Five minutes farther into the desert is a second group of similar hillocks, twenty-one in number; but many others are scattered around on small single plateaux. Still lower down and nearly by the bushes, I found to the south of both groups, another, consisting of forty graves, of which some still clearly showed their original four-cornered shape. The best grave had fifteen to eighteen feet on each side; it had been, like several others, dug up in the middle, and had filled itself with pluvial earth, in which a tree was growing; at another there was still a great four-cornered circumvallation of twenty-four paces to be seen; the undermost foundations were built of little black stones; and a tumulus seems to have been erected inside the enclosure, though not in the middle. Another well-preserved stronger circumvallation had a little less extent, but seemed to have been quite filled up by a pyramid. Of an actual casing there was nothing to be seen anywhere. The hillocks went farther south into the bushes, and altogether they might be estimated at two hundred in number. Perhaps they continued to stretch along toward Meroe, at the edge of the desert, whither I should have ridden, had I not sent the boat, which I had now to find in a hurry, too far down the river. It seems from this that here was the actual burial place of Meroë, and that pyramidal, or when flat sides were wanted, tumular hillocks of stone were the usual form of the graves of private persons also at that period.
LETTER XXII.
Barkal.
May 9, 1844.
The desert of Gilif, which we traversed on our way hither, in order to cut off the great eastern bend of the Nile, takes its name from the principal mountain lying in the midst of it. On the maps it is confused with the desert of Bahiûda, joining it on the south-east, and through which lies the road from Chartûm to Ambukôl and Barkal. Our direction was at first due east to a well, then north-west through the Gilif mountains to the great Wadi Abû Dôm, which then conducted us in the same direction to the westerly bend of the Nile.
The general character of the country here is not that of a desert, like that between Korusko and Abu Hammed, but rather of a sandy steppe. It is almost everywhere overgrown with gesh (reed bushes), and not unusually with low trees, mostly sont-trees. The rains, which fall here at certain seasons of the year, have washed down considerable masses of earth into the levels, that might well be cultivated, and are occasionally broken by rain-streams three to four feet deep. The earth is yellow, and formed of a clayey sand. The species of rock in the soil and all the mountains, with the exception of the high Gilif chain, is sandstone. The ground is much covered with hard black blocks of the same, the road uneven and undulating. Numerous gazelles and great white antelopes, with only one brown stripe down the spine, find a rich subsistence in these plains, which are also visited in the rainy season by herds of camels and goats.
We departed from the river on the 29th of April; yet this was only a trial of strength, as is very customary with greater caravans, like that of birds of passage, before their great migration. After two hours’ journey up to Gôs Burri, lying off from the river, the guide again permitted the uneasy swarm to settle; the camel-drivers lacked provisions, a few more animals were obtained, some changed. Thus we were not in order and full readiness until the following noon. We stayed the night at Wadi Abu Hommed, where we had Gebel Omarda on the right.
The third day we left early, passed Gebel Qermâna, and came to the well Abu Ilêh, which turned our road far to the east, and detained us several hours beyond noon. Hence we crossed a broad plain in seven hours, and encamped about ten o’clock at night near Gebel Sergên. On the 2nd of May we arrived, after four hours, at a woody district to the right of Gebel Nusf, the “Mountain of the half,” situated half-way between the wells of Abu Tlêh and Gaqedûl, which, in the desert, always form the hour of the desert clock.
The Arabs from the district of Gôs Burri, who guide us, are of the ’Auadîeh race; they are far more considerable than the Ababde, have a hasty indistinct utterance, and seem altogether to have little capacity. They have commingled much with the Fellahîn of the country, who here call themselves Qaleâb, Homerâb, and Gaalin. Shaiqîeh Arabs also exist here, probably since the Egyptian conquest; they have shields and spears like the Ababde. The rich sheikh Emîn, of Gôs Burri, had given us his brother, the Fakîr Fadl Allah, as a guide, and his own son, Fadl Allah, as overseer of the camels; but even the nobles of the people here make a poor and evanescent impression in comparison with our conductors of Korusko. The order of the day here was this, that we generally set out about six o’clock in the morning, and continued going on until ten o’clock; then the caravan rested during the noonday heat till about three, when it journeyed again until ten or eleven o’clock at night.
The whole afternoon we rode through the extensive plain, El Gôs, probably so called from the great sand-downs, so characteristic of this region, and which assume, in the southern districts, a peculiar form. They have almost all the form of a crescent, opening toward the south-west, so that one looks from the road into a number of amphitheatres, the steep sand-walls of which rise ten feet with the north wind, which blows inside, and clears away the sand, which would otherwise rapidly fill the cavity, from the inner field. How quickly these moveable sand structures change their place, is shown by the traces of the caravan road, often lost beneath high sand-hills. Toward eight in the evening we left the Gebel Barqugrês to the left, and stopped for the night at a short distance from the Gilif mountains.
On the 3rd of May we passed through the Wadi Guâh el ’âlem, much overgrown with trees, into the mountains, principally porphyritical, and like all original mountains, containing more vegetation than the sandy plains, by the longer holding of the precipitated damp and scarce rains. After three hours we came into Wadi G’aqedûl, luxuriantly overrun with gesh and prickly trees of every kind—sont, somra, and serha. We here found grazing herds of camels and goats, particularly in the neighbourhood of the water, which has also attracted numerous birds, among them ravens and pigeons. In the wide, deep-lying grotto, which may be 300 feet in diameter, and is enclosed by high walls of granite, the water is said to remain three years without requiring replenishment. It was, however, so foul and bad smelling, that it was even despised by my thirsty ass. The drinkable water lies farther up the mountain, and is difficult to be obtained.