. The God more especially venerated here was Ammon-Ra.
On the 18th of May we carried out our long-intended second visit to the Wadi Gazâl, took impressions of all the Greek and Koptic inscriptions of the burial-place, and took away with us what appeared yet legible.
We are now more sensible than before of the meaning of the summer-season in the torrid zone; the thermometer usually rises in the afternoon to 37° and 38° Reaumur; indeed, occasionally, above 40° in the shade. The glowing sand at my feet I often found to be 53°, and whatever is made of metal can only be touched with a cloth round it in the open air. All our drawings and papers are richly bedewed with pearly drops of perspiration. But the hot wind is the most annoying, which drives oven-heat in our faces, instead of coolness. The nights are scarcely more refreshing. The thermometer falls to 33° towards evening, and towards morning to 28°. Our only refreshment is continual Nile-baths, which, however, would be considered warm-baths in Europe. We have several times had storms with violent sand-filled hurricanes, and a few drops of rain. Yesterday a whirlwind beat down our tent, and at the same time our arbour of strong trunks and palm-branches fell upon us from its violence, while we were eating; the meal was scarcely eatable on account of the strong spice of sand. It would seem that violent gusts of wind are peculiar to this clime or country, for one often sees four or five high sand-pillars at the same time at different distances, dashing heavenward like mighty volcanoes. There are few serpents here; but a great number of scorpions, and ugly great spiders more feared by the natives than the scorpions. We therefore sleep on anqarebs brought from the village, on account of these malicious vermin.
LETTER XXIV.
Dongola.
June 15, 1844.
Before our departure from Barkal, I undertook an excursion up the Nile into the district of the cataracts, which we had cut off in our desert journey. I also wished to learn the character of this part of the country, the only portion of the valley of the Nile which we had not traversed with the caravan. We went by water to Kasinqar, and remained there the night. From here arise wild masses of granite, which form numerous islands in the rivers, and stop the navigation.
With much trouble we arrived the next day, before the camels were ready, at the island of Ishishi, surrounded by violent and dangerous eddies. We here found ruins of walls and buildings of brick, sometimes of stone, both hewn and unhewn, which leads us to the conclusion that they must have served as fortifications to the island at different times; yet there were no inscriptions, excepting one in a few unintelligible signs. We did not mount our camels at Kasinqar until after nine o’clock, and rode along the right hand shore, between the granite rocks, which leave but very little room for a scanty vegetation. The eye is relieved almost wholly in the numerous, and generally smaller islands, by green clumps of trees and cultivated spots multifariously intersected by the black crags. There is scarcely room for larger villages among these rocks; few, indeed, could find sustenance among them. The villages consist of single and small rows of houses stretching along at a great distance, yet, bearing the same name, however, to a certain extent. The plain of Kasinqar ended with a beautiful group of palms. Then we entered the district of Kû’eh, followed by the long tract of Hamdab, to which belongs the island of Mérui or Méroe, more than a quarter of an hour in length. Here, too, the name is explained by the situation. It is very high, sometimes forty feet above the water-level; the one now among the larger islands is wholly barren and uninhabited, and excepting the black crags periodically washed by the waters, it is completely white. This is occasioned principally by the dazzling sand-drifts which cover it; but strangely enough, the rocks jutting out of the sand are also white, either from the broad veins of quartz, in the same manner as another peculiar white rock which I had seen in the province of Robatât, lying on the way, and which was called by the camel-drivers Hager Mérui, or because the weather-beaten granite here has contracted this colour. The name of the village of Méraui, near Barkal, has, perhaps, the same origin; here the white precipices, running from Méraui to the river, and which attracted my attention on our departure, have suggested the name by their colour.
On the opposite shore the Gebel Kongêli, comes near to the river, also called Gebel Mérui; from the island as well as the rushing cataract a little above the island, which has received the name of Shellâl Mérui.
At four o’clock we arrived at the ruin Hellet el Bib, which from a distance has quite the appearance of a castle of the middle ages. It rises on low rocks, the ridge of which traverses the court and the building itself, so that a part of it appears like an upper story. The whole edifice is built of unburnt, but good and carefully-formed bricks, cemented with a small quantity of mortar, and covered with a coating of the same. Within are various large and small rooms, some with half-round niches in them and arched doorways. The walls of the west side were fifteen feet high. The outer wall of the court of unhewn stone, but carefully built up to about five to eight feet, enclosed a tolerably regular square, the side of which was about sixty-five paces long.