We rode for two or three hours in this fertile district, and then entered again upon a sandy plain overgrown with large Syale trees, where we stopped during the noontide hours, on the high banks of the river, and watered our camels. Large flocks of storks passed over our heads to the northward. At the end of seven hours from our setting out in the morning we reached the extremity of the sandy plain, where commences a tract called Boeydha (بويضه), less extensive, but equally fertile with the plain preceding. It contains many small hamlets, in which the houses consist generally of one room only, serving for all purposes. Here are the salt-works which supply the whole country as far as Sennaar with salt. The earth, which for several miles round is strongly impregnated with salt, is collected by the Arabs in heaps upon the side of the road. The salt is separated from the earth by boiling in large earthen vessels, and the saline part is then boiled a second time, in smaller vessels. The salt is afterwards formed into small round cakes about a foot in diameter, and three inches in thickness; it is perfectly white, and has much the appearance of rock salt. About a dozen cakes are packed together in a basket; four baskets make a camel’s load. This salt constitutes a considerable branch of the Shendy trade. The Sennaar merchants buy it in great quantities for the Abyssinian markets, and exchange it in the mountains about Ras el Fil, for slaves and gold. The works are the property of the Mek of Shendy: there were about twenty boilers on the fire when I passed.
Just beyond the plain of Boeydha, where the road again enters a barren sandy desert, stands a tall date-tree, the only one of its species met with hereabouts, for no dates are grown anywhere from Dóngola to Sennaar. The merchants hail this tree as a beacon which marks the successful termination of their journey. Several people of Shendy were waiting for us, to salute their acquaintances, and take a look at the loads. As traders never enter Shendy in the day time, we halted till sun-set, and then proceeded slowly towards the town, which we reached after about nine hours march from our departure from Djebail.
At Shendy from April 17th to May 17th. We entered a large house belonging to the friends of the Ababdes, situated on the skirts of the town, towards the desert; but the next morning the Mek sent one of his slaves to tell us, that he wanted that house himself for one of his Abyssinian female slaves, who was to be inoculated with the small-pox, and whom he wished to pass the time of her illness in an open, airy, and insulated place. He ordered a house to be prepared for us in the middle of the town, and we took possession of it the next day; the owner was absent, but his wife gave us a civil reception.
Next to Sennaar, and Cobbé (in Darfour), Shendy is the largest town in eastern Soudan, and larger, according to the report of the merchants, than the capitals of Dóngola and of Kordofan. It consists of several quarters, divided from each other by public places, or markets, and it contains altogether from eight hundred to a thousand houses. It is built upon the sandy plain, at about half an hour’s walk from the river; its houses are similar to those of Berber; but it contains a greater number of large buildings, and fewer ruins. The houses seldom form any regular street, but are spread over the plain in great disorder. I nowhere saw any walls of burnt bricks. The houses of the chief, and those of his relatives, contain court-yards twenty feet square, inclosed by high walls, and this is the general description of the habitations of Shendy. The government is in the hands of the Mek; the name of the present chief is Nimr (نِمر), i. e. Tiger. The reigning family is of the same tribe as that which now occupies the throne of Sennaar, namely the Wold Adjib(ولد عجيب), which, as far as I could understand, is a branch of the Funnye. The father of Nimr was an Arab of the tribe of Djaalein, but his mother was of the royal blood of Wold Adjib; and thus it appears that women have a right to the succession. This agrees with the narrative of Bruce, who found at Shendy a woman upon the throne, whom he calls Sittina (an Arabic word meaning our Lady). The Mek of Shendy, like the Mek of Berber, is subject to Sennaar; but, excepting the purchase money paid for his government, on his accession, and occasional presents to the king and vizieri[21] of Sennaar, he is entirely independent, and governs his district, which extends about two days journeys farther to the south, quite at his own pleasure.
Before the arrival of the Mamelouks in Dóngola Mek Nimr had been for many years in continual warfare with the Arabs Sheygya, who had killed several of his relatives in battle, and, by making inroads into his dominions with large parties of horsemen, had repeatedly laid waste the whole western bank of the river. The Sheygya made peace with him, in order more effectually to oppose the Mamelouks, when his own brother, to whom the command of the western bank had been entrusted, declared against him, and they have now carried on war for several years, with little success or loss on either side, as they are separated from each other by the river, and can never pass it but in small parties.
