In the afternoon we walked out to see the village, which is a very pleasant one, situated upon the bottom of a hill, covered with wood, all the rest flat before it. Through this plain there are many large timber trees, planted in rows, and joined with high hedges, as in Europe, forming inclosures for keeping cattle; but of these we saw none, as they had been moved to the Dender for fear of the flies. There is no water at Beyla but what is got from deep wells. Large plantations of Indian corn are everywhere about the town. The inhabitants are in continual apprehension from the Arabs Daveina at Sim Sim, about 40 miles south-east from them; and from another powerful race called Wed abd el Gin, i. e. Son of the slaves of the Devil, who live to the south-west of them, between the Dender and the Nile. Beyla is another frontier town of Sennaar, on the side of Sim Sim; and between Teawa and this, on the Sennaar side, and Ras el Feel, Nara, and Tchelga, upon the Abyssinian side, all is desert and waste, the Arabs only suffering the water to remain there without villages near it, that they and their flocks may come at certain seasons while the grass grows, and the pools or springs fill elsewhere.
Although I went early to bed with full determination to set out by day-break, yet I found it was impossible to put my design in execution, or get from the hands of our kind landlord. One of our girbas seemed to fail, and needed to be repaired. Nothing good, as he truly said, could come from the Shekh of Atbara. A violent dispute had arisen in the evening, after I was gone to bed, over their bouza, between the king's servant and that of Shekh Adelan. It was about dividing their fees which they had received from Shekh Fidele. This was carried a great length, and it was at last agreed that it should be determined by the Shekh of Beyla in the morning, when both of them, as might be supposed, should have cooler heads. For my part, I took no thought or concern about it, as no circumstance of its origin had been notified to me; but it took up so much of our time, that it was after dinner before we were ready.
On the 21st of April we left Beyla at three o'clock in the afternoon, our direction south-west, through a very pleasant, flat country, but without water; there had been none in our way nearer than the river Rahad. About eleven at night we alighted in a wood: The place is called Baherie, as near as we could compute, nine miles from Beyla.
On the 22d, at half past five o'clock in the morning we left Baherie, still continuing westward, and at nine we came to the banks of the Rahad. The ford is called Tchir Chaira. The river itself was now standing in pools, the water foul, stinking, and covered with a green mantle; the bottom soft and muddy, but there was no choice. The water at Beyla was so bad, that we took only as much as was absolutely necessary till we arrived at running water from the Rahad. We continued half an hour travelling along the river at N. W. and W. N. W. till three quarters past ten. At noon we again met the river Rahad, which now had turned to the westward of north, and by its sides we pitched our tents near the huts of the Arabs, called Cohala, a stationary tribe, that do not live in tents, but are tributary to the Mek, and regularly pay all the taxes and exactions the government of Sennaar lays upon them, and from these, therefore, we were not under any apprehension.
On the 23d, at six o'clock in the morning we left the Cohala, continuing along the river Rahad, which here runs a very little to the eastward of north. At three o'clock we alighted at Kumar, another station of the same Arabs of Cohala, on the river side. This river, here called Rahad, or Thunder, winds the most of any stream in Abyssinia. It begins not far from Tchelga, passes between Kuara and Sennaar, separating Abyssinia from Nubia, and making, with the river Atbara, the Astaboras or Tacazzé, and the Nile, a perfect island, whereas before it was only a peninsula. It seems to intercept all the springs that would go down to the middle of the peninsula, from the high country of Abyssinia, and is probably the reason of the great dearth of water there. While it is in Abyssinia it is called Shimfa. It falls into the Nile at Habharras, about thirty-eight miles north of Sennaar.
The quarrel between our two conductors was so little made up, that the king's servant would not travel with us, but always went half a day before, and we joined him when we encamped in the evening. We did not pay him the compliment of asking him why he did this, but allowed him to take his own way, which he seemed not to be pleased with, giving many hints at night, that he had, all his life, been averse to the having any thing to do with white people.
We set out at five in the afternoon from Kumar, and in the close of the evening met several men, on horseback and on foot, coming out from among the bushes, who endeavoured to carry off one of our camels. We indeed were somewhat alarmed, and were going to prepare for resistance. The camel they had taken away had on it the king's and Shekh Adelan's presents, and some other things for our future need. Our clothes too, books, and papers, were upon the same camel. Adelan's servant, though he was at first surprised, did not lose his presence of mind; he soon knew these Arabs could not be robbers, and guessed it to be a piece of malice of the king's servant to frighten us, and extort money from us, in order to obtain restitution of the camel. He therefore rode up to one of the villages of the Arabs, to ask them who those were that had taken away our camel.
In one of the huts he found the king's servant regaling himself; upon which he said to him, "I suppose, Mahomet, you have taken charge of that camel, and will bring it with you to Sennaar; it has your master's presents, and mine also, upon it:" and saying this, he rode off to join us, and to punish those that had taken the camel, who, we were sure after this notification, must follow us. We kept on at a very brisk pace, for it was eleven o'clock before they came up to where we were encamped for the night, bringing our camel, which they had taken, along with them, with an Arab on horseback, attended with two on foot, and with them the king's servant. I did not seem at all to have understood the affair, only that robbers had taken away our camel. But it did not sit so easy upon the Arabs, who did not know there was any with us but the king's servant, and who wanted to frighten us for not making them a present for eating their grass and drinking their water. At first, Adelan's servant refused to take the camel again upon any terms, insisting that the Cohala should carry it to Sennaar; but, after a great many words, I determined to make peace, upon condition they should furnish us with milk, wherever they had cattle, till we arrived at Sennaar. This was very readily consented to; and as this affair probably was owing to the malice of the king's servant, so it ended without further trouble.
On the 24th, we set out at half after five in the morning, and passed through several small villages of Cohala on the right and on the left, till at eleven we came to the river Dender, standing now in pools, but by the vast wideness of its banks, and the great deepness of its bed, all of white sand, it should seem that in time of rain it will contain nearly as much water as the Nile. The banks are everywhere thick overgrown with the rack and jujeb tree, especially the latter. The wood, which had continued mostly from Beyla, here failed us entirely, and reached no further towards Sennaar. These two sorts of trees, however, were in very great beauty, and of a prodigious size. Here we found the main body of Cohala, with all their cattle, living in perfect security both from Arabs and from the plague of the fly. They were as good as their word to us in supplying us plentifully with excellent milk, which we had scarcely ever tasted since we left Gondar.