_On the Blue River, Province of Sennâr, Lat. 13°, 2nd March, 1844._

To-day we reach the most southern limit of our African journey. To-morrow we again turn towards the north and homewards. We shall go as far as the neighbourhood of SERO—a place on the boundary between the provinces of Sennâr and Fasokl, for our time will not allow us to do more. From Chartûm I have ascended the river as far as this spot, with Abeken alone. We relinquished the desert journey to Mandera, the rather as the eastern territories are at present insecure from the war in Taka; and we now employ the time, in travelling several days farther across Sennâr, to gain some information about the character of the river and the adjacent country. This journey is worth the trouble, for, from Abu Haras, situated at the influx of the Rahad, between Chartûm and Sennâr, the character of the whole country is completely altered in its soil, vegetation, and animals. I then thought I should like to obtain a view of the Nile valley itself, as far up the river as possible, as the character of this narrow strip of country has had a greater influence on the course of history than any other spot in the whole world.

It is impossible, without incurring danger, or making peculiar preparations, to travel up the White River beyond a few days’ journey, as far as the boundaries of Mohamed Ali’s conquests. After this, there are the SCHILLUKS on the western bank, the DINKAS on the eastern, both native negro nations, who are not very friendly to Northern guests. The Blue River is navigable still farther up, and in historical times, as well as at the present day, was of much greater importance than the White River, as it was the means of communication between the North, and Abyssinia. I should have liked to have penetrated as far as the province of Fasokl, the last under Egyptian rule; but it cannot be combined with the calculation of our time. This evening, therefore, we shall terminate our southern journey.

But I must go back in my reports to Dâmer, where, on the 27th January, I embarked with Abeken upon a boat belonging to Mûsa Bey, the first adjutant of Achmed Pascha, who politely placed it at our disposal. About eight o’clock in the evening we halted for the night at the island of DAL HAUI. We had received a Kawass from Emin Pascha, who came here with Ismael Pascha at the time of the conquest of the country, went with Defterdar Bey to Kordofan (or, as he expresses it, Kordifal), then accompanied him on his avenging march to Schendi, in consequence of the murder of Ismael, and since that time has, for three-and-twenty years, roamed over the whole of the Sudan in all directions. He carries in his head the most complete map of these countries, and has a marvellous memory for names, directions, and distances; so that I have drawn two maps according to his statements, particular parts of which may not be without geographical interest. He has also been in Mecca, and therefore likes to be called Haggi Ibrahim (The Pilgrim Ibrahim). He has great experience in other matters also, and will be extremely useful to us from his long and extensive knowledge of the country.

On the 28th January we halted about mid-day at an island called GOMRA, as we heard that there were some ruins in the vicinity which we were anxious to see. We were obliged to go through a shallow arm of the Nile, and to ride back an hour northwards on the eastern bank. At length, after passing the villages of Motmar and El Akarid, between a third village, SAGADI, and a fourth, GENNA, we found the insignificant ruins of an ancient place, constructed of bricks and strewed over with potsherds.

We returned in the mid-day heat, not in the very best humour, and did not reach BEG ́ERAUÎEH in our boat before sunset, near which the Pyramids of Meröe are situated. It is singular that Cailliaud does not mention this spot; he only speaks of the Pyramids of ASSUR, _i. e._ SÛR, or E’ SÛR. This is the name of the whole plain in which the ruins of the town and Pyramids are situated, and also a single portion of Beg ́erauîeh, which last, by wrong spelling, is called, in Hoskins, BEGROMI.

Although it was already dark, I nevertheless rode to the Pyramids with Abeken. They are situated a short hour inland, on the first elevation of the low hills which run along in an easterly direction. The moon, which was in its first quarter, feebly illuminated the plain, covered with stones, low bushes, and clumps of reeds. After a rapid ride, we at length reached the foot of a row of Pyramids, closely crowded together, which rose before us in a crescent, as the form of the narrow elevation rendered necessary. To the right, a little behind, another group of Pyramids joined these; a third lies more to the south, and rather more forward in the plain, but too distant to be seen by half moonlight. I fastened the bridle of my donkey-steed to a block of stone, and clambered up the first mound of ruins.

Although the individual Pyramids are not accurately placed according to the quarters of the heavens, as they are in Egypt, nevertheless all the ante-chambers here attached to the Pyramids themselves are turned away from the river, towards the east, doubtless on the same religious grounds which induced the Egyptians to place the unattached temples standing in front of their Pyramids also towards the east; therefore, in Gizeh and Sagâra, towards the river, while their sepulchral chambers are towards the west.

Half looking, half feeling, I found some sculptures on the outer walls of the small sepulchral temple, and I also felt figures and writing on the inner walls. It occurred to me that I had the end of a candle in my saddle-pocket; I lighted this, and then examined several ante-chambers. There I immediately encountered the Egyptian gods, Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Atmu, &c., with their names in the known hieroglyphic character. I also found the name of a king in the first chamber. One of the two Rings contained the emblems of a great Pharaoh of the Old Monarchy, Sesurtesen I., the same which had been adopted by two later Egyptian monarchs, and I here found them, for the fourth time, as the Throne-Name of an Ethiopian king. The sculptures on the remaining sides were not completed. I found some Royal Shields this evening also in another ante-chamber, but not very legible. The inscriptions and representations had altogether been much damaged. The Pyramids have also all of them lost their summits, as in Egypt, and many have been destroyed down to the ground.

Our new Kawass, who did not like to leave us alone in the night time, had immediately followed us. He had a perfect knowledge of the locality, as he had been here a long time with FERLINI, and had assisted him in his researches among the Pyramids. He showed us the spot in which Ferlini, in 1834, had found immured the rich treasure of gold and silver rings.

I also discovered, the same evening, a cased Pyramid, according to the principle of the Egyptian Pyramids, which were afterwards enlarged by superimposed layers of stone. According to the inscriptions and representations of the ante-chambers, these Pyramids were most of them built solely for kings, some of them, perhaps, for their wives and children. Therefore, their great number indicates a tolerably long succession of kings, and a well-established Monarchy, which probably must have remained in a state of tranquillity for a series of centuries.

The event of most importance in this moon and torchlight survey, was not, however, exactly the most cheering. I was unavoidably convinced that on this most renowned spot of ancient Ethiopia, I had nothing before me but the remains, proportionately speaking, of a very late period of art. Even earlier than this, the drawings of Ferlini’s monuments, which I saw for the first time in Rome, and the monuments themselves, which I had just seen in London, impressed me with the opinion that they had been, indeed, sculptured in Ethiopia, but certainly not previous to the first century before the birth of Christ, therefore about the same period to which certain genuine Greek and Roman works belong, which were discovered simultaneously with the Ethiopian treasure. I must now make the same remark upon the monuments in general, which are found not only here but throughout the whole island of Meröe, as well as of all the Pyramids at Beg ́erauîeh, and of the temples of Ben Naga, of Naga, and in the Wadi e’ Sofra (the Mesaurât of Cailliaud), which we have since then seen. The representations and inscriptions do not leave the smallest doubt of this, and it will in future be a fruitless task to endeavour to support the favourite supposition of an ancient, brilliant, and renowned Meröe, whose inhabitants were at one time the predecessors and the instructors of the Egyptians in civilisation, by the demonstration of monumental remains from that old period.

This conviction is besides of no small scientific value, and seems even now to throw some light on the historical connection between Egypt and Ethiopia, the importance of which can be only thoroughly demonstrated by the monuments of Barkal. There, I have no doubt, will be found the oldest Ethiopian monuments, although, perhaps, not earlier than the period of Tahraka, who reigned simultaneously over Egypt and Ethiopia in the seventh century before Christ.

The next morning at sunrise we rode back to the Pyramids, and discovered fifteen different kings’ names, some of them, however, in very bad preservation.

We had just completed our survey of the two groups of Pyramids lying to the north-east, and were riding on to the third, which is situated in the plain, not far from the ruins of the town, and is, perhaps, the oldest Necropolis, when we heard shots from the bank, and saw white sails fluttering over the river. Soon afterwards Erbkam, the two Weidenbachs, and Franke, came walking across the plain, and hailed us from a great distance. We had not expected them to arrive so soon, and, therefore, rejoiced still more to see them again. We could now pursue our journey to Chartûm together.

We sailed away about two in the afternoon, and the next morning about ten o’clock reached SCHENDI. We proceeded in the afternoon, spent the night on the island of HOBI, and the following morning arrived at BEN NAGA. Here, we first visited the ruins of two small temples; the one lying towards the west, had Typhonic pillars, instead of columns, but no inscription was to be found on the few remains; in the other temple to the east, some sculptures were preserved on the low remains of the walls of the temple; and also some writing on several circular fragments of columns, but too little to take away any connected ideas from them. Had we made some excavations, we might probably have discovered some kings’ names, but it was impossible to make such an experiment till our return.

