all safe on the other side, and at thirty-five minutes past three we arrived at Halifoon, about five miles from the ferry on the east side of the Nile. One mark of the boatmen's attention I cannot but mention: The weather was very hot, and we had plenty of time; the water being clear and tempting, I proposed swimming over to the other side for the pleasure of bathing; but they, one and all, opposed my design with great violence, and would not suffer me to undress. They said there was a multitude of crocodiles in the river near that place, and although they were not large enough to kill, or carry off a camel, they very often wounded them, and it would be a wonder if we passed without seeing them; indeed the last boat had not reached the shore before two of them rose in the middle of the stream. I made what haste I could to get a gun, and fired at the largest, but, as far as I could judge, without effect.
On the 22d, at three o'clock in the afternoon we left Halifoon, and by ten at night came to Halfaia, a large, handsome, and pleasant town, although built with clay. The houses are terrassed at the tops, their inhabitants being no longer afraid of the rains, which have been for some time here very inconsiderable. The Battaheen were encamped near Umdoom, a large village on the side of the river, about seven miles from Halifoon. They are a thievish, pilfering set, and we passed them early in the morning, before it was light. The road is very pleasant, through woods of acacia-trees, interspersed with large fields covered with bent grass. At Umdoom we found troops of women going to their morning occupation, that of gathering seeds to make bread.
The command of Mahomet Wed Ageeb is very extensive. It reaches from this passage of the river at Halifoon on the south, as far as Wed Baal a Nagga on the north, and to the east as far as the Red Sea, though a great part of those Arabs have been in rebellion, and have not paid their tax for some years. His command on the westward of the river reaches to Korti, all over the desert of Bahiouda, though lately the Beni Gerar, Beni Faisara, and Cubba-beesh, have expelled the ancient Arabs of Bahiouda, who pretend now only to be the subjects of Kordofan. He has also the charge of levying the tribute of horses from Dongola, in which consists the great strength of Sennaar.
Halfaia is the limit of the rains, and is situated upon a large circular peninsula surrounded by the Nile from S. W. to N. W. that is, at all the points of W. It is half a mile, or something more, from the river. This peninsula contains all their sown land, and is not watered by the river, but by what is raised from the stream by wheels turned by oxen. Halfaia consists of about three hundred houses; their principal gain is from a manufacture of very coarse cotton cloth, called Dimour, which serves for small money through all the lower parts of Atbara. There are palm-trees at Halfaia, but they produce no dates. The people here eat cats, also the river-horse and the crocodile, both of which are in great plenty. Halfaia, by many altitudes of the sun and stars, was found to be in lat. 15° 45´ 54´´, and in long. 32° 49´ 15´´ east from the meridian of Greenwich.
On the 29th, at six o'clock in the morning we left Halfaia, and continued our journey about 3 miles and a half further, when we came to two villages, a small one to the north and a large one to the west. The Nile here runs N. E. of us. This whole day was spent in woods of a very pleasant kind; there were large numbers of birds of various colours, but none of them, so far as I could hear since we left Sennaar, endowed with the gift of song. Sakies[44] in the plain, all between the Nile and the road, lift the water from the stream, and pour it on the land, in hopes that it may produce some miserable crops of dora; for the river overflows none of this country, and it is very precariously and scantily watered with rain.
In a little time, continuing our journey, we came to Shekh Atman's, the tomb of a Fakir on the road. There is a high ridge of mountains on our left, west of the Nile about five miles, and a low ridge on our right, about eight miles distant; our direction was straight north. At half past eight, about five miles further, we came to the village Wed Hojila. The river Abiad, which is larger than the Nile, joins it there. Still the Nile preserves the name of Bahar el Azergue, or the Blue River, which it got at Sennaar. The village was once intended to be built at the junction of the two rivers, but the Fakir's tomb being on the side of the Nile, the village likewise was placed there. The Abiad is a very deep river; it runs dead and with little inclination, and preserves its stream always undiminished, because rising in latitudes where there are continual rains, it therefore suffers not the decrease the Nile does by the six months dry weather. Our whole journey this day was through woods, with large intervals of sandy plains producing nothing except some few spots of corn sown in time of the showers, while the sun returned over the zenith, but still looking very poorly. At half past twelve we arrived at Suakem, under trees, near a sakia. At four o'clock in the afternoon we left Suakem, the mountains of Gerri bearing N. E. of us, and, five miles further, alighted in a wood near the Arabs Abdelab.
On the 30th, at five o'clock in the morning we left this station, and after having gone eight miles N. E. we came to a village, which is, as it were, the suburb of Gerri. The Acaba of Gerri is a low ridge of rocks that seems first to run from both sides across the bed of the river, as if designed to stop it; and it is impossible to look at the gap through which it falls down below, without thinking that this passage was made by the Nile itself when first it began to flow. Gerri is built on a rising ground, consisting of white, barren sand and gravel, intermixed with white alabaster like pebbles, which, in a bright sun, are extremely disagreeable to the eye. It consists of about 140 houses, none of them above one storey high, neat, well built, flat-roofed, and all of one height, composed with the same coloured earth as that on which it stands, and, for this reason, it is scarcely visible at a distance. It is immediately at the foot of the Acaba, something more than a quarter of a mile from the Nile. Gerri is situated at the end of the tropical rains, in lat. 16° 15´, and the Acaba seems to answer those mountains of Ptolemy, beyond which (that is to the N.) he says it is [Greek: diammon kai abrochon chôran][45], that is, a country full of sand and without rain; it is but a small spot immediately on the Nile, which is all cultivated, as it enjoys the double advantage both of the overflowing of the river and the accidental showers. It is also called Beladullah, or the Country of God, on account of this double blessing. The dates of Gerri are sent to the Mek, and are reserved on purpose for him. They are dry, and never ripen, nor have any of the moist and pulpy substance of the dates of Barbary. They are firm and smooth in the skin, and of a golden colour.
On the 1st of October, at half past five in the morning we left Gerri, the Acaba continuing on the east and west, but the two extremities curving like a bow or an amphitheatre. This ridge of mountains is composed of bare, red stone, without any grass. At ten minutes after eight we changed our road to N. E. endeavouring to turn the point of the Acaba about three miles off, and at ten o'clock alighted among green trees to feed our camels. At three o'clock in the afternoon we left our resting-place in the wood. The mountains, which were then on our left hand, are those of the Acaba of Gerri; but those on the right still ran parallel to our course, and ended in the Acaba of Morness: we were now two miles from the river, its course due north. About twenty minutes past four we came to the Acaba of Morness, a ridge of bare, stony hills, and half an hour after we passed it. There is very little ascent, and the road is only loose, broken stones, which last about a quarter of an hour.
At six o'clock in the evening we came to Hajar el Assad, or Hajar Serrareek, the first signifying the Lion's Stone, the next the Stone of Thieves, a beggarly, straggling village, where there is a sakia, and small stripes of dora, as if sown in a garden, and watered from the well at pleasure. Hajar el Assad is the boundary between Wed Ageeb and the Mek of Chendi; it is a yellow stone set upon a rock, which they imagine has the figure of a lion. We now alighted near half a mile from the river, in a small plain, where was only one shepherd with his cot and flock. At some distance, near the river, there was a house or two with sakies. September is the seed-time in this country. When the Nile is at its height, the flat ground along the side of the water, which is about a quarter of a mile broad, is sown with dora, as far as water can be conducted in rills to it, but after this short space, the ground rises immediately; there the harvest-time is in November; and the seed-time at Sennaar is in July, and their harvest in September; both regulated by the height of the Nile at the respective places.