I came on my way, first to a colony, by Kumr betá Dáhela, where the inhabitants of that village hold their villeggiatura; for they stay here during the dry months, and return to their village on the river bank, at the beginning of the rainy season. The last village whither I came is called Româli, a little above that given in the map as Sero, which lies under the 13° N. latitude. On the hot and tiring way back I attended a burial. Silently and solemnly, without sound or sob, two corpses, wrapt in white cloths, were borne along on anqarêbs by several men, and laid in a grave of some feet deep in the forest near the road. Perhaps they had perished of the cholera-like complaint, which has now broken out with great violence in the southern regions.
We should have much liked to proceed to Fasoql, in the last province of Mohammed Ali, to see the change in the character of the country beginning at Rosêres, where so many novel forms of tropical vegetation and animal life present themselves; but our time was expended.
The Rais received the command to take down the masts and sails, by which the bark at once lost its stately appearance, and drove down the river with the current like a wreck. Soon the pleasant quiet of the vessel, that had seemed to fly along of itself, was interrupted by the yelling, ill-sounding songs of the rowers contending with the wind.
By the 4th, we were again at Sennâr, and on the 8th, at an early hour, we reached Wed Médineh. This place is almost as important as Sennâr. A regiment of soldiers lies in barracks here, with the only band in the Sudan, and two cannons. We were immediately visited by upper military scribe Seïd Hashim, one of the most important persons of the place, whom we had already known in Chartûm.
We determined to visit Sultana Nasr (Victoria) at Sorîba, an hour and a half inland, partly to learn the character of the country further from the river, and partly to get some idea of the court of an Ethiopian princess. Seïd Hashim offered us his dromedaries and donkeys for this trip, and also his own society; so we rode away that afternoon into the hot, black, but scantily treed plain, and soon accomplished the uninteresting way on the sturdy animals.
Nasr is the sister of the mightiest and richest king (melek) in the Sudan, Idris wed (i.e. Welled, son or successor of) Adlân, who is certainly under Mohammed Ali’s supremacy now, but yet commands several hundred villages in the province El Fungi; his title is Mak el Qulle, King of the Qulle mountains. Adlân was one of his ancestors, after whom the whole family now calls itself; his father was the same Mohammed (wed) Adlân, who, at the time of Ismael Pasha’s conquering campaign had taken most of the power of the legitimate but weak king of Sennâr, Bâdi, but who was then murdered at the instigation of Reg’eb, another pretender to the throne. When Ismael had arrived, and Reg’eb and his company had fled to the Abyssinian mountains, King Bâdi united himself with the children and party of Mohammed Adlân, and submitted to the conqueror, who made him Sheikh of the country, had the murderers of Mohammed Adlân impaled, and gave his children, Reg’eb and Idris Adlân, great power and wealth. Nasr, their sister, also gained much consideration, which was, however, much increased, as she was allied to the legitimate royal family by her mother’s side. Therefore is she called Sultâna, Queen. Her first husband was named Mohammed Sandalôba, brother of Hassan Sandalôba, whom we had visited at Sennâr. He has now been dead for a long time, but she has a daughter by him, named Dauer (Light), who married a great Sheikh, Abd-el Qader, but then parted from him, and now lives with her mother, in Sorîba. The second son of Nasr is Mohammed Defalla, the son of one of her father’s viziers. He was then with Ahmed Pasha Menekle on the war march (ghazua, of which the French have made razzia) in Saka. But even when he is at home, she remains the principal person in the house, by reason of her noble birth.
Since very ancient times, a great estimation of the female sex appears to be a very general custom. It must not be forgotten how often we find reigning queens of Ethiopia mentioned. From the campaign of Petronius, Kandake is well known, a name which, according to Pliny, was bestowed on all the Ethiopian queens; according to others, always on the mother of the king. In the sculptures of Meroë, too, we occasionally find very warlike, and doubtless reigning, queens represented. According to Makrizi, the genealogies of the Beg’a, whom I consider the direct descendants of the Meroetic Ethiopians, and for the ancestors of the Bishari of the present day, were not counted by the males, but by the females, and the inheritance did not devolve upon the son of the deceased, but upon the sister or the daughter. In the same way, according to Abu Selah, the sister’s son took precedence of the son among the Nubians, and Ibn Batuta reports the same custom to be existing among the Messofites, a western negro race. Even now, the court and upper minister of some southern princes are all women. Noble ladies allow their nails to grow an inch long, as a sign that they are there to command, and not to work, a custom which is found in the sculptures among the shapeless queens of Meroë.
When we arrived at Sorîba, we entered the square court-yard by a particular door, running round the principal building, and thence into an open, lofty hall, the roof of which rested on four pillars, and four half pillars. The narrow beams of the roof jut out several feet beyond the simple architrave, and form the foundation of the flat roofs; the whole entrance reminded one much of the open façades of the graves of Benihassan. In the hall there was fine ebony furniture, of Indian manufacture, broad anqarêbs, with frames for the mosquito nets. Fine cushions were immediately brought, sherbet, coffee, and pipes handed round. The vessels were made of gold and silver. Black female slaves, in light white garments, which, fastened at the hips, are drawn up over the bosom and shoulders,—handed round the refreshments, and looked very peculiar with their plaited hair. The Queen, however, did not come; perhaps she was ashamed of showing herself to Christians; only a half-opened door, which soon closed again, allowed us to perceive several women behind, to whom we ourselves might be objects of curiosity. I therefore let the sultana know, through Saïd Hashim, that we were there to pay our visits, and now hoped that we might have the pleasure of seeing her. Upon this, the doors of strong wood cased with metal, opened wide, and Nasr entered with a free, dignified step. She was wrapped in long fine-woven cloths, with coloured borders, under which she wore wide gay trowsers of a somewhat darker shade. Behind her came the court, eight or nine girls in white clothes with red borders, and elegant sandals. Nasr sat down before us, in a friendly and unconstrained manner; only now and then she drew her dress over her mouth and the lower part of the face, a custom of Oriental modesty, very general with women in Egypt, but much rarer in this country. She replied to the greetings I offered her through the Dragoman with a pleasant voice, but stayed only a short time, withdrawing through the same door.
We examined the inner parts of the house, with the exception of her private rooms, which were in a small building close, and mounted the roof to have a view of the village. Then we took a walk through the place, saw the well, in depth more than sixty feet, and lined throughout with brick, whence Nasr always has her water fetched, though it is warm, and less nice than that of the Nile. Then we returned, and were about to depart, when Nasr sent us an invitation to remain the night in Sorîba, as it was too late to get back to Wed Médineh by day. We accepted the offer, and a banquet of boiled dishes was immediately brought, only intended, however, as preparatory to supper. The sultana, however, did not show herself again the whole evening. We remained in the hall, and slept on the same cool pillows, which had served as a divan during the day. But the next morning we were invited by her to visit her in her own rooms. She was more communicative to-day than yesterday, had European chairs brought for us, while her servants and slaves squatted on the ground about us. We told her of her namesake, the Sultana Nasr of England, and showed her her portrait on an English sovereign, which she looked at with curiosity. But she manifested little desire to see that far-off world beyond the northern water with her own eyes.
About eight o’clock we rode back to Wed Médineh. Soon after our return, Saïd Hashim received a letter from Nasr, in which she asked him confidentially whether he thought I would receive a little female slave as a guest-present. I had expressed to her, in return, that this was against the custom of our country, but that the gift would be accepted if she would choose a male slave instead, and after some little hesitation, she really sent a young slave to me, who was brought to me in the ship.