The heat is not inordinate; in the morning, at eight o’clock, usually 23° R.; from noon, till about five o’clock, 29°; and at eleven at night, 22°.
The evenings we spend on board, then I have the geography explained to me by our khawass, Hagi Ibrahim, or take some Nubians to my camels, to learn their language. I have already prepared a long vocabulary of the Nubian language. On a comparison with other lists, in Rüppell and Cailliaud, I also found in Koldági one of the languages spoken in the southernmost part of Kordofan, many similar words, which testify a narrow connection between the two languages. The Arabs call the Nubian language lisân rotâna, which I at first took for its actual name; it signifies, however, only a foreign language, distinct from the Arabic. Therefore if the three Nubian dialects are spoken of, they are not only called Rotâna Kenûs, Mahass, or Donqolaui, but also Rotâna Dinkaui, Shilluk, even Turki and Franki, Turkish and Frank, i. e. European gibberish. The same error is at the bottom of the now received designation of the Nubians as Berbers, and their language as the Berber language; for this is not their national name, or that of the language, as it is generally believed, but means originally the foreign-speaking persons, the Barbaros.[76]
On the 25th of February we landed near Saba Doleb; I sought for ruins, but only found tall, well-built cupolas of burnt brick, in the form of beehives, and erected in quite a similar manner to the Greek Thesauri, in horizontal layers. They are the graves of holy Arab sheikhs of a late era; the villagers did not know what date to assign for their erection. Under the cupola, in the middle of the building of fifteen to eighteen feet in diameter, is the long narrow grave of the saint, surrounded with larger stones and covered with a multitude of little ones, according to the superstition one thousand in number. I found six such domes, most of them half dismantled, some quite ruined, but two tolerably well preserved, and still visited; a seventh, probably the latest, was built of unburnt bricks.
At Wad Negûdi, a village to the west of the Nile, we found the first dilêb-palms,[77] with slender naked trunks and little bushy crowns, like date-palms in the distance, and dûm-palms close to it, by reason of the leaves. The fruit is round, like that of the dûm-palm, but larger. These trees are said to be more frequent on the eastern tributaries; here, on the Nile, they are found but in a very small district. The leaves are regularly divided into fan-like folds one under the other, and the stem has strong saw-like notches. With such a stalk the Rais of our vessel sawed off another leaf, which I had brought to the bark, to take with me. It is divided into sixty-nine points, and measures five feet and a quarter from that part of the stem where the fan begins, although it is but young, and therefore keeps its fans quite shut as yet. Another one, still larger, which had already unfolded itself, we put up in the bark as a parasol, in the shade of which we sat. The way to those palms we had to make through the giant grass thickets, shooting up stiffly and closely like corn, and covering great plains. The ends of the stalks were five or six feet above our heads, and even the tall camels, bred in this place, could scarcely see above them.
On the 26th of February, we arrived at the village Abu el Abás, on the eastern shore. This is the principal place of the neighbourhood, and the Kashef living here, has authority over 112 villages. I there purchased, for a few piasters, of a Turkish khawass a dog-ape. This is the holy ape of the ancient Egyptians, kynokephalos, dedicated to Thoth and the Moon, and appearing as the second of the four gods of the lower world.[78] It interests me to have this animal, which I have seen so innumerably represented on the monuments, about me for a time, and to observe the faithfully caught representations of its striking and usual characteristics in old Egyptian art. It is remarkable that this ape, so peculiar to Egypt in ancient times, is now only found in the south, and even there not very frequently. How many species of animals and plants, indeed manners and customs of men, with which the monuments of Egypt make us acquainted, are only to be found here in the farthest south of old Ethiopia, so that many representations, i. e. those of the graves of Benihassan, seem rather to picture scenes of this country than of Egypt. The kynokephalos has here no particular name, but only the general term gird (great ape). His head, hair, and colour, are not unlike those of a dog, whence his Greek appellation. Occasionally, too, he barks and growls just like a dog. He is yet young, and very good-natured, but immeasurably cleverer than Abeken’s little dog and Nesnas monkey. He is very funny when he wants something good to eat, that he may see held in the hand. Then he lays his ears back, and knows how to express the greatest joy, but sits still, like a good child, and only smacks his lips like an old wine-taster. On seeing the crocodile, however, his hair ruffled up on his whole body, he cried out lamentably, and was scarcely to be held in his terror.
