Chapter VI

Two bubbles floating o’er the sea of Life,

Wind-driven, meet, and are at once but one.

Then came the hour of parting and the tears,

The thousand vows of faith and no distrust,

The warm embrace of ecstasy and pain,

And the long kiss of sorrow and of love;

And then the last firm grasp of hands, and then

Eternal separation, and the gaze

Upon the slow-retreating form, then years—

In moments—of wild anguish and despair,

And nights of prayers, and days without a smile.

* * * * *

FROM OLD DONGOLA TO SOTAIRE.

Started. — Commotion in camp. — Welcome news. — Festivities. — The gazelle. — Mohommed Effendi’s diary. — A deserted donkey. — Mahtool. — Wady Milkh. — Sotaire. — A polite shiekh. — Tribes. — A legend. — Feuds. — A fantasia. — Rebecca. — A sad story.

BEFORE starting on our journey I desired Mohommed Effendi, Lieutenant of Engineers, to make ample notes of the nature of the country through which we were about to travel. We left our camp at Old Dongola at 11 o’clock and travelled for six hours. Our usual hour for stopping was 4 o’clock, but having been unavoidably compelled to start late, we were anxious to make up for the delay.

After two hours’ journey, when we were about a mile ahead of the camels, we were somewhat startled to observe, from the summit of a low hill we had ascended in order to get a view of the country round, a general commotion in the caravan behind. Its march was arrested, and the sound reached us of rifle-firing, for which we were utterly unable to account. A few of the swiftest riders were seen coming at full speed across the desert in our direction, evidently with something of importance to communicate. The Arabs were flourishing their spears, and some of them their swords, and one or two of the soldiers who were with them were firing their rifles and revolvers in every direction. With many shouts and other demonstrations of joy, we were informed on their arrival that the favourite wife of Mohommed, the chief Mahound, had three days before given birth to an heir, an event to which the family had looked forward for years. A special messenger had been sent on from New Dongola, and had fortunately overtaken the caravan, where the joy was universal. We expressed our unbounded delight, and waited for the camels to come up, when we congratuled the Mahound on his good fortune, and promised him a pot of jam for the festivities which, he smilingly and exultingly told us, would take place that very night, when our travelling was ended. A fantasia was kept up all that evening with music, dancing, shouting, screaming, and firing of rifles and pistols. The happy, blushing father bore the honours done him with dignity, and presided over the entertainment to the unquestioned satisfaction of all concerned.

After the enthusiasm had quieted down, Mohommed Effendi came into my tent with his day’s report. It was as follows:—

“General character of ground sand and stones, similar to Bahiuda desert, no vegetation.

“5 P.M., moving sand-hills.

“Om Medhayr (no water).”

His report was correct except in saying “like Bahiuda desert.” In that desert large quantities of fossil wood are found, occasionally even entire trees, in addition to volcanic fragments and much lava, although no craters of extinct volcanoes exist in the country.

All through this day’s journey we saw troops of gazelles, from two to four in number, but never near enough to give us a shot. In a large tract of desert country like that through which we were travelling, where even the small quantity of grass which grows in the rainy season is, for the greater part of the year, dried up and incapable of affording the necessary moisture for food, it is somewhat difficult to account for the presence, in large numbers, of so considerable an animal as the gazelle. It is never seen in the cultivated parts, which it would necessarily have to traverse in order to get down to the Nile to drink, and all the wells in the neighbourhood are many feet below the surface of the ground. The great speed of the gazelle enables it to travel over vast distances in a comparatively short space of time, and those we see to-day scampering over the sand and stones, may within a week be many miles away to the south, in a region where the vegetation is, all through the year, green and sufficiently moist to give them proper sustenance. They are caught by the Arabs throughout these parts by a foot-trap, to which a log of wood is attached, not heavy enough to fix them to the spot, but only forming an impediment to their rapid flight, when they may be easily run down by a dog or an active man. Sometimes they are found starved to death with the trap and log attached to the foot. That they travel far is evidenced by the circumstance of their being occasionally taken with marks on them of their having escaped from traps used in the distant country of the Shillooks, where, in addition to the method of catching them described above, they are also trapped by the neck, a trap never used by the Arabs, as the animal sometimes dies by strangulation, rendering it unfit for the food of a good and pious Mohommedan. Their flesh is excellent eating, resembling venison, and, if prepared for the table in the same manner, is in no way inferior.

On the second day we travelled for nine hours and fifteen minutes. On arrival in camp Mohommed Effendi furnished me with the following notes of the journey:—

“Small stones, little sparse grass, and rolling sand till 11 o’clock.

“Rolling sand and stones till 12.

“Level, sandy, with stones and rock till 1.30.

“Rock to right and left till 2.

“Flat, sandy, till 3.40.

“Rocky till 5.10—end of journey. Few trees, no water, uninhabited. Met a donkey.”

Than these few short notes of the Lieutenant, it is impossible to give a better description of this desert.

The deserted donkey we found on the road offered us matter for as much speculation as the watch that Dr. Paley invites his readers to suppose they might find on a heath. We concluded it had not been there for ever, but how it got there at all was to us a puzzle. It was standing on the top of a slight rise, fixed and motionless, with its head hanging down to the ground, as though grazing, and was visible to us for nearly two hours before we reached it; but presenting only an end view, we could make nothing of its appearance at all. We supplied it with water and half a dozen Abernethy biscuits. It became a grateful friend and a useful servant, but the mystery of its existence we were never able to unravel.

