Soliman, my old and faithful servant, who had carried my first letter to Sennaar, though provided for in the king's service, insisted upon attending me to Sennaar, and dying with me if it should be my fate; or else gaining the reward which had been promised him, if he brought back the good news of my safe arrival and good reception there. At parting, I gave the faithful Yasine one of my horses and my coat of mail, that is my ordinary one; for the one that was given me by Ozoro Esther had belonged to king Yasous, and as it would have been an affront to have bestowed it on a common man like Yasine, who, besides, was a Mahometan, so I gave it (with Ozoro Esther's consent) to Ayto Engedan, king Yasous's grandson. Before parting, Yasine, like an old traveller, called the whole company together, and obliged them to repeat the Fedtah, the Prayer of Peace.
At half past seven in the evening we came to Engaldi, a large bason or cavity, several hundred yards in length, and about thirty feet deep, made for the reception of water by the Arabs, who encamp by its side after the rains. The water was almost exhausted, and what remained had an intolerable stench. However, flocks of Guinea fowls, partridges, and every sort of bird, had crowded thither to drink, from the scarcity of water elsewhere. I believe, I may certainly say, the number amounted to many thousands. My Arabs loaded themselves in a very little while, killing them, with sticks and stones; but they were perfectly useless, being reduced to skeletons by hunger and thirst. For this reason, as well as that I might not alarm any strolling banditti within hearing, I did not suffer a shot to be fired at them.
At eight we came to Eradeeba, where is neither village nor water, but only a resting-place about half a mile square, which has been cleared from wood, that travellers, who pass to and from Atbara, might have a secure spot whence they could see around them, and guard themselves from being attacked unawares by the banditti sometimes resorting to those deserts.
At a quarter past eleven we arrived at Quaicha, a bed of a torrent where there was now no water; but the wood seemed growing still thicker, and to be full of wild beasts, especially lions and hyænas. These do not fly from man, as those did that we had hitherto seen, but came boldly up, especially the hyæna, with a resolution to attack us. Upon our first lighting a fire they left us for a time; but towards morning they came in greater numbers, than before; a lion carried away one of our asses from among the other beasts of burden, and a hyæna attacked one of the men, tore his cloth from his middle, and wounded him in his back. As we now expected to be instantly devoured, the present fear overcame the resolutions we had made, not to use our fire arms, unless in the utmost necessity. I fired two guns, and ordered my servants to fire two large ship-blunderbusses, which presently freed us from our troublesome guests. Two hyænas were killed, and a large lion being mortally wounded was dispatched by our men in the morning. They came no more near us; but we heard numbers of them howling at a distance till day-light, either from hunger or the smarts of the wounds they had received, perhaps from both; for each ship-blunderbuss had fifty small bullets, and the wood towards which they were directed, at the distance of about twenty yards, seemed to be crowded with these animals. The reason why the hyæna is more fierce here than in any part of Barbary, will be given in the natural history of that wild beast in the Appendix.
Though this, our first day's journey from Falaty and Ras el Feel, to Quaicha, was of eleven hours, the distance we had gone in that time was not more than ten miles; for our beasts were exceedingly loaded, so that it was with the utmost difficulty that either we or they could force ourselves through those thick woods, which scarcely admitted the rays of the sun. From this station, however, we were entertained with a most magnificent sight. The mountains at a distance towards the banks of the Tacazzé, all Debra Haria, and the mountains towards Kuara, were in a violent bright flame of fire.
The Arabs feed all their flocks upon the branches of trees; no beast in this country eats grass. When therefore the water is dried up, and they can no longer stay, they set fire to the woods, and to the dry grass below it. The flame runs under the trees, scorches the leaves and new wood, without consuming the body of the tree. After the tropical rains begin, the vegetation immediately returns; the springs increase, the rivers run, and the pools are filled with water. All sorts of verdure being now in the greatest luxuriancy, the Arabs revisit their former stations. This conflagration is performed at two seasons; the first, by the Shangalla and hunters on the southern parts of this woody country, begins in the month of October, on the return of the sun, the circumstances of which I have already mentioned; the latter, which happens in March, and lasts all April, besides providing future sustenance for their flocks, is likewise intended to prevent, at least to diminish, the ravages of the fly; a plague of the most extraordinary kind, already described.
We left Quaicha a little before four in the morning of the 19th of March, and at half an hour past five we came to Jibbel Achmar, a small mountain, or rather mount; for it is of a very regular form, and not above 300 feet high, but covered with green grass to the top. What has given it the name of Jibbel Achmar, or the Red Mountain, I know not. All the country is of red earth about it; but as it hath much grass, it should be called[23] the Green Mountain, in the middle of the red country; though there is nothing more vague or undetermined than the language of the Arabs, when they speak of colours. This hill, surrounded with impenetrable woods, is in the beginning of autumn the rendezvous of the Arabs Daveina, when there is water; at which time the rhinoceros and many sorts of beasts, crowd hither; tho' few elephants, but they are those of the largest kind, mostly males; so that the Arabs make this a favourite station, after the grass is burnt, especially the young part of them, who are hunters.
We reached Imserrha at half past eleven, the water being about half a mile distant to the S. W. The wells are situated upon a small ridge that runs nearly east and west. At one extremity of this is a small-pointed mountain, upon which was formerly a village belonging to the Arabs, called Jehaina, now totally destroyed by the hunting parties of the Daveina, the great tyrants of this country, who, together with the scarcity of water, are the principal causes that this whole territory is desolate. For though the soil is sandy and improper for agriculture, yet it is thickly overgrown with trees; and were the places where water is found sufficiently flocked with inhabitants, great numbers of cattle might be pastured here, every species of which live upon the leaves and the young branches of trees, even on spots where grass is abundant.
On the 20th, at six o'clock in the morning we set out from Imserrha, and in two hours arrived at Rashid, where we were surprised to see the branches of the shrubs and bushes all covered with a shell of that species of univalve called Turbines, white and red; some of them from three to four inches long, and not to be distinguished by the nicest eye from those sea-shells, of the same species, which are brought in great quantities from the West India islands, especially St Domingo.
How these came first in a sandy desert so far from the sea is a disquisition I shall not now enter into. There are of this fish great numbers in the Red Sea, and in the Indian Ocean; how they came upon the bushes, or at the roots of them, appears more the business of the present narrative. To confine myself to the matter of fact, I shall only say, that throughout this desert are many springs of salt-water; great part of the desert is fossile salt, which, buried in some places at different depths according to the degree of inclination of all minerals to the horizon, does at times in these fountains appear very near the surface. Here I suppose the seed is laid, and, by the addition of the rain-water that falls upon the salt during the tropical rains, the quantity of salt-water is much increased, and these fishes spread themselves over the plain as in a temporary ocean. The rains decrease, and the sun returns; those that are near springs retire to them, and provide for the propagation of future years. Those that have wandered too far off in the plains retire to the bushes as the only shelter from the sun. The intense heat at length deprives them of that shade, and they perish with the leaves to which they crept for shelter, and this is the reason that we saw such a quantity of shells under the bushes; that we found them otherwise alive in the very heart of the springs, we shall further circumstantiate in our Appendix, when we speak of mussels so found in our history of the formation of pearls.