We procured some camels for the following day, and about nine o’clock in the morning I started with Abeken, Erbkam, and Max Weidenbach, for NAGA. Such is the name given to the ruins of a town and several temples, which are situated in the eastern desert, between seven and eight hours distant from the Nile. From our landing-place in the vicinity of the only group of palm-trees in the surrounding country, it was only one half hour to the village of BEN NAGA, which is in WADI TERESIB. One hour eastward down the river (for it here flows in a direction from west to east) are the above-mentioned ruins, in WADI EL KIRBEGÂN, near to which we had disembarked the previous day; we left them now on our left hand, and rode in a south-easterly direction into the desert, having here and there some parched bushes; we traversed the valley of El Kirbegân, which, as far as this point, runs outwards from the river, in which we found an encampment of the Ababde Arabs.

Four hours and a half from Ben Naga we came to a single hill in the desert called BUÊRIB. It was on the water-shed between the smaller south-western Wadis (so even the flattest depressions of the ground are called, in which the water runs off, and which we should scarcely call valleys) and the great, broad WADI AUATÊB, which we were now descending, after having left Buêrib at a short distance on our left. In three hours and three-quarters from Buêrib we arrived at the ruins of NAGA.

It was not till we approached the temple that I solved the enigma, which I had hitherto sought in vain to interpret, and on which neither Cailliaud nor Hoskins could offer any explanation; namely, how had it been possible to found and to maintain a large city in the midst of the desert, so far removed from the river. The whole valley of Auatêb is even now cultivated land. We found it far and wide covered with the stubble of Durra. The inhabitants of Schendi, Ben Naga, Fadniê, Selama, Metamme, consequently of both banks of the Nile, come as far as this to cultivate the land and to gather in the Durra. The water of the tropical rains suffices to fertilise this flat but extensive tract of low ground, and in ancient times, when more care was bestowed upon it, a still greater profit must have been derived from this region. During the dry season of the year they must undoubtedly have had large artificial reservoirs, such as we found even now, though without water, near the more remote ruins to the north-west of Naga.

The ruins stand on a projection of a mountain range several hours long, which from them has taken the name of GEBEL E’ NAGA, and stretches out from the south, northwards. WADI AUATÊB passes along its western side towards the river. We arrived about half-past five o’clock, after an uninterrupted ride. On the road we saw the path covered with the marks of gazelles, wild asses, foxes, jackals, ostriches. Lions are also met with here, but we did not see any of their tracks.

I visited the three principal temples before nightfall, all of which belong to a very late period, and do not suggest the ideas of very ancient art, as Cailliaud and Hoskins thought they could recognise. There is, besides, a fourth temple by the side of the three principal temples, of Egyptian architecture, whose well-joined arches, not unpleasantly combined with Egyptian ornaments, not only presupposes them to have been erected when the Roman dominion extended over the world, but even that Roman architects were on the spot. This last temple has no inscriptions. With respect to the three others, the two lying to the south were built by one and the same king; in the representations in both temples he is accompanied by the same queen. But a third royal personage appears behind them having a different name in the two temples. The Throne-Shield of Sesurtesen I. is again attached to the name of the king, although he does not appear to be the same as the King of the Pyramids of Sûr. Besides, both those other personages have assumed old Egyptian Throne-Shields, which might easily mislead us.

The third most northern temple has sustained much injury, and very little writing remains upon it, yet a king is mentioned on the door-posts who differs from the builder of both the other temples.

The figures of the gods are almost wholly Egyptian, but on the southern temple there is a figure unknown in Egypt, with three lions’ heads (a fourth may perhaps be supposed behind) and four arms. This may be the barbaric god specially mentioned by Strabo, whom the Meröites worshipped besides Hercules, Pan, and Isis.

The next morning, the 2nd of February, we again visited the three temples, took some impressions on paper, and then started for the third group of monuments, named by Cailliaud MESAURÂT. This, however, is a term which is here employed to designate all the three groups of ruins, and which only means _pictures_, or walls furnished with pictures. The ruins of Ben Naga are called MESAURÂT EL KIRBEGÂN, because they are situated in WADI EL KIRBEGÂN; it appears that the second group only has retained its old name of NAGA, or MESAURÂT E’ NAGA; the third group situated towards Schendi is called MESAURÂT E’ SOFRA from the mountain basin in which it lies, which is called E’ SOFRA, the table.

We first pursued, for the space of two hours, in a northerly direction the mountain chain of Gebel e’ Naga, in the valley of Auatêb. Then, about half-past twelve, we ascended through the first defile which opens to the right, into a valley situated somewhat higher, E’ SELEHA; it becomes broader behind the first low fore-range, and is luxuriantly overgrown with grass and shrubs; after extending for an hour and a quarter in the direction of S.S.W. to N.N.E., it opens on the left hand into the valley of Auatêb, and straight on into another smaller valley, from which it is separated by Gebel Lagâr. It is this small valley, which from its circular form is called E’ SOFRA; here are the ruins which were also seen by Hoskins, who did not, however, advance as far as Naga. We arrived about a quarter past two, and had not, therefore, been quite four hours coming from Naga to this spot. As we only wished to take a passing hasty survey, we walked through the widely-scattered ruins of the principal building, which Cailliaud held to be a great school, and Hoskins an hospital; and we saw in the few sculptures, which are unaccompanied by inscriptions, that here also we had before us monuments of a late period, probably still more recent than those in Sûr and Naga. We then went to a small temple in the neighbourhood, with pillars on which are represented riders upon elephants, lions, and other strange barbarous scenes. We looked at the huge artificial cisterns, now called Wot Mahemût, which in the dry season must have compensated the inhabitants for the want of the river; and about four o’clock we returned to Ben Naga.

As we emerged from the hills, we met great troops of wild asses, which always kept at a little distance from us, as if they would invite us to hunt them. They are of a grey or greyish-red colour, with white bellies; they all have a black stripe drawn distinctly across the back, and the tip of the tail is also generally black. Many of them are caught when young, but they cannot then even be used for riding or carrying burdens. It is only the next generation which can be employed in that manner. Almost all the tame asses in the south, which come from the Ass Cataract (Schellâl homâr) in Berber, are got from this wild breed, and have the same colour and similar marks.

We encamped soon after sunset in a plain, overgrown with bushes. The camel-drivers and our Kawass were in great terror of lions in this desert till a large fire was kindled, which they kept most carefully alive throughout the night. If a lion only lets his voice be heard near a caravan, which really does sound deep and awful across the wide desert, all the camels run away on every side as if they were mad, and it is difficult to catch them again, frequently not before they have sustained and done much injury. Human beings are not, however, easily attacked. A few days ago a camel was strangled by a lion in our neighbourhood, but on the farther side of the river. A man who was present saved himself on the nearest tree.

On the 3rd of February we again set out about seven in the morning; we left the two Buêribs, the great “blue” and the little “red,” at a considerable distance on our left hand, and shortly before nine o’clock arrived in the valley of El Kirbegân, which we followed for half an hour in the direction of the river. We saw the Mesaurât el Kirbegân in its whole extent on our right, but kept upon the hills till a little after eleven, when we arrived at Ben Naga, and half an hour afterwards once more at our landing-place.

Two hours afterwards we continued our journey in our boat. We made, however, little progress with a strong adverse wind, and saw nothing new, except for the first time a hippopotamus swimming in the water. The next morning we disembarked on the western bank, opposite the village of GÔS BASABIR, to see the ruins of the walls of an old fortress, with towers of defence, which surrounded the summit of a hill. The space enclosed was about 300 paces in diameter. In the afternoon we approached the Schellâl (the Cataract) of GERASCHAB, the higher mountain ranges lying before us, closed in upon each other, and at length formed a mountain hollow, seemingly without any outlet; this was, however, to our surprise, near at hand, for we turned to our left into a narrow defile, which widened into a high and wild rocky valley; we followed it for nearly an hour before again emerging on the other side into another plain. The eruptive granite ranges of QIRRE pass on the eastern side of the river into RAUIÂN, “the thirsty quenched;” while to the west, some distance from the river, there is ATSCHAN “the thirsty,” also rising up in a detached form.

The 5th February we landed about eleven in the morning at TAMANIÂT. Mohammed Saïd, the former treasurer of the late Achmed Pascha, whose acquaintance we had made in Dâmer, had given us a letter to one of the sub-officials there, which contained instructions to him to deliver to us the fragment of an inscription which had been found in Soba. It belonged to the centre of a marble table, which was inscribed on both sides with Greek or Coptic letters of a late period. The signs, which were not difficult to read, neither contained Greek nor Coptic words; only the name ⲅⲉⲱⲣⲅⲓⲟ.. could be deciphered. The same evening we arrived in CHARTÛM. This name signifies an elephant’s trunk, and probably was derived from the form of the narrow tongue of land on which the town is situated, between the two Nile rivers which unite at this spot.