After travelling for two hours on the following day we arrived at Mahtool on the border of the Wady Milkh, or Royal valley, a large extinct river, from ten to thirty miles wide, along the bed of which we proposed to travel to Darfoor. Its deepest part, for a width of two or three miles, contains a few thorn-trees and shrubs. Its sides are formed by a more or less interrupted series of sandstone rocks, marked and water-worn into picturesque and castellated forms. The outlet of this dried-up valley is at Dabbe, seventeen or eighteen miles higher up the Nile than Old Dongola. The last five miles of its ancient course have been entirely choked and obliterated by the rolling sand, so that at Dabbe no traces of this once gigantic tributary of the Nile are now discernible. The quantity of rain which falls on its area is never sufficiently large to give it a current in any part of its course; the water lies about in pools only in the rainy season, but wells sunk to a depth of thirty or forty feet will, I was told, always surely find it.

The wells at Mahtool are only two in number, but, unlike many others in the desert, never run dry and are always abundantly supplied with water, which is, however, brackish. They are situated in a small plain, about two hundred feet long by eighty feet wide, surrounded on all sides by sand-hills. There are no habitations near, the site being too near the latitude of the rainless district. The vegetation in the centre of the valley is very sparse, and the surrounding desert is, as I have described it, almost barren. We stayed here two days, in order to give the camels, which had fasted since our departure, an opportunity of feeding in the valley and of having a drink. On the morning of the 7th, having replenished our water-skins, we started again, following the Wady Milkh. The trees in the centre, consisting only of the thorniest varieties of the mimosa, became almost hourly more numerous and the scattered tufts of yellow grass more plentiful. Gazelles were running about in numbers, affording us good sport, and the sheep we had brought with us from Old Dongola were now sadly at a discount. On the second day we arrived at Sotaire, two wells in a little valley buried among the mountains about a mile distant to the east. The vegetation in the Wady Sotaire, though much greener and denser than that below, affords not a tree nor a blade of any kind of grass which the sheep, or even the camels, will eat, and our animals, after watering, had to be taken down into the Wady Milkh to feed. We pitched our tents in the neighbourhood of the wells, and decided to empty away all the brackish water we had brought from Mahtool, and refil the tanks and skins with the more palatable element of Sotaire.

Several wandering Arabs were stationed in the district, some of whom were drawing water for the large flocks of sheep, goats and cattle they had brought with them. The shiekh came into our camp shortly after our arrival and, after salaaming, said that he and his family and every one of his people wished to be our servants and our servants’ servants while we remained, and would draw water for us all. Yacoob brought coffee and cigarettes, which we drank and smoked with the venerable old shiekh, father of many families. He intended remaining for the dry season at Sotaire and should water run short, which it was sure to do, his sons and his oxen, his wives and his daughters (camels he had none) would leave daily for Mahtool, and bring up the necessary supplies.

Mohommed Effendi procured the names of the sub-tribes, some of each of whom were staying round the wells:

Welled Ochbeh.

Otoobeh.

El Khawachleh.

Barharrha.

Mahadeed.

Saragahbeh.

Horhab.

All of these belong to the great tribe of the Khababbeesh, the western limits of whose happy hunting-grounds is only reached on the borders of Darfoor.

It was a great gathering of the clans. For long years there had been an irreconcilable feud between the families of the Welled Ochbeh and the Otoobeh. Many years ago (the Lieutenant, who had been out among the people to learn the story, said a thousand, but I subsequently discovered it was only ten), a young girl of the Welled Ochbeh, while driving home an ox late at evening, had been suddenly set upon by a very bad man of the Otoobeh, who had beaten her and taken away her ox. She had, of course, cried very much, but was, nevertheless, determined to have revenge. All through the night she had tracked the spoiler, and seeing him, next morning, leaning over a well to draw water, she had crept stealthily behind him and, making a sudden rush, had fairly pushed him over into the well. Since then murders had constantly been taking place. The families with their relatives, from all parts of the desert, were now met for the purpose of reconciliation, to kill the fatted calf and hold a grand _fantasìa_. I wandered away from our tents after dinner and dark to the site of the Arab encampment, about half a mile distant among the stony mountains. The tents consisted only of four upright sticks in the sand, with a piece of rush matting spread over as a protection from the sun by day and the moon by night; they were about thirty in number, most of them placed in a semicircle—those of the meaner members of the society being on the outside. The women were nearly all still at work grinding corn; few of the men had arrived, and these were hunting up their musical instruments for the _fantasìa_, in which everyone, high and low, was to take part.

Among the crowd of Arabs, men and women, boys and girls, whom we found on our arrival round the wells, was a young girl about fourteen or fifteen years of age, and of extreme beauty. I named her in my mind “Rebecca,” and, like Abraham’s servant to Rebecca of old, introduced myself by begging her to draw me some water from the well; this she did, and gave me to drink from the gourd which she wore suspended from her neck. I found her again in the Arab camp surrounded by her friends grinding corn; the offer of my cigarette-case, for most Arab girls love to smoke, was sufficient excuse for sitting down next to them.

The _fantasìa_ commenced soon after. The old men with the shiekh in their centre seated themselves in a semi-circle smoking their “chibooks.” The musicians and singers were three boys with rude cane pipes giving forth two notes, or three at most; they placed themselves in a row in front of the shiekh, and alternately advