The third government is Fazuclo, bounded by the river El-aice on the west, and the Nile on the east, and the mountains of Fazuclo, where are the great cataracts, on the south. These are part of the large chain of mountains of Dyre and Tegla, which reach so far westward into the continent, from whence comes the chief supply both of gold and slaves which constitute the riches of this country; for the greatest part of the revenue of Fazuclo is gold; and the person that commands it is not a Funge, but the same native prince from whom the army of Sennaar conquered it. This seems to be a very remarkable piece of policy in this barbarous nation, which must have succeeded, as they constantly adhere to it, of making the prince of the state they have conquered their lieutenant in the government of his own country afterwards. Such was the case with Dongola, whose Mek they continue; also with Wed Ageeb, prince of the Arabs, whom they subdued; and such was the case with Fazuclo, Wed Aboud, Jibbel Moia, and other petty states, all of which they conquered, but did not change their prince.
The forces at Sennaar, immediately around the capital, consist of about 14,000 Nuba, who fight naked, having no other armour but a short javelin and a round shield, very bad troops, as I suppose; about 1800 horse, all black, mounted by black slaves, armed with coats of mail, and without any other weapon but a broad Sclavonian sword. These I suppose, by the weight and power of man and horse, would bear down, or break through double the number of any other troops in the world: nobody, that has not seen this cavalry, can have any idea to what perfection the horse rises here. The Mek has not one musket in his whole army. Besides these horse, there is a great, but uncertain number of Arabs, who pay their tribute immediately to the Mek and to the great men in government, and live under their protection close by the town, and thereby have the advantage of trading with it, of supplying it with provisions, and, no doubt, must contribute in part to its strength and defence in time of need.
After what I have said of the latitude of Sennaar, it will scarcely be necessary to repeat that the heats are excessive. The thermometer rises in the shade to 119°, but as I have observed of the heats of Arabia, so now I do in respect to those of Sennaar. The degree of the thermometer does not convey any idea of the effect the sun has upon the sensations of the body or the colour of the skin. Nations of blacks live within lat. 13° and 14°, when 10° south of them, nearly under the Line, all the people are white, as we had an opportunity of seeing daily in the Galla, whom we have described. Sennaar, which is in lat. 13°, is hotter, by the thermometer, 50 degrees, when the sun is most distant from it, than Gondar is, though a degree farther south, when the sun is vertical.
Cold and hot are terms merely relative, not determined by the latitude, but elevation of the place; when, therefore, we say hot, some other explanation is necessary concerning the place where we are, in order to give an adequate idea of the sensations of that heat upon the body, and the effects of it upon the lungs. The degree of the thermometer conveys this very imperfectly; 90° is excessively hot at Loheia in Arabia Felix, and yet the latitude of Loheia is but 15°, whereas 90° at Sennaar is, as to sense, only warm, although Sennaar, as we have said, is in lat. 13°.
At Sennaar, then, I call it cold, when one, fully cloathed and at rest, feels himself in want of fire. I call it cool, when one, fully cloathed and at rest, feels he could bear more covering all over, or in part, more than he has then on. I call it temperate, when a man, so cloathed and at rest, feels no such want, and can take moderate exercise, such as walking about a room without sweating. I call it warm, when a man, so cloathed, does not sweat when at rest, but, upon moderate motion, sweats, and again cools. I call it hot, when a man sweats at rest, and excessively on moderate motion. I call it very hot, when a man, with thin or little cloathing, sweats much though at rest. I call it excessive hot, when a man, in his shirt, at rest, sweats excessively, when all motion is painful, and the knees feel feeble as if after a fever. I call it extreme hot, when the strength fails, a disposition to faint comes on, a straitness is found in the temples, as if a small cord was drawn tight around the head, the voice impaired, the skin dry, and the head seems more than ordinary large and light. This, I apprehend, denotes death at hand, as we have seen in the instance of Imhanzara, in our journey to Teawa; but this is rarely or never effected by the sun alone, without the addition of that poisonous wind which pursued us through Atbara, and will be more particularly described in our journey down the desert, to which Heaven, in pity to mankind, has confined it, and where it has, no doubt, contributed to the total extinction of every thing that hath the breath of life. A thermometer graduated upon this scale would exhibit a figure very different from the common one; for I am convinced by experiment, that a web of the finest muslin, wrapt round the body at Sennaar, will occasion at mid-day a greater sensation of heat in the body than the rise of 5° in the thermometer of Fahrenheit.