My first visit with Abeken was to Emin Pascha, who had reached Chartûm before us. He received us in a very friendly manner, and would not allow us to leave him the whole morning.

A magnificent breakfast, consisting of thirty dishes, which we partook of at his house, gave us a most curious insight into the secrets of the Turkish culinary art; as I learned from our highly-fed Pascha, it resembles the most accomplished systems of the latest French kitchens, in obeying the refined regulations of a fastidious taste in the preparation and arrangement of food. Soon after the first dishes, mutton, roasted on the spit, is brought in, which cannot be dispensed with at any Turkish meal. Then follow various courses of dishes of meats and vegetables, solid and liquid, sour and sweet, and a certain repetition of changes is observed in the successive dishes, in order to keep up the keenness of the appetite. Pillau, boiled rice, always forms the conclusion.

The external preparations for such an entertainment are somewhat as follows. A great, round, metal tray, with a flat border, about three feet in diameter, is placed on a low frame, and serves as a table, round which five or six persons seat themselves on cushions or coverlets; the legs vanish beneath the body, in the ample folds of the dress; as to the hands, the left must be invisible, it would be quite improper to let it ever be seen during meals. The right hand must alone be active. No such thing as a plate is to be seen, no more than knives and forks. The table is covered with deeper or shallower, covered or uncovered dishes, which are constantly changed, so that but a very few morsels can be taken from each. Particular dishes, however, such as roast meat, cold milk with cucumbers, &c., remain longer on the table, and one returns to them more frequently. Both before and after dinner, the hands are of course washed. A servant, or slave, kneeling, holds in one hand a metal basin, in the middle of which lies a piece of soap, in a little projecting saucer, expressly used for the purpose; with the other he pours water from a metal pitcher over the hands, and a fine, ornamentally embroidered towel hangs over his arm for drying them.

After dinner the pipe is immediately presented, coffee handed round, and then one may retire. The Turks are in the habit of making this the period of their mid-day repose, till Asser. But before we parted from our host, a number of weapons were brought, belonging to the savage nations living farther up the country, lances, bows, arrows, clubs, and a king’s sceptre, which he sent to the boat for me, as a present to his guest.

We afterwards visited our countryman, NEUBAUER, the apothecary of the province, who has been very unfortunate: a short time since, he was removed from his post by the late Achmed Pascha; but he has now been again appointed apothecary by Achmed Pascha Menekle, through the intercession of Dr. Koch. We then went to a Pole who has settled here—Hermanovich, the head-physician of the province, who, in consequence of an order from the Pascha, offered us his house, to which we went the following day; it had lately been newly fitted up; there was a garden beside it, and a great court-yard, which was very useful for unpacking and repairing our chests and tents.

The next day the Pascha returned our visit. He came on horseback. We handed him coffee, pipes, sherbet, and showed him some drawings and pictures from Egypt, in which he was interested merely from curiosity. He is a large, corpulent man, a Circassian by birth, and therefore, like most of his countrymen, better informed than the Turks in general. I saw a rich collection of all kinds of birds of the Sudan, at the house of a Syrian, IBRAHIM CHÊR; there were about 300 different species, and between twenty and thirty choice specimens of each.

On one of the following days, I took a walk with Abeken and Erbkam to the opposite bank of our tongue of land on the WHITE RIVER, which we then followed up to its junction with the Blue; its waters are in fact whiter, and have a less pleasant taste than those of the Blue, because at a higher point it flows slowly through several lakes, the standing water of which imparts an earthy and less pure taste to it. I have filled some bottles with the water of the Blue, and White Rivers, which I shall take away with me sealed up.

On the occasion of a more recent and friendly visit of the Pascha, we met the brother of the former Sultan of Kordofan (who was himself also called Mak or Melek) and the Vizier of the Sultan NIMR (Tiger) of Schendi. The latter still lives in Abyssinia, whither he fled, after having, in the year 1822, burned the conqueror of his country, ISMAEL PASCHA, a son of Mohammed Ali, and all his officers, after a nocturnal banquet which he had prepared for him in a somewhat lonely house.

On the 14th, we made an excursion up the WHITE RIVER, but were soon obliged to turn back, because it has so little current, that, on account of the north wind which of late has constantly been blowing, our return threatened to be tedious. The banks of the White River are barren, and the few trees which formerly stood in the neighbourhood of Chartûm are now cut down, and have been used for building or fuel. There is a larger mass of water in the White River than in the Blue, and even after its junction it preserves its course, so that the Blue River must be viewed as the secondary river, but the White as the true Nile. Their different waters can be distinguished beside each other for a long time after their junction.

On the 16th February, I sent for some DINKA slaves, to interrogate them about their language. They were, however, so dull of apprehension, that I could only with difficulty get out of them the words for numbers up to a hundred, and a few separate pronouns. The languages of the Dinkas and the Schilluks, who dwell several days’ journey distant up the White River, the former on the eastern bank, the latter on the western, are as little known grammatically as most of the other languages of Central Africa; I therefore requested the Pascha to procure me some intelligent persons who were well acquainted with those languages. This was impossible for the present, but we shall attend to it on our return.

Meanwhile our purchases and repairs being completed, I hurried on the departure as much as possible. The house of Hermanovich will also be at our disposal on our return; it is built in a convenient manner, and is very airy. I had a prospect of the oldest house in the town from my window, whose pointed straw roof peeped over our wall. These pointed straw huts, called TUKELE, are the characteristic buildings of this country, and are found almost exclusively in the south. But as Chartûm is a new town, the small number of old huts have disappeared, with the exception of this one, and all the houses are built of unburnt bricks.

About mid-day, on the 17th February, we embarked on board our boats. I sailed to the south with Abeken up the Blue River, partly to become acquainted with its natural character, partly to view the ruins of Soba and Mandera; our other travelling companions, who had nothing to occupy them farther up, sailed northwards back to Meröe, in order to sketch the monuments there.

The following day we landed on the eastern bank, where great heaps of red bricks, destined for exportation, proclaimed the vicinity of the ruins of SOBA. At the present day, unburnt bricks alone are made throughout the country, therefore all the ruins of burnt stones must have belonged to an earlier period. This material for building is transported in great quantities from Soba as far as Chartûm, and beyond it.

We disembarked, and had scarcely got beyond the thorny bushes nearest to the bank, when we perceived the overturned mounds of bricks, covering a large plain, possibly an hour in circumference. Some larger heaps might be the remains of the Christian churches which are described by Selîm of Assuan (in Macrizi), in the tenth century, as magnificently decorated with gold, when Soba was still the capital of the kingdom of ALOA. We were shown the spot where some time ago a stone lion is said to have been discovered, which is now in the possession of Churshid Pascha, in Cairo. Nowhere could walls, nor the form of buildings, be recognised; it was only on the mound to the south, at a little distance off, that we found some hewn yellow blocks of sandstone, and a low wall; on another heap lay several rough slabs of a black slaty stone.

The country round Soba, like this, is flat both far and wide to the base of the hills in front of the Abyssinian range, and the ground, especially at this season, is arid and black; the denser vegetation is confined to the bank of the river; farther off there are nothing but single trees, now in greater, now in fewer numbers.

I promised the sailors a sheep, on condition that we should reach KAMLÎN betimes, for there was a strong wind, which made us very slow in our progress; our boat, besides, is not a fast one, the sailors are inexperienced, and from the low state of the water, the boat easily sticks fast in the sand; we sailed on almost the whole night through, and reached Kamlîn about eight in the morning.

The ancient place of the same name lies one half-hour farther up the river, and is composed of a few huts. The houses near which we landed belong to a number of factories, which Nureddin Effendi, a Coptic Catholic Egyptian, who went over to Islam, established, in common with the late Achmed Pascha, more than four years ago, and which yield a rich profit. A simple, homely German, who has never given way to the bad customs of the East, born in the neighbourhood of Würzburg, by name Bauer, has established a Soap and Brandy Manufactory, of which he takes the management himself. A Sugar and Indigo Factory is conducted by an Arab. Bauer has settled farther to the south than any European we have ever met with in Mohammed Ali’s dominions, and we were rejoiced to find such a good termination to the long but not very agreeable chain of Europeans, most of them degenerated in civilisation, who have preferred the Turkish government to that of their Fatherland.[43]

He has an old German housekeeper with him, Ursula, a comical, good-natured soul, to whom it was no less a holiday to receive German guests again, than it was to himself. With joyful alacrity she rummaged out some European utensils, and the only fork that was still in preservation, and served up fried chickens, saurkraut, and some small sausages, with excellent wheaten bread; at last actually a cherry cake, of baked European cherries (for our fruits do not grow in Egypt), in short, a home repast such as we never expected to see in this Ultima Thule.

