Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

Hakim,1 says the sherriffe; the Shekh's house, I was met

'Hakim !' says the Shekh of the Jehaina; 'Ullah Akbar!' (God is great) says the Moullah, lifting his eyes up to heaven, and counting his beads very devoutly.

The foretelling the sign seemed not at all to please the Shekh, who appeared very much disconcerted with the supposed invisibility of my messengers. I got up, having pushed my design just far enough.

On the 14th letters arrived from Yasine to the Shekh, full of reproaches for his behaviour to me; and declaring, with most solemn oaths, that if those letters found me at Teawa, or if I was not gone from thence in peace, he would commission the Daveina Arabs to burn every stalk of corn between that and Beyla as soon as it was in the ear, and that they should neither eat bread nor drink water in it, as long as he was alive, and governor of Ras el Feel. At this the Shekh consented to let us go. The eclipse happening as I had predicted, a violent apprehension fell upon them all; and the women from their apartments began to howl, as they do on all melancholy occasions of misfortune or death. 'Now,' continued I, 'I have kept my word; it will soon be clear again, and will do no harm to man or beast.'

When in the antechamber of

1 The Hakim, or wise man, knows. He is indeed wise.

[ocr errors]

by Aiscach, and two or three black slaves, who cried out in great terror, 'O Hakim! what is this? what are you going to do?' 'I am going to take leave of you,' I replied. That night I sent a present to Aiscach and the other ladies who were our friends, and had been kind to us. I took leave of the Shekh on the morning of the 18th, and set out for Beyla.

Our journey, for the first seven hours, was through a barren, bare, and sandy plain, without finding a vestige of any living creature, without water, and without grass, a country that seemed under the immediate curse of Heaven.

We continued on foot, from four till the grey of the morning of the 19th of April.

We found Beyla to be about eleven miles west of Teawa, and thirty-one and a half miles due south. We were met by Mahomet, the Shekh, at the very entrance of the town. He said he looked upon us as risen from the dead; that we must be good people, and particularly under the care of Providence, to have escaped the many snares the Shekh of Atbara had laid for us.

Mahomet, the Shekh, had provided every sort of refreshment possible for us; and, thinking we could not live without it, he had ordered sugar for us from Sennaar.

Our whole company was full of joy, to which the Shekh greatly encouraged them; and if ther

was an alloy to the happiness, | it was the seeing that I did not partake of it. Symptoms of an aguish disorder had been hanging about me for several days, ever since the diarrhoea had left me. I found the greatest repugnance, or nausea, at the smell of warm meat; and, having a violent headache, I insisted upon going to bed supperless, after having drunk a quantity of warm water by way of emetic. Being exceedingly tired, I soon fell sound asleep, having first taken some drops of a strong spirituous tincture of the bark which I had prepared at Gondar, resolving, if I found any remission, as I then did, to take several good doses of the bark in powder on the morrow, beginning at daybreak, which I accordingly did, with its usual

success.

On the 20th of April, a little after the dawn of day, the Shekh, in great anxiety, came to the place where I was lying. His sorrow was soon turned into joy when he found me quite recovered from my illness.

In the afternoon we walked out to see the village, which is a very pleasant one, situated upon the bottom of a hill, covered with wood, all the rest flat before it. Through this plain there are many large timber trees, planted in rows, and joined with high hedges, as in Europe, forming enclosures for keeping cattle; but of these we saw none, as they had been oved to the Dender for fear

[ocr errors]

of the flies. There is no water at Beyla but what is got from deep wells. Large plantations of Indian corn are everywhere about the town. The inhabitants are in continual apprehension from the Arabs Daveina at Sim-Sim, about forty miles southeast from them; and from another powerful race called Wed abd el Gin, i.e. Sons of the slaves of the Devil, who live to the south-west of them, between the Dender and the Nile. Beyla is another frontier town of Sennaar, on the side of SimSim; and between Teawa and this, on the Sennaar side, and Ras el Feel, Nara, and Tchelga, upon the Abyssinian side, all is desert and waste.

On the 21st of April we left Beyla at three o'clock in the afternoon, our direction southwest, through a very pleasant, flat country, but without water; there had been none in our way nearer than the river Rahad. About eleven at night we alighted in a wood. The place is called Baherie, as near as we could compute nine miles from Beyla,

On the 22d, at half-past five o'clock in the morning, we left Baherie, still continuing westward, and at nine we came to the banks of the Rahad.

We resumed our journey and at six o'clock in the evening of the 24th we set out from a shady place of repose on the banks of the Dender, through a large plain, with not a tree before us; but we presently

found ourselves encompassed with a number of villages, nearly of a size, and placed at equal distances in form of a semicircle, the roofs of the houses in shape of cones, as are all those within the rains. The plain was all of a red, soapy earth, and the corn just sown. This whole country is in perpetual cultivation; and though at this time it had a bare look, would no doubt have a magnificent one when waving with grain. At nine we halted at a village of pagan Nuba. These are all soldiers of the Mek of Sennaar, cantoned in these villages, which, at the distance of four or five miles, surround the whole capital. Having settlements and provisions given them, as also arms put in their hands, they never wish to desert, but live a very domestic and sober life. Many of them that I have conversed with seem a much gentler sort of negro than those from Bahar el Aice, that is, than those of whom the Funge, or government of Sennaar, are composed.