We arrived at the famous old metropolis of the Sudan, Sennâr, on the 27th of February, the king of which, before the conquering of the country by Ismaël Pasha, ruled as far as Wadi Halfa, and was supreme over a number of lesser tribute-paying kings. The place does not look now as if it had been so lately a royal city. Six or seven hundred pointed straw huts, (tukele) surround the ruins of red brick, where the palace formerly stood. The bricks are now used for the erection of a building for Soliman Pasha, who is to reside in Sennâr. It was so far finished, that the Vakil of the absent Pasha could hold his divan in it. We found him there, sitting in judgment. Many other people, Sheikhs and Turks were present; among them the Sheikh Sandalôba, the chief of the Arab merchants, and a relation of Sultana Nasr, with whom we afterwards became acquainted in her capital village Sorîba. We paid this distinguished man a visit in his house, at which honour he seemed much delighted. His chief chamber was a dark though lofty saloon, with a roof resting on two pillars and four half pillars, on to which we mounted, in order to get a view of the city.
In the meantime, an anqarêb was prepared for us in the court; mead (honey and water) was brought, and from the stable an hyæna, here called Morafil, and two young lions, of which the larger, actually the property of Soliman Pasha, was led to our bark, together with a couple of sheep, as a present from the Vakil. I had the animal tied up in the hold, and received a tear in the hand from his sharp claws, as a welcome. His body is already more than two feet long, and his voice is a most powerful tenor. Every morning now there is a tremendous row on board our not over large vessel, when we are drinking tea before the cabin early; the monkeys jumping merrily about, and the lion is let out from the hold on deck, which is given him during the day, and we are bringing the cups and pans into safety, which he tries to reach with his already strong and inquisitive claws.
On the 29th of February we arrived at nine o’clock in Abdîn. The wind was unfavourable on the 1st of March, and we proceeded but little, so that I had plenty of time for shooting birds. Toward evening I came to a village, lying very romantically in a creek of the river, which is here broader. Many huts built of straw poked their pointed roofs into the branches of thickly-leaved trees. Narrow tortuous paths, forming a real labyrinth, led among thorns and trunks from one hut to another, in and before which the black families were lying and the children playing by a sparing light. I asked for milk, but was referred to an adjoining Arab village, whither a man conducted me, armed with a lance, the general weapon of the country. By light brushwood and high grass we came to the great herds of cattle of the Arabs, who had pitched their mat huts about the grazing place. The Fellahs of this region are much browner than the wandering Arabs, although far from being negroes, and they seem to coincide with the Nubians in race.
On the 2nd of March we anchored by an island, near the eastern shore. At a little distance from the landing-place, the Rais perceived a broken crocodile egg at a spot newly dug. He dug away with his hands, and found forty-four eggs three feet down in the sand. They were still covered with a slimy substance, as they had only been laid the day before or in the past night. The crocodiles like to leave the river in a windy night, make a hole for the eggs, cover them up again, and the wind soon blows away every trace. In a few months the young ones creep out. The eggs are like great goose-eggs, but rounded off at both ends, as the latter are only at the large end. I had some boiled; they are eaten, but have an unpleasant taste, so I willingly yielded them up to the sailors, who ate them with a great appetite.
We landed near the deserted village of Dáhela, on the eastern shore, whence I proceeded alone inland for three-quarters of an hour. The character of the vegetation remains the same. The earth is dry and level; the inconsiderable hills and dales that occur are not original, but seem to have been formed by the rain. My goal was a great tamarind tree, which rose mightily amidst the low trees and bushes, and was encircled by a number of fluttering green and red birds, the species of which is yet unknown to me.