At Sennaar, from 70° to 78° in Fahrenheit's thermometer is cool; from 79° to 92° temperate; at 92° begins warm. Although the degree of the thermometer marks a greater heat than is felt by the body of us strangers, it seems to me that the sensations of the natives bear still a less proportion to that degree than ours. On the 2d of August, while I was lying perfectly enervated on a carpet, in a room deluged with water, at twelve o'clock, the thermometer at 116°, I saw several black labourers pulling down a house, working with great vigour, without any symptoms of being at all incommoded.
The diseases of Sennaar are the dysentery, or bloody flux, fatal in proportion as it begins with the first of the rains, or the end of them, and return of the fair weather. Intermitting fevers accompany this complaint very frequently, which often ends in them. Bark is a sovereign remedy in this country, and seems to be by so much the surer, that it purges on taking the first doze, and this it does almost without exception. Epilepsies and schirrous livers are likewise very frequent, owing, as is supposed, to their defeating or diminishing perspiration, or stopping the pores by constant unction, as also by the quantity of water they deluge themselves with at the time they are hottest. The influence of the moon in epilepsies, and the certainty with which the third day after the conjunction brings back the paroxysm in regular intermitting fevers, is what naturally surprises people not deeper read than I am in the study of medicine. Those who live much in camps, or in the parts of Atbara far from rivers, have certainly, more or less, the gravel, occasioned, probably, by the use of well-water; for at Sennaar, where they drink of the river, I never saw but one instance of it, that of the Sid el Coom; as for Shekh Ibrahim, whom I shall speak of afterwards, he had passed a great part of his life at Kordofan. The venereal disease is frequent here, but never inveterate, insomuch that it does not prevent the marriage of either sex. Sweating and abstinence never fail to cure it, although, where it had continued for a time, I have known mercury fail.
The elephantiasis, so common in Abyssinia, is not known here. The small-pox is a disease not endemial in the country of Sennaar. It is sometimes twelve or fifteen years without its being known, notwithstanding the constant intercourse they have with, and merchandizes they bring from Arabia. It is likewise said this disease never broke out in Sennaar, unless in the rainy season. However, when it comes, it sweeps away a vast proportion of those that are infected: The women, both blacks and Arabs, those of the former that live in plains, like the Shillook, or inhabitants of El-aice, those of the Nuba and Guba, that live in mountains, all the various species of slaves that come from Dyre and Tegla, from time immemorial have known a species of inoculation which they call Tishteree el Jidderee, or, the buying of the small pox. The women are the conductors of this operation in the fairest and driest season of the year, but never at other times. Upon the first hearing of the small pox any where, these people go to the infected place, and, wrapping a fillet of cotton cloth about the arm of the person infected, they let it remain there till they bargain with the mother how many she is to sell them. It is necessary that the terms be discussed judaically, and that the bargain be not made collusively or gratuitously, but that one piece of silver, or more, be paid for the number. This being concluded, they go home, and tie the fillet about their own child's arm; certain, as they say, from long experience, that the child infected is to do well, and not to have one more than the number of pustules that were agreed and paid for. There is no example, as far as I could learn, either here or in Abyssinia, of this disease returning, that is, attacking any one person more than once.
The trade of Sennaar is not great; they have no manufactures, but the principal article of consumption is blue cotton cloth from Surat. Formerly, when the ways were open, and merchants went in caravans with safety, Indian goods were brought in quantities to Sennaar from Jidda, and then dispersed over the black country. The return was made in gold, in powder called Tibbar, civet, rhinoceros's horns, ivory, ostrich feathers, and, above all, in slaves or glass, more of which was exported from Sennaar than all the east of Africa together. But this trade is almost destroyed, so is that of the gold and ivory. However, the gold still keeps up its reputation of being the purest and best in Africa, and therefore bought at Mocha to be carried to India, where it all at last centers. If the wakea of Abyssinian gold sells at 16 patakas, the Sennaar gold sells at the same place for 22 patakas. The ivory sells at 1½ oz.[40] per rotol at Cairo, which is about 25 per cent lighter than the rotol of Mocha. Men-slaves, at a medium, may be about a wakea per head at Sennaar. There are women, however, who sell for 13 or 14 wakeas. What their peculiar excellencies may be, which so far alters the price, I cannot tell, only they are preferred by rich people, both Turks and Moors, to the Arab, Circassian, and Georgian women, during the warm months in summer.
The Daveina Arabs, who are great hunters, carry the ivory to Abyssinia, where they are not in fear. But no caravan comes now from Sudan[41] to Sennaar, nor from Abyssinia or Cairo. The violence of the Arabs, and the faithlessness of the government of Sennaar, have shut them up on every side but that of Jidda, whether they go once a-year by Suakem.