Sennaar is in lat. 13° 34´ 36´´ north, and in long. 33° 30´ 30´´ east from the meridian of Greenwich. It is on the west side of the Nile, and close upon the banks of it. The ground whereon it stands rises just enough to prevent the river from entering the town, even in the height of the inundation, when it comes to be even with the street. Poncet says, that when he was at this city, his companion, father Brevedent, a Jesuit, an able mathematician, on the 21st of March 1699, determined the latitude of Sennaar to be 13° 4´ N. the difference therefore will be about half a degree. The reader however may implicitly rely upon the situation I have given it, being the mean result of above fifty observations, made both night and day, on the most favourable occasions, by a quadrant of three feet radius, and telescopes of two, and sometimes of three feet focal length, both reflectors and refractors made by the best masters.
The town of Sennaar is very populous, there being in it many good houses after the fashion of the country. Poncet says, in his time they were all of one storey high; but now the great officers have all houses of two. They have parapet roofs, which is a singular construction; for in other places, within the rains, the roofs are all conical. The houses are all built of clay, with very little straw mixed with it, which sufficiently shews the rains here must be less violent than to the southward, probably from the distance of the mountains. However, when I was there, a week of constant rain happened, and on the 30th of July the Nile increased violently, after loud thunder, and a great darkness to the south. The whole stream was covered with wreck of houses, canes, wooden bowls, and platters, living camels and cattle, and several dead ones passed Sennaar, hurried along by the current with great velocity. A hyæna, endeavouring to cross before the town, was surrounded and killed by the inhabitants. The water got into the houses that stand upon its banks, and, by rising several feet high, the walls melted, being clay, which occasioned several of them to fall. It seemed, by the floating wreck of houses that appeared in the stream, to have destroyed a great many villages to the southward towards Fazuclo.
The soil of Sennaar, as I have already said, is very unfavourable both to man and beast, and particularly adverse to their propagation. This seems to me to be owing to some noxious quality of the fat earth with which it is every way surrounded, and nothing may be depended upon more surely than the fact already mentioned, that no mare, or she-beast of burden, ever foaled in the town, or in any village within several miles round it. This remarkable quality ceases upon removing from the fertile country to the sands. Aira, between three and four miles from Sennaar, with no water near it but the Nile, surrounded with white barren sand, agrees perfectly with all animals, and here are the quarters where I saw Shekh Adelan the minister's horse, (as I suppose, for their numbers) by far the finest in the world, where in safety he watched the motion of his sovereign, who, shut up in his capital of Sennaar, could not there maintain one horse to oppose him.
But however unfavourable this soil may be for the propagation of animals, it contributes very abundantly both to the nourishment of man and beast. It is positively said to render three hundred for one, which, however confidently advanced, is, I think, both from reason and appearance, a great exaggeration. It is all sown with dora, or millet, the principal food of the natives. It produces also wheat and rice, but these at Sennaar are sold by the pound, even in years of plenty. The salt made use of at Sennaar is all extracted from the earth about it, especially at Halfaia, so strongly is the soil impregnated with this useful fossile.
About twelve miles from Sennaar, nearly to the N. W. is a collection of villages called Shaddly, from a great saint, who in his time directed large pits to be dug, and plastered closely within with clay, into which a quantity of grain was put when it was at the cheapest, and these were covered up, and plastered again at the top, which they call sealing, and the hole itself matamore. These matamores are in great number all over the plain, and, on any prospect of corn growing dearer, they are opened, and corn sold at a low price both to the town and country.
To the north of Shaddly, about twenty-four miles, is another foundation of this sort, called Wed Aboud, still greater than Shaddly. Upon these two charities the chief subsistence of the Arabs depends; for as there is continual war among these people, and their violence being always directed against the crops rather than the persons of their enemies, the destruction of each tribe would follow the loss of its harvest, was it not for the extraordinary supplies furnished at such times by these granaries.
The small villages of soldiers are scattered up and down through this immense plain to watch the grain that is sown, which is dora only, and it is said that here the ground will produce no other grain. Prodigious excavations are made at proper distances, which fill with water in the rainy season, and are a great relief to the Arabs in their passage between the cultivated country and the sands. The fly, that inexorable persecutor of the Arabs, never pursues them to the north of Shaddly. The knowledge of this circumstance was what, perhaps, determined the first builders of Sennaar to place their capital here; this too, probably, induced the two saints, Shaddly and Wed Aboud, to make here these vast excavations for corn and water. This is the first resting-place the Arabs find, where, having all things necessary for subsistence, they can at leisure transact their affairs with government.
To the westward of Shaddly and Aboud, as far as the river Abiad, or El-aice, the country is full of trees, which make it a favourite station for camels. As Shaddly is not above three hours ride on horseback from Sennaar, there could not be chosen a situation more convenient for levying the tribute; for though Gerri, from the favourable situation of the ground, being mountainous and rocky, and just on the extremity of the rains, was a place properly chosen for this purpose by the Arab prince before the conquest of the Funge, (for his troops there cut them off, either from the sands, or the fertile country, as he pleased), yet many of them might have remained behind at Shaddly, and to the westward, free from the terror of the fly, and consequently without any necessity of advancing so far north as Gerri, and there subjecting themselves to contribution.
In this extensive plain, near Shaddly, arise two mountainous districts, the one called Jibbel Moia, or the Mountain of Water, which is a ridge of considerable hills nearly of the same height, closely united; and the other Jibbel Segud, or the Cold Mountain, a broken ridge composed of parts, some high and some low, without any regular form. Both these enjoy a fine climate, and are full of inhabitants, but of no considerable extent. They serve for a protection to the Daheera, or farms of Shaddly and Wed Aboud. They are also fortresses in the way of the Arabs, to detain and force them to payment in their flight from the cultivated country and rains to the dry lands of Atbara. Each of these districts is governed by the descendant of their ancient and native princes, who long resisted all the power of the Arabs, having both horse and foot. They continued to be Pagans till the conquest of the Funge. Bloody and unnatural sacrifices were said to have been in use in these mountainous states, with horrid circumstances of cruelty, till Abdelcader, son of Amru, the third of the kings of Sennaar, about the year 1554, besieged first the one and then the other of these princes in their mountain, and forced them to surrender; and, having fastened a chain of gold to each of their ears, he exposed them in the public market-place at Sennaar in that situation, and sold them to the highest bidder, at the vile price of something like a farthing each. After this degradation, being circumcised, and converted to the Mahometan religion, they were restored each to their government, as slaves of Sennaar, upon very easy conditions of tribute, and have been faithful ever since.
Nothing is more pleasant than the country around Sennaar, in the end of August and beginning of September, I mean so far as the eye is concerned; instead of that barren, bare waste, which it appeared on our arrival in May, the corn now sprung up, and covering the ground, made the whole of this immense plain appear a level, green land, interspersed with great lakes of water, and ornamented at certain intervals with groups of villages, the conical tops of the houses presenting, at a distance, the appearance of small encampments. Through this immense, extensive plain, winds the Nile, a delightful river there, above a mile broad, full to the very brim, but never overflowing. Every where on these banks are seen numerous herds of the most beautiful cattle of various kinds, the tribute recently extorted from the Arabs, who, freed from all their vexations, return home with the remainder of their flocks in peace, at as great a distance from the town, country, and their oppressors, as they possibly can.