On a pedestal in front of Bauer’s house we found the most southern Egyptian sculpture which we have met with: a sitting statue of OSIRIS, with the usual attributes, carved out of black granite; a portion of it is mutilated, and it is of a late style, about 21⁄2 feet high; it had been found in SOBA, and is not devoid of interest, being the only monument of Egyptian art from this town.

The European arrangement of Bauer’s rooms made a strange impression on us, here in the midst of the black population in the south. A wooden Black Forest house-clock, with weights, beat in regular time; some half-broken European chairs stood round the fixed table, a small book-shelf was placed behind it, with a selection of the German classics and historical works; in the corner the Turkish divan, which could not be dispensed with even here. Above the great table, and beside the canopied bed in the opposite corner, hung bell-pulls, which communicated with the kitchen. An inquisitive Nesnas ape looked in at the grated window next the door; and across the little court-yard we saw the busy Ursula, in a crimson-flowered gown, tripping hither and thither among little naked black slave-boys and girls, ordering them to do this and that with a somewhat scolding voice, and peeping into the steaming-pots in the adjoining kitchen. We saw nothing of her the whole morning; not even during the excellent and savoury repast which she had prepared for us; it was only after dinner that she presented herself, with many curtseys, to receive our commendations. She lamented over the insufficiency of her cooking apparatus, and vehemently reproached Herr Bauer because he had no intentions of leaving this detestable, dirty, hot country, although he had promised her to do so from one year to the other. She came hither with Bauer, and has been eleven years in the country, and four years in Kamlîn. He intends to return to Germany in another year, to settle in Styria or Thuringia with his savings, and, like his father, to be a peasant again.

After rising from table, the son of Nureddin Effendi also sent us a Turkish dinner, ready cooked, of twelve to fifteen dishes, which however, after our European repast, we left to the servants. We had also seen the factories that morning, and had tasted the fine brandy (called Marienbad), which Bauer prepares chiefly from sugar-cane and dates. The business seemed to be in the best order, and even the cleanliness, so unusual in this country, of the rooms, the vessels, and utensils, were proofs of the solid basis upon which this factory, worked by slaves alone, is conducted. The pleasant impression made upon us by this visit was also considerably increased by discovering that Bauer possessed a second piece of the above-mentioned marble inscription, which had been discovered in the ruins of Soba. He presented me with the fragment, which was easily joined with the other piece, though we had still not got the complete inscription. The fragment shows the traces of twelve lines on the one side, and of nine on the other. The characters can be distinctly read here also; but the name ⲓⲁⲕⲱⲃ is alone intelligible. It is either very barbarous Greek, or a peculiar language formerly spoken in Soba. In fact, we know, through Selîm, that the inhabitants of Soba had their sacred books in the Greek language, but translated them also into their own.

After we had also paid a visit to the son of Nureddin Effendi, we started with the promise to call upon him again on our return.

From Kamlîn the banks continue at an equal elevation. The character of a river valley is lost. There is no longer a deposit of black earth; the precipitous and high banks consist of a primitive soil, and a calcareous conglomerate, which, by Bauer’s account, can be easily burnt into plaster.

On the morning of the 21st we came to a considerable bend of the river towards the east; the wind became, on that account, so unfavourable, that our Kawass disembarked, to press into our service people from the neighbourhood to draw our boat along. I walked for several hours along the western bank, as far as ARBAGI, a deserted village, built of black bricks, but on the remains of a still older place, as I discovered from the walls of burnt bricks. This place was formerly the chief centre of the commerce of the Sudan, which, at a later period, was transferred to Messelemîeh. Soon after this we saw the two most northerly growing BAOBABS, which here are called HÓMARA. These giant trees of the creation (Adansonia digitata) become more and more frequent, south of this spot, and at Sero they are among the common trees of the country. One of the stems which I paced round, measured above 60 feet in circumference, and was certainly not one of the largest of its kind, as they are still not numerous here. At this season they were leafless, and stretched out their bare branches far above the surrounding green trees, which looked like low bushes beside them. I found their fruit, which is called GUNGULES,[44] here and there among the Arabs; they resemble small gourds, in the form of pears, and have a light hairy surface. If the hard, tough shell is broken, a number of kernels are found inside, which are surrounded by a dry, sweetish, sourish pulp, which is nevertheless pleasant to the taste. The leaves are digitate.

On the 22nd of February we arrived on the western bank, at a small village, whose inhabitants, men, women, and children, fled with terror at our approach across the sandy plain to the wood, probably because they were afraid of being pressed to draw the boat on farther. On the opposite bank there was another village, and from it we saw a magnificent procession of men, dressed out in the Arabian and Turkish costume, march down to the river with some beautifully bridled horses. It was the Kaschef, and the principal Sheikh of ABU HARAS, who had heard about us from Achmed Pascha, as we had intended to go from this spot into the desert to Mandera with camels and guides. The horses were intended for us, and we therefore rode to the house of the Kaschef, to make some more inquiries about the antiquities of Mandera and Qala. As the desert road to the shore of the Red Sea leads from here by that place, we found several people who had passed near it. However, by what I gathered from all the accounts, there seem to be only some hills in the form of a kind of fortress at both these places, or, at the most, some roughly-built walls, intended to protect the caravans, but no ancient buildings or hieroglyphic inscriptions. In Qala there might be some camels and horses, also, scratched into the rock by Arabs or other people, such as we have frequently seen in the Great Desert near the well of Murhad, and in other places.

We therefore determined to relinquish this desert journey, and to go farther up the river instead, that we might become acquainted, as far as our time permitted, with the natural character of the Nile river, its banks, and neighbouring inhabitants.

After a short quarter of an hour from Abu Haras, we came to the mouth of the RAHAD, which, in the rainy season, conveys a considerable mass of water into the Nile, but was now nearly dry, and had only a little stagnant water, which next month may perhaps also disappear.

I left the boat as often as possible, to get acquainted with the banks. To go farther inland was of itself interdicted chiefly by the wood, which clothes both sides of the river, and is nearly impenetrable. There, in luxuriant splendour, grow the shady, high-domed tamarind-tree, the tower-like hómara (Baobab), the many-branched gemús (sycamore-tree), and the various kinds of the brittle, gum-yielding sont-trees. Creeping plants, often the thickness of a man’s body, climb up their branches like gigantic serpents, in innumerable windings, to their very summits, and down again to the ground, where, along with the low shrubs, they fill up every gap between the huge stems. In addition to this, scarcely one of ten among the trees or shrubs has not thorns, which renders any attempt to penetrate the close thicket not only dangerous, but impossible. Several among them—for instance, the sittere-tree—have thorns placed together in pairs, and in such a manner, that one thorn bends forwards, the other back; if any one, therefore, approaches the branches carelessly, he may be sure that his clothes will carry away with them some unavoidable signs, not to be obliterated here without difficulty, and then imperfectly. Some other thorny trees look extremely ornamental, and growing in more open situations, they rise like slender young birches. We distinguished two species which are usually joined together, and can only be known from one another because the bark of the one stem is of a brilliant red colour up to the outermost little branches, like a growth of blood-vessels, while that of the other is of a dark black colour. Both of them have glistening long white thorns, which, with the little green leaves, rise up with a sharp outline, as if they had been painted with the brush.

Scarcely one of the birds, which frequently hovered around us in large numbers, were known to me, even in Egypt. I shot many of them, and had them stuffed by our cook, Siriân. Among them were some beautiful silver-grey falcons (suqr schikl), guinea-fowls (gedâd el wadi), with knobs of horn on the nose, and blue lappets on both sides of the head; black and white rhinoceros birds (abu tuko) with huge beaks; some birds quite black, with a bright crimson breast (abu labba); large brown and white eagles (abu tôk), one of which, with outspread wings, measured six feet; smaller brown eagles, the _hedâja_, and black and white ones, which are called _ráchama_. These last, which are much more numerous towards Egypt, are the same which we are in the habit of seeing among the hieroglyphics. On the bank there are also great numbers of black and white plovers, furnished with black curved spines on their wing-joints, and the long-legged, completely white, _abu baqr_ (cow-birds), who are in the habit of grazing on the backs of the buffaloes and cows.

We saw great bats frequently flying about in broad daylight; their long golden-brown wings look bright through the branches, and suddenly they hang head downwards on the branches like great yellow pears, and can then easily be shot. They have long ears, and a strange trumpet-like nose.