The government of Shendy is much to be preferred to that of Berber: the full authority of the Mek is not thwarted by the influence of powerful families, which in these countries tends only to insecurity, nor has he adopted that system of rapacity which makes Berber so justly dreaded by strangers. His absolute power is owing to the diversity of Arab tribes inhabiting Shendy, none of which is strong enough to cope with his own family and its numerous branches. The largest of these tribes are the Nimrab, Nayfab, and Djaalein, the greater part of whom still lead the Bedouin life. The most respectable class of the inhabitants of Shendy are the merchants, amongst whom are great numbers of foreign settlers from Sennaar, Kordofan, Darfour, and Dóngola: the last are the most numerous, and they occupy an entire quarter of the town, but their nation is less esteemed than any other. They are reproached with inhospitality, and their avarice has become proverbial; the broker business, which is almost exclusively in their hands, has added to the odium of their name, so that an Arab of Shendy considers it as an insult to be called a Dongoláwy, a name here considered as equivalent to that of Jew in Europe.
Commerce flourishes at Shendy because the Mek does not extort any taxes from the merchants, which many people assured me he dared not do from his fear of the vizier of Sennaar. I am not able to judge how far this may be true; but the fact is, that caravans pay nothing whatever by way of duty; they generally make up a small present to the Mek, in order to enjoy his particular protection, and add something further for one of his brothers, who is a principal man in the place. Our party of Ababdes sent him a small parcel of soap and sugar, of which my quota amounted to half a dollar. I did not hear of any subordinate offices in the government of Shendy, and the Mek seems to unite all the branches of authority in his own person. His relatives are the governors of villages; and his court consists of half a dozen police officers, a writer, an Imam, a treasurer, and a body guard, formed principally of slaves. The character of the people is much the same as that of the inhabitants of Berber. They are kept in some order, it is true, by the Mek; but wickedness and injustice govern all their conduct, for they know that the law can do little more than endeavour to prevent crimes, and that it very seldom punishes them. Nightly robbers, drunken people who have assaulted strangers, thieves detected in the market, &c. &c. are often carried before the Mek, but he is generally satisfied with imprisoning them for two or three days; and I did not hear a single instance of his having ordered any person to be put to death, or even flogged, although such crimes as I have mentioned were committed daily during my stay at Shendy. The delinquents were permitted to return quietly to their homes, on paying a small fine to the Mek and his people. I was told that at Kordofan thieves are always punished with death.
Debauchery and drunkenness are as fashionable here as at Berber; the latter, I think, is even more common. No night passed without my hearing the loud songs of some Bouza meeting, though our quarter, that of the Dongoláwy, who are too avaricious to be addicted to these vices, was one of the quietest. At Berber public women were constantly seen in the street; at Shendy I very seldom met any of them, though within the inclosures of the houses they are almost as numerous as at Berber.
The dress, habits, and manners of the inhabitants of Shendy are the same as those of the places last described, and appear to prevail as far as Darfour, and Sennaar. I observed more well dressed people at Shendy than at Berber, and clean linen was much oftener seen. Gold being a very current article in the Shendy market, the women have more frequently golden rings at their noses and ears than those of Berber; the people also possess more wealth. It is not uncommon to see a family possessed of a dozen slaves, acting as servants in the house, and labourers in the field.
The people of Shendy, like those of Berber, are shepherds, traders, and husbandmen. Agriculture, however, seems to be little thought of by the inhabitants themselves, being chiefly left to the Arab peasants of the vicinity; the cultivable soil in the neighbourhood of the city is narrow; but to the north and south of it are some fine arable plains. Water-wheels are common; they are erected generally on those parts of the high banks, which the most copious inundations of the river cannot overflow; by means of them the cultivators raise one winter crop; but they are too lazy to bestow the labour necessary for watering the soil a second or third time, as is done in the most elevated parts of Upper Egypt, where also the river very seldom rises high enough to overflow the banks. Dhourra is the chief produce; Dokhen and wheat are sown in small quantities, the former for the consumption of the western traders who visit Shendy, the latter almost exclusively for the families of the great. Large quantities of onions, some red pepper (brought from Kordofan), Bamyes, chick-peas (حُمّص), Meloukhye, and Tormos,i[22] are always found in the market either green or dried. During the inundation some water-melons and cucumbers are sown, but for the use only of the Harem of the Mek.