These have small features likewise, but are woolly-headed and flat-nosed, like other negroes, and speak a language rather pleasant and sonorous, but radically different from any I have heard.

They pay adoration to the moon, but I never saw them pay any attention to the sun. Their priests seemed to have great influence over them, but

more through the influence of fear than affection. They are immoderately fond of swine's flesh, and maintain great herds of them in their possession. There is no running water in all that immense plain they inhabit; it is all procured from draw-wells. We saw them cleaning one, which I measured, and found nearly eight fathoms deep. In a climate so violently hot as this, there is very little need of fuel; neither have they any, there being no turf, or anything resembling it, in the country, no wood, not even a tree, since we had passed the river Dender.

On the 25th, at four o'clock in the afternoon, we set out from the villages of the Nuba, intending to arrive at Basboch, where is the ferry over the Nile; but we had scarcely advanced two miles into the plain when we were enclosed by a violent whirlwind, or, what is called at sea, the water-spout. After suffering severely, we took refuge in a Nuba village, where we were kindly treated.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

try?' I had here a very clean | venture over, I fired at him with

and comfortable hut to lodge in, though we were sparingly supplied with provisions all the time we were there.

Basbach is on the eastern bank of the Nile, not a quarter of a mile from the ford below. The river here runs north and south. Towards the sides it is shallow, but deep in the middle of the current, and in this part it is much infested with crocodiles. Sennaar is two miles and a half s.s.w. of it. We heard the evening drum very distinctly, and not without anxiety, when we reflected to what a brutish people, according to all accounts, we were about to trust ourselves.

We stayed here till the 29th, when leave was sent us to enter Sennaar. It was not without some difficulty that we got our quadrant and heavy baggage safely carried down the hill, for the banks are very steep to the edge of the water. As our boat was but a very indifferent embarkation, it was obliged to make several turns to and fro before we got all our several packages landed on the western side. This assemblage, and the passage of our camels, seemed to have excited the appetite, or the curiosity, of the crocodiles. One, in particular, swam several times backwards and forwards along the side of the boat, without, however, making any attack upon any of us; but, being ex

dingly tired of such com

upon his second or third

a rifle gun, and shot him directly under his fore-shoulder in the belly. The wound was undoubtedly mortal, and very few animals could have lived a moment after receiving it. He, however, dived to the bottom, leaving the water deeply tinged with his blood. Nor did we see him again at that time; but the people at the ferry brought him to me the day after, having found him perfectly dead. He was about twelve feet long, and the boatmen told me that these are by much the most dangerous, being more fierce and active than the large ones. The people of Sennaar eat the crocodile, especially the Nuba. I never tasted it myself, but it looks very much like conger-eel.

CHAPTER XIV.

Four months in Sennaar.

ON our arrival we were conducted by Adelan's servant to a very spacious good house belonging to the Shekh himself, having two storeys, a long quarter of a mile from the king's palace. He left a message for us to repose ourselves, and in a day or two to wait upon the king, and that he should send to tell us when we were to come to him. This we resolved to have complied with most exactly; but the very next morning, the 30th of April, there came a servant from the palace

to summon us to wait upon | a man about thirty-four; his feet the king, which we immediately were bare, but covered by his obeyed. I took with me three shirt. He had a very plebeian servants, black Soliman, Ismael countenance, on which was the Turk, and my Greek servant stamped no decided character. Michael. The palace covers a I should rather have guessed prodigious deal of ground. It him to be a soft, timid, irresois all of one storey, built of clay, | lute man. At my coming forand the floors of earth. The ward and kissing his hand, he chambers through which we looked at me for a minute, as passed were all unfurnished, if undetermined what to say. and seemed as if a great many He then asked for an Abysof them had formerly been des- sinian interpreter, as there are tined as barracks for soldiers, many of these about the palace. of whom I did not see above I said to him in Arabic, That fifty on guard. The king was I apprehended I understood as in a small room, not twenty much of that language as would feet square, to which we as- enable me to answer any quescended by two short flights of tion he had to put to me.' Upon narrow steps. The floor of the which he turned to the people room was covered with broad that were with him, 'Downright square tiles; over it was laid a Arabic, indeed! You did not Persian carpet, and the walls learn that language in Habesh?' hung with tapestry of the same said he to me. I answered, 'No; country; the whole very well I have been in Egypt, Turkey, kept, and in good order. The and Arabia, where I learned it; king was sitting upon a mattress but I have likewise often spoken laid on the ground, which was it in Abyssinia, where Greek, likewise covered with a Persian Turkish, and several other lancarpet, and round him was a guages, were used.' He said, number of cushions of Venetian cloth of gold. His dress did not correspond with this magnificence; for it was nothing but a large, loose shirt of Surat blue cotton cloth, which seemed not to differ from the same worn by his servants, except that, all round the edges of it, the seams were double stitched with white silk, and likewise round the neck. His head was uncovered. He wore his own short black hair, and was as white in colour as an Arab. He seemed to be

Impossible! He did not think they knew anything of languages, excepting their own, in Abyssinia.'

There were sitting in the side of the room, opposite to him, four men dressed in white cotton shirts, with a white shawl covering their heads and part of their face, by which it was known they were religious men, or men of learning, or of the law. One of these answered the king's doubt of the Ab sinians' knowledge in languag

« ZurückWeiter »