We also hunted the MONKEYS, but from their agility they were very difficult to reach. One day we found an immense tree, quite full of monkeys; some of them hastily came down on our approach, and fled to a distant thicket; others hid themselves among the foliage, quite at the top; but some of them who considered both methods of escape dangerous, sprang with inconceivably bold leaps from the uppermost branches of the tall tree, which might have been about 100 feet high, to the smaller trees standing near, whose thorny branches bent down beneath their weight without letting them fall; they thus gained their end, and escaped my gun.

The CROCODILES become more numerous the farther south we go. The tongues of the sandy islands are often covered with them. They generally lie in the sun, close to the edge of the water, open their mouths, and seem to sleep, but do not allow any one to approach them; but even if they are hit by the shot they immediately dive into the river. It is therefore very difficult to obtain one. Our Kawass only once made such a good shot at a young crocodile, about three feet long, that it was unable to get back to the water. It was brought to the boat, where it lived for several days afterwards, to the terror of our little Nesnas monkey, Bachît.

It is no less difficult to approach the HIPPOPOTAMI, which we have sometimes seen in great numbers, but with their heads alone above the water. Once only a young hippopotamus stood quite clear out of the water on a sandy island; it allowed us to come unusually near. The Kawass shot, and hit it, naturally without the ball penetrating the thick hide, whereupon the clumsy creature, with its unshapely head, its fat belly, and short elephant legs, galloped off in a most comical manner to reach the water close beside him, and immediately disappeared. They generally are in the habit of coming on land only in the night, and they do much injury in the fields of Durra and other plantations, by treading down and devouring. It is not known that a hippopotamus was ever caught alive here.

We saw no lions, but we heard their roaring in the distance throughout the starlight night; there is something very solemn in the deep and sonorous voice of this royal beast.

The 24th of February we came to a second tributary river of the Nile, the DENDER, which is larger than the Rahad. I went up part of it to see (which was impossible at its mouth) whether the water was still flowing, and farther up I discovered that, where the still water had collected into small canals, certainly a very feeble current yet existed; in the rainy season the Dender must rise more than twenty feet, as may be seen by its bed; I found its banks were cultivated with cotton bushes, gourds, and other useful plants.

The heat is not excessive, in the morning about eight o’clock it is usually 23° R.; about mid-day till about five o’clock, 29°; and about eleven o’clock at night it is 22° (833⁄4°, 971⁄4°, 811⁄2° Fahr.).

We spend our evenings in our boat; here I make our Kawass, Hagi Ibrahim, inform us about the geography; or I take some Nubian sailors into my cabin to learn their language. I have already made a long vocabulary in the Nubian language; comparing it with other lists in Rüppell and Cailliaud, I found many words in the Koldági language spoken in the southern territories of Kordofan which agree with them; this proves there is an intimate connection between the two languages. The Arabs are in the habit of calling the Nubian language _lisân rotâna_, which I at first supposed to be its actual name; but it only means a foreign tongue different from the Arabic. They do not, therefore, only speak of a _Rotâna Kenûs_, _Mahass_, _Donqolaui_, when they mean to designate the three Nubian dialects, but also of a _Rotâna Dinkaui_, _Schilluk_—even of a Rotâna _turki_ and _franki_, thus likewise of Turkish and French; _i. e._ of European gibberish. The same error is the cause of the now received designation of the Nubian as the Berber, and of their language as the Berber language; for this is not the name of the people, nor of their language, as is generally thought, but originally means only the people speaking a foreign tongue, the _Barbaros_.

On the 25th of February we disembarked at SABA DOLEB; I searched for ruins, but only found high domes in the form of bee-hives, built well and solidly of bricks, about 20 feet high, and closely resembling the Greek Thesauri, constructed of horizontal layers, lapping over inwardly. They are tombs of holy Arab Sheikhs of a late period; the inhabitants of the village could not tell us the date of their erection. Beneath the cupola, and in the centre of the building, which is between 15 and 18 feet wide, there is the long narrow tomb of the saint, surrounded with larger stones, and covered with a number of small stones, which, according to a superstition, must necessarily amount to a thousand; I found six domes similar to these, most of them half, some wholly fallen to pieces; two, however, in very good preservation, which are even still visited; a seventh, probably the most recent, was built of unburnt bricks.

At WAD NEGUDI, a village situated to the west of the Nile, we found the first DILÊB PALMS, with slender naked stems and small bushy crowns, resembling, at a distance, the Date Palm, but when near, from their leaves, like the Doum Palm. Their fruit is round, like that of the Doum Palm, but of a larger size. These trees are said to be very abundant on the tributary rivers towards the east; but here, on the Nile, they are only to be found within a very small tract of land. The leaves are regularly divided like a fan into a great number of connected folds, and the leaf-stalk has strong serrated notches. The Rais of our boat, who was with me, sawed off another leaf with one of these leaf-stalks; I had it brought to the boat, to take it away with us. It is divided into sixty-nine points, and is five feet and a quarter long, from that part of the stalk where the fan begins, although it is still young, and therefore its fan is still completely closed. Another larger one, which had just unfolded itself, we set up in the boat as an umbrella, and sat beneath its shade. We were obliged to make a path to those palm-trees through gigantic woods of grass, which shoot up stiff and thick like corn-fields, and cover large plains. The points of the blades towered up five or six feet above our heads, and even the tall camels, which are bred here, could hardly look over it.

On the 26th February we arrived at the village of ABU EL ABAS, on the eastern bank. It is a chief town of this district, and the Kaschef who lives here is placed over 112 villages. I there purchased a dog-ape from a Turkish Kawass for a few piastres. This is the holy ape of the ancient Egyptians, the Cynocephalus, which was dedicated to Thoth and the Moon, and appears as the second among the four Gods of Death. It is interesting to me to have a creature about me for some little time, which I have seen innumerable times upon the monuments, and thereby to observe the faithful apprehension and representation of its essential and characteristic appearances in the ancient Egyptian sculpture. It is remarkable that this ape, so peculiar to Egypt in ancient times, is now only found in the south, and even there, it is not very common. How many species of animals and plants, even manners and customs of men, with which we become acquainted through the monuments of Egypt, can only now be found in the most southern parts of ancient Ethiopia, so that now many representations, for instance in the tombs of Benihassan, seem to delineate scenes in this country rather than in Egypt. There is no special name here for the Cynocephalus, only the general one, _qird_ (large monkey). Its head, hair, and colour, are not unlike those of a dog, and hence its Greek name. Sometimes also it barks and snarls like a dog. It is still young, and very good-natured, but far more intelligent than Abeken’s pretty little Nesnas ape. It is extremely ludicrous when it wishes to get something good to eat, which we have in our hands; it then lays back its ears on its head, and knows how to express the utmost delight, but remains sitting quiet like a good child, only chattering with the lips, like an old wine-bibber. At the sight of the crocodile, however, all the hair of its body bristled up; it uttered piercing shrieks, and could scarcely be held down from terror.

On the 27th February we reached SENNÂR, the celebrated ancient capital of the Sudan, whose king, before the conquest of the country by Ismael Pascha, had dominion as far as Wadi Halfa, and ruled over a number of smaller kings who paid him tribute. One would not suspect, from the present aspect of the place, that only a short time since it was such a powerful royal residence. Between six and seven hundred pointed straw huts, Tukele, surrounded the piles of red-brick ruins, where formerly the royal mansion stood. These bricks are now employed for building an abode for Solimân Pascha, who is to reside in Sennâr; it was already so far complete that the Wakil[45] of the absent Pascha was able to hold his divan within it. We found him there, just as he was sitting in judgment. Many other people, Sheikhs and Turks, were present; among them the Sheikh Sandalôba, the chief of the Arabian merchants, and a relative of the Sultâna Nasr, whose acquaintance we afterwards made in the village of Sorîba, which she makes her royal residence. We paid a visit to this distinguished man in his own house, with which honour he seemed much gratified. His principal apartment is a dark, lofty hall, with a roof resting on two pillars and four pilasters, upon which we mounted to obtain a view over the town.

Meanwhile an anqareb was prepared for us, to sit upon in the court-yard; they brought us mead (honey with water), and led a hyæna out of the stable, here called Marafil, and two young lions, the largest of which, belonging to Solimân Pascha, and two wethers, were taken to the boat, as a present from his Wakil. I had the creature fastened down in the hold, and as a welcome immediately received a violent scratch on my hand from his sharp claws. His body is now above two feet long, and his voice has already become a strong tenor. There is a most tumultuous scene now every morning on our, not very large, boat, when we drink our tea at an early hour in front of the cabin; on each side of the door, a monkey is making its merry leaps, and when the lion is released from the hold of the vessel, and on the deck, which is given to him during the day, we are obliged to place our cups and pitchers in safety, as he endeavours to reach them with his clumsy, but already strong claws.

On the 29th of February, about nine in the morning, we arrived at ABDÎN. The 1st of March the wind was unfavourable to us, and we made very little progress, so that we had plenty of time at our disposal for shooting birds. Towards evening I came to a village romantically situated in a creek formed by the river, spreading out at this point. Many huts, built of straw, extended their pointed roofs upwards between the branches and thick foliage of the trees. Narrow crooked paths, forming a real labyrinth, led from one hut to the other, between thorns and trunks of trees; within the huts, and in front of them, the black families were lying, the children playing by a feeble lamp-light. I asked for some milk, but was told to apply at an Arab village in the neighbourhood, to which I was led by a man armed with a spear, the universal weapon of the country. Making our way through thin shrubs and tall grass, we reached the large troops of cattle belonging to the Arabs, who had raised their mat huts round the pasture ground. The Fellahs who have settled here are much browner than the wandering Arabs, though they are not negroes, but they appear by race to be connected with the Nubian stock.

The 2nd of March we landed on an island close to the eastern bank. At a short distance from the landing-place the Rais discovered a broken crocodile egg, at a spot where there was some newly turned up ground. He dug down with his hands, and found forty-four eggs lying beside each other three feet deep in the sand. They were still covered with a slimy coat, as they had been only laid the previous day or during the night. Crocodiles prefer coming out of the river on a windy night, they bury their eggs in the ground, cover them over, and the wind soon disperses all traces of the disturbed earth. A few months afterwards the young ones creep out. The eggs are like large goose’s eggs, but as much rounded off at both ends as these are only at the blunt end. I had some of them boiled, they are eatable, but have a disagreeable taste; therefore I willingly left them to the sailors, who devoured them with a hearty appetite.

We landed at the forsaken village of DÁHELA on the eastern bank, from which I proceeded alone a distance of about three-quarters of an hour inland. The character of the vegetation continues the same. The ground is dry and level, the small hills and valleys which intersect it are not the original forms of the ground, but seem only to have been produced by rain. The farthest point I aimed at was a great tamarind-tree which towered up splendidly from the lower trees and bushes, and round which were fluttering a number of green and red birds hitherto unknown to me.

On my road, I first came to a settlement, Kumr betá Dáhela, where the inhabitants of the village I mentioned above are accustomed to keep their _villeggiatura_. They only remain here during the dry months, and wander back in the beginning of the rainy season to their more solidly built village on the bank of the river. The last village that I reached is called ROMÂLI, a little above the place which is marked SERO on the map, and which is situated at the 13° of north latitude. On the hot and fatiguing road back, I was present at a burial; silent and serious, without sound or lamentation, two corpses wrapped in white cloths were borne by men on anqarebs, and were laid in a grave several feet deep, in the wood, close to the passing road. Perhaps they had died of the cholera-like plague, which we hear has broken out with virulence in these southern parts.

We would willingly have gone up, as far as Fazoql, into the last province in Mohammed Ali’s dominions, to become acquainted with the complete change in the character of the country, which then again occurs, beginning at Rosêres, and exhibiting so many phenomena, plants and animals, peculiar to the tropics; but our time had come to an end.

The Rais received orders to lower the sails and masts; by which the boat at once lost its dignified appearance, and it floated down with the current of the river like a wreck. Soon the agreeable silence in the vessel, which had hitherto hastened on as if of its own accord, was interrupted by the shrill and discordant singing of the rowers, struggling against the wind.

On the 4th of March we again arrived at Sennâr, and on the morning of the 8th reached Wed Médineh. This place is almost as important as Sennâr. A regiment of soldiers is here in garrison with the only band of music in the Sudan, and with two cannons. We were immediately visited by the chief clerk of the regiment, Seïd Haschim, one of the most distinguished people of the place, with whom we had formerly become acquainted in Chartûm.

We determined to go from this on a visit to the Sultâna Nasr (Victoria) in SORÎBA, which is about an hour and a half inland, partly to learn something of the character of the country farther removed from the river, partly to gain some notion of the court of an Ethiopian princess. Seïd Haschim offered his dromedaries and asses, and to accompany us himself on this expedition. We therefore set out with him in the afternoon over the hot, black plain, where only a few trees were scattered here and there, and soon got over the uninteresting ground on our active animals.

NASR is the sister of the most powerful and the richest King (Melek) in the Sudan, the IDRIS WED (_i. e._ WELLED, the son or descendant of) ADLÂN, who now indeed is under the supremacy of Mohammed Ali, but yet rules over several hundred villages in the province of El Fungi; his title is Mak el Qulle, King of the Qulle Mountains. One of his ancestors was called ADLÂN, and the whole family at present is named after him; his father was the same Mohammed (Wed) Adlân, who at the period of the victorious campaign of Ismael Pascha, appropriated to himself the greater part of the power belonging to the legitimate but feeble Bâdi, King of Sennâr, but who afterwards, at the instigation of a second Pretender, Reg ́eb, was murdered. When Ismael approached, and Reg ́eb had fled with his adherents into the Abyssinian mountains, King Bâdi joined the children and the party of Mohammed Adlân, and submitted to the Pascha, who made him a Sheikh over the country, had the murderers of Mohammed Adlân empaled, and bestowed great power and riches on his children Reg ́eb and Idris Adlân. Their sister Nasr was also treated with great respect, which was still more increased because she was descended, on the mother’s side, from the legitimate royal house itself. On that account she is also called _Sultâna_, Queen. Her first husband was Mohammed Sandalôba, a brother of Hassan Sandalôba, whom we had visited in Sennâr. He died a long time ago, but by him she had a daughter, Dauer (the Light), who married a great Sheikh, Abd el Qader, but she was afterwards separated from him, and now always resides with her mother in Sorîba. The second husband of Nasr is Mohammed Defalla, the son of one of her father’s viziers. He was just then with Ahmed Pascha Menekle, on the campaign (_Ghazua_, out of which the French have made _Razzia_) in Taka. But even when he is at home, on account of her noble birth, she continues mistress in the house.

A great preference for the female sex seems to have been a very universal custom since ancient times in these southern countries. We must recollect how frequently we find reigning Queens of Ethiopia mentioned. In the campaigns of Petronius, Candace is well known, a name which, according to Pliny, was given to all the Ethiopian Queens; according to others, only to the mother of the King. In the pictures at Meröe, also, we sometimes see very warlike, and doubtless reigning, Queens represented. According to Makrizi, the genealogies of the Beg ́as, who I consider to be the direct descendants of the Meröitish Ethiopians, and the ancestors of the present Bischâris, were not counted by the men, but by the women; and the inheritance did not go to the son of the deceased, but to the son of the sister, or of the daughter of the deceased. In like manner, according to Abu-Sela, among the Nubians, the sister’s son always had the preference of his own son in the succession to the throne; and, according to Ibn Batuta, the same custom existed among the Messofites, a negro people lying to the west. Even now the household and chief offices belonging to the courts of several southern princes are wholly filled by women. Ladies of distinction are in the habit of allowing their nails to grow an inch long, as a sign that their duty consists in commanding, and not in working; a custom we have lately seen in the representations of the unshapely and corpulent Queens of Meröe.

When we arrived in SORÎBA, we stepped through a peculiar gate-house into the great square court-yard, which passes round the principal building, and then into an open lofty hall, the roof of which rested on four pillars, and four pilasters. The narrow beams of the ceiling jut out several feet above the simple architrave, and form the immediate support of the flat roof; the whole entrance reminded me much of the open façades of the tombs of Benihassan. In the hall there stood some beautiful furniture of Indian work in ebony, some broad anqarebs, with frames for the fly-nets. Magnificent coverlets were immediately brought in, and sherbet, coffee, and pipes handed round; the vessels were made of gold and silver. Black slave girls in light white dresses, which are fastened round the hips, and drawn over the bosom and shoulders, handed the refreshments, and looked most strange with their half-braided, half-combed wigs. The Queen did not however appear; perhaps she shrank from showing herself to Christians; we were only able to see some women who were standing behind a half-opened door, which re-closed, and to whom we ourselves might have been an object of curiosity. I therefore sent word to the Sultâna, through Seïd Haschim, that we had come to pay a visit to herself, and we now begged we might be permitted to pay our respects to her. Upon which, soon afterwards, a strong wooden door, cased with metal, which led from the inner chambers to the hall, opened wide, and Nasr, with free and dignified steps, walked in. She was wrapped in long, finely-woven linen, with coloured borders, and underneath she wore wide, party-coloured trousers of a darker hue. The female household followed her, eight or ten girls in white dresses, bordered with red, and ornamented sandals. Nasr sat down before us in a friendly and natural manner; she only sometimes drew her dress before her mouth and the lower part of her face, an Oriental custom which is universal in Egypt among women, but which is less practised in this country. She replied to the salutations which I addressed to her through the Dragoman, with an agreeable voice, but only remained a short time with us, and then again retired through the same door.

We were now permitted to see the interior of the house, with the exception of her own apartments, which were in a small adjoining house; and we got upon the roof to have a view over the village. We afterwards took a walk through the place, saw the well, which is lined with bricks to the depth of 60 feet, and supplies a lukewarm water, which is more insipid than that of the Nile, from which Nasr always has her own drinking water fetched. We then turned back, intending to start, but Nasr invited us to spend the night in Sorîba, as it was already too late to return to Wed Médineh by daylight. We accepted the invitation, and immediately a repast of cooked food was brought in, which was only a preparation for the magnificent supper. The Sultâna, however, did not allow herself to be seen again the whole evening. We remained in the hall, and slept on the same cool cushions which had served us during the day as a divan. The next morning, however, we were invited to visit her in her own rooms. She was more willing to talk to-day than yesterday, had European chairs placed for us, while her attendants and slave girls squatted down round us. We told her about her name-sister, the Sultâna Nasr of England, and exhibited her portrait to her on an English gold coin, which she regarded with much curiosity. Nevertheless, she showed very little desire to see with her own eyes that distant world beyond the northern ocean.

About eight o’clock we rode back to Wed Médineh. Soon after our arrival Seïd Haschim received a letter from Nasr, in which she asked him confidentially whether I would accept a little slave girl from her, as a gift to the stranger. I sent a message to inform her that this was contrary to our customs, but that there would be no difficulty if, instead of a slave girl, she would select a slave boy; and, after the removal of some scruples, as this seemed to her less becoming, she really sent a little slave boy, who was brought to me in our boat.

He had been the playmate of the Sultâna’s little grandson, the son of her daughter Dauer, and was handed over to me with the name of REHÂN (the Arabic designation for the sweet-scented basilicum). I was also informed that he was born in the district of Makâdi, on the frontier of Abyssinia, which generally furnishes the most intelligent and faithful slaves. This district is under Christian domination, and is inhabited both by Christians and Mohammedans, who are separated into different villages. The former call themselves Nazâra (Nazarenes), or Amhâra (Amharic Christians); the latter Giberta. Amongst the latter, children of their own race, or that of their neighbours, are frequently stolen and sold to Arabian slave-dealers; for in the central parts of Abyssinia the slave trade is strictly interdicted. However, this account of the boy has since proved incorrect, and perhaps was only meant to remove the obstacle which some might find in offering me a Christian boy, while on the other hand it would appear still more doubtful to hand over to me a native Mohammedan. The boy himself first communicated to our Christian cook, and afterwards to myself, that he was born of Christian parents, that he had here for the first time received the name of Rehân, and that his real name was Gabre Máriam, _i. e._ in Abyssinian, “the slave of Mary.” He was born near Gondar, the capital of Amhâra. He appears to have belonged to a family of some distinction, for the place called Bamba, which is stated by Bruce to be in the neighbourhood of Lake Tzana, by his accounts belonged to his grandfather; and his father, who now is dead, possessed many herds, which the boy often drove, with others, to the pasture. One day, above three or four years ago, when on such an expedition, at a considerable distance from his dwelling-place, he was stolen by some mounted Bedouins, carried off to the village of Waldakarel, and then sold to King Idris Adlân; by him he was afterwards presented to his sister Nasr. He is a pretty boy, very dark, and may be now between eight and nine years old; but much more advanced than a child of this age would be with us. The girls here marry from eight years old upwards. He wears his hair in a peculiar manner, in innumerable little braids; these must, at least once every month, be re-braided and daubed with grease, by a woman skilled in the art; and his body also must from time to time be well rubbed with grease. His entire clothing consists in a great white cloth, which he binds round his hips, and throws upwards over the shoulders. I call him now by his Christian name, and shall take him to Europe with me.

Seïd Haschim did all in his power to keep us some days longer in Wed Médineh. The first evening he invited us to his house, with the Turks of most distinction, and had a number of dancing-girls to show us the national dances in these parts; they chiefly consist in contortions of the upper part of the body and the arms, similar to what are represented on the Egyptian monuments; but differ from the Egyptian dances of the present day, which are chiefly limited to very ungraceful gestures.

A good-natured and very comical old man led on the dances, while he at the same time sang some Arabic songs, with a piercing but not disagreeable voice, which had reference to the assembled company, or to persons of repute, such as Nasr, Idris Adlân, Mak (_i. e._ Melek), Bâdi, &c.; and with his left hand touched the chords of a five-stringed lyre, passing the plectrum over them in time with his right. His instrument only embraced six tones of the octave. The first string on the right hand had the highest tone, C, to be struck with the thumb, the string immediately succeeding, the lowest tone, E; then followed the third, F; the fourth, A; the fifth, B. The instrument is called RABABA, and the performer on it REBÂBI. This man had been instructed by an old celebrated Rebâbi in Schendi; he had made his instrument himself, after the model of that belonging to his master, and had also acquired from him his talent for making verses, and thus became the favourite black bard of Wed Médineh. All the poetry of his songs had been composed by himself; they were sometimes improvised, and whoever disobliged him or his patrons, would probably be made the object of his satire.

I made him come to me the following morning, and, through Jussuf, write down four of his poems in Arabic: one on Mohammed, the son of Mak Mesâʾd, who resides in Metammeh; one upon King Nimr, who burnt Ismael Pascha, and is still living in Abyssinia; a third on Nasr; and lastly, a song of homage to pretty girls.[46] It is impossible to render these melodies in our notes. I have only written down a small portion of them, which in some measure approaches our mode of singing. They are generally half recited, half carried down, with quivering tones, from the highest notes to a deep and long-sustained tone. These are their most peculiar characteristics, but they are quite incapable of being noted down. Each verse contains four rhymes; the voice is retained lightly on each of them, on the second more than on the first and third; but longest on the last rhyme. The music always sinks at this point, and the same deep tone recurs, which gives a certain character to the progressing song. A particular recurrence of the melody may, indeed, also be noticed, but this is impossible for a European ear to remember. I purchased the instrument from the good-natured old man. He gave it unwillingly, although I let him name his own price; and several times after he had taken the money, and had laid down his instrument for it, an air of anxious sorrow came over his expressive countenance. The following day I bid him come to me again. He was depressed, and told me his wife had given him a sound beating for having given his instrument away. Here it is no disgrace for a man to be beaten by his wife, but it is so perhaps in the reverse case. A woman who has been beaten goes at once to the Cadi to complain; she then generally obtains justice, and the husband is punished.

In Wed Médineh we were also present at a funeral ceremony, which seemed a strange enough one to us. A woman had died three days before; the day succeeding her death, the third, the seventh, and several days afterwards are peculiarly solemnised. In front of the house, an hour before sunset, above a hundred women and children had collected, and more were constantly coming in, and cowered down beside the others. Two daughters of the deceased were present, whose richly ornamented and grease-besmeared heads they had already strewed with ashes, and had rubbed the whole of the upper part of their bodies white with them, so that their eyes and mouths alone shone forth clean, and, as it were, set into the white mask. The women wore long cloths round their hips; the young girls and children the Ráhat, a girdle composed of five strips of leather, hanging down close together; this is usually bound round the loins by a cord, prettily ornamented with shells and pearls, and it falls half-way down the leg. There was a great wooden bowl with ashes, which was repeatedly filled again with fresh ones. Female musicians cowered down close on either side of the door uttering shrill screams, which pierced our ears; they now clapped their hands together in time; now struck the sounding DARA-BUKA (a kind of hand kettle-drum, called here in the Sudan DALUKA); and now beat with sticks on some hollow gourds floating in tubs of water. The two daughters, about eighteen or twenty years of age, and the nearest relations, began, two and two, to move at first slowly towards the door in a narrow passage between the constantly increasing crowds; then suddenly shrill screams, clapping of hands, and loud shrieks burst from them all at once; whereupon they turned round, and began their fearfully contorted dancing. Bending the upper part of their body in convulsive and strained twistings and turnings, and slowly balancing themselves, they moved their feet forwards, then suddenly threw their breasts upwards with violence and their heads back on their shoulders, which they stretched out in all directions, and thus, with half-closed eyes, gradually glided forwards. In this manner they went down a slight incline of fifteen and twenty paces, where they threw themselves on the ground, covered themselves with dust and earth, and turned back again to re-commence the same dance. The younger of the two daughters had a beautiful slight figure, with wonderful elasticity, and when she stood quietly erect, or was lying on the ground with her sunken head, her regular and gentle, though inanimate features, even during the dance, and the classical form of her body, was exactly like an antique statue. This dancing procession was repeated over and over again. Each of the mourners is compelled at least to go through this once, and the nearer the relationship so much the more frequently is it repeated. Whoever cannot immediately force her way up to the vessel of ashes, takes them from the head of her neighbour to strew it on her own head. In front of this squatting assembly some women are cowering, who understand how to sob loudly and to shed profuse tears, which leave long black streaks on their white-rubbed cheeks. The most striking, and the most repelling, part of this spectacle is, that nothing is done from unrestrained sorrow, but all with deliberation, with a degree of pathos, and evidently studied; children as young as four and five years old are placed in the procession, and if they perform the difficult and unnatural movements well, their mothers, who are cowering behind, call out to them _taib, taib_—_i. e._ bravo! well done! In the second act, however, of this ceremony, rendered peculiarly stunning by its continual clapping, screaming, and shrieking, all the dancers throw themselves into the dust, and tumble down the hill; but this they also do slowly, and with deliberation, carefully drawing up their knees to their bodies, to hold their dresses with them, and also crossing their arms; they then roll down, over knees and back. This ceremony begins one hour before sunset, and lasts till night.

The unnatural feeling pervading the whole proceeding makes an indescribable impression, which is rendered still more disagreeable by seeing nothing in all of it but an inherited and perverted custom, an empty spectacle; not a trace of individual truth and natural sentiment can be perceived in the persons who participate; and yet the comparison between this and certain descriptions and representations of similar festivals among the ancients, teaches us to understand much, of which judging by our own manner of life, we can never form a correct notion, till we have once seen with our eyes such caricatures of metamorphoses as are here and there exhibited in the East.

The following day we visited the hospital, which we found very cleanly, and in good order; it holds a hundred patients, but there were then only eight-and-twenty within it. We then went to the barracks, in the large court-yard of which the men are exercised. The commanding officer ordered out the band of music, and they played several pieces before us. The first was the Parisienne, which sounded most strangely in this country, as well as the succeeding pieces, most of them French, and known to me; they were, however, tolerably well executed. The musicians performed almost solely on European instruments, and have also admitted the name of our trumpet into their Arabic musical language, but have transferred it to the drum, which they call _trumbêta_, while for the trumpet they have a peculiar name of their own, _nafir_; they call their great flute _sumára_, the small one _sufára_, and the great drum _tabli_. There were only twelve hundred soldiers present belonging to the regiment, which consists of four thousand men, almost all negroes, whose black faces staring out of their white linen uniform and red-tasselled caps, made them look like dressed-up monkeys, only much more unhappy and oppressed. The negroes are incapable of any military discipline and regular exertion, and generally sink beneath the imposed yoke. We did not, however, suspect that these same people would two days afterwards rebel in a body, and set off to their hills.

Emin Pascha was expected hourly. But on the 13th I received in the morning a letter from him, from Messelemîeh, between four and five hours distant from this place, in which he wrote that he should not come to Wed Médineh before the following day, and hoped to find us still there. He at the same time informed me that the war in Taka was over, and that all had submitted. Several hundred natives had been killed in skirmishes; the morning before the chief battle, all the Sheikhs of the tribes from Taka had come to the Pascha to sue for pardon, which he had granted them, on condition that no fugitive should venture to remain in the great wood, which was their chief place of refuge. The following morning he had the wood searched, and as nobody was discovered in it, he had it set on fire, and entirely burnt to the ground. On his journey back, he intends to pass through the eastern districts to Katârif, on the Abyssinian frontier, and thence to go to the Blue River. We had scarcely read this news from Taka, when we heard the sound of cannon in front of the barracks announcing the victorious message to the population round.

In another letter, which had gone to Emin Pascha instead of me, Herr von Wagner gave me the pleasing intelligence that our new companion, the painter Georgi, had arrived from Italy, and had already started for Dongola, where he waits for further orders. I shall write to him to come as far as Barkal to meet us.

As we were certain by this letter of finding the Pascha still in Messelemîeh, we started for that place about mid-day; and as the town is situated an hour and a half distant from the Nile, we made the journey by land.

The boat, meanwhile, was to follow us to the harbour of Messelemîeh, that is to say, to the nearest landing-place of this most important of the commercial towns of the whole Sudan. Besides Jussuf, we took with us the Kawass and Gabre Máriam, who sat behind me on the dromedary, where there is always left a small place for a servant, like a coach-box behind the carriage; he sits on the narrow hinder part of the animal, and holds on to the saddle with both his hands. It was hot, and the ground was parched up. The few birds which I saw were different from those which habitually inhabit the banks of the river.

Half-way we came to TÂIBA, a village which is only inhabited by FUKARA (plur. of FAKIR). These are the sages, the holy men of the people, a kind of priest, without however having priestly functions to perform; they can read and write; they do not permit any music, dancing, or festivals among them, and therefore have a great reputation for sanctity. The chief of this village is the greatest Fakir of the whole surrounding neighbourhood. Every one believes in him like a prophet; whatever he predicts, happens. The late Achmed Pascha, one month before his death, caused him to be imprisoned. “God will punish you for this,” was his answer to the order, and one month afterwards the Pascha died. He is a very rich man, and possesses several villages. We went in quest of him, and found him in his house at dinner; about twenty people were sitting round a colossal wooden bowl, which was filled with a gruel of boiled Durra and milk. The bowl was pushed in front of us, but we could not eat any of this food. We amused ourselves with the old Fakir, who joined in our conversation with easy, friendly, and pleasing manners, and then inquired our names, and the object of our journey. Every one who entered, our servants among the number, approached him reverently, and touched his hand with their mouth and forehead. The dignity of Sheikh is hereditary in his family; his son is looked up to almost as much as himself, and in this way we can understand how a village like this, when the Sheikh has once been himself a Fakir, can become altogether a priest-village. E’ Dâmer, on the island of Meröe, was formerly a Fakir place similar to this. The inhabitants of Tâiba, probably of Arabic race, call themselves ARAKIN. There are a number of such local names here, whose origin it is difficult to make out.

When we had smoked out our pipes, we left the congregation of holy men, and rode away. One half hour before we reached Messelemîeh, we came to a second village called Hellet e’ Solimân, where we dismounted at a house which had been built by the late Mak, or Melek Kambal, of Halfaï, when he married the daughter of Defalla, to whom the village belonged; it now belongs to his brother’s son, Mahmûd welled Schauîsch, who has besides the title of Melek, but is really only the guardian of Kambal’s little son, Melek Beshîr. It is easy to see what is now thought here of the old reverential title of Melek, or King. Mahmûd was not at home, as he had accompanied Ahmed Pascha on his campaign. Nevertheless, we were entertained in his house according to the hospitable custom of this country. Coverlets were spread out, milk and fresh baked Durra bread in thin slices, which has by no means a bad taste, was brought in; added to this, another simple, but refreshing beverage, _abréq_, fermented sourish Durra water. Soon after Asser we reached Messelemîeh. Emin Pascha received us very kindly, and communicated to us the intelligence that Mohammed Ali’s first minister, Boghos Bey, whom I had visited in Alexandria, was dead, and that Artim Bey, a man of elegant manners, and a shrewd politician, had been appointed in his place.

We declined the Pascha’s invitation to supper, and offer of a night’s lodging, and soon rode away towards the river, where we hoped to find our boat. As it had not yet arrived, we spent the night on anqarebs in the open air. We were not able to start for Kamlîn till the following morning, the 15th March, and reached it towards evening. The next day we spent agreeably with our countryman, Herr Bauer. On the 17th, having paid a visit to Nureddin Effendi, in Wad Eraue, several hours distant from Kamlîn, we arrived on the following day at SOBA, where I immediately sent for one of the vases which had been found in the ruins of the ancient city, and which was said to be kept by the brother of the Sheikh. After waiting a long time, it was brought to us. It was an ancient vessel for incense, made of bronze in filigree work. The sides of the vessel, which was of a roundish form, and about nine inches high, and of similar width, consisted solely of open-work Arabesques; the swinging chains had been fastened to the upper border by three little hooks, one of which, however, has broken away, so that the most interesting part of the whole, an inscription running round beneath the border, and like the Arabesques carved _à jour_, in rather large letters, thereby is unfortunately incomplete. This is of peculiar importance, as the writing is again in the Greek, or rather in the Coptic character, as on the stone-tablet; but the language is neither of these, but doubtless the ancient vernacular tongue of Soba, the capital of the mighty Kingdom of Alŏa. Short as it is, it is distinguished from the stone inscription by containing the Coptic signs ϣ (sch) and ϯ (ti), which are not to be found in the latter. I purchased the vessel for a few piastres. This is now the third monument of Soba which we take away with us, for I must mention, in addition, that at the house of Seïd Haschim, in Wed Médineh, we also saw a small Venus of Greek workmanship, carved in pure style, and about a foot high, which had likewise been found in Soba, and was presented to me by its owner. At length, on the 19th March, we again entered the house of Herr Hermanovich, in Chartûm, later than our original calculations had led us to expect, for which reason I had already communicated our delay to Erbkam, in a letter from Wed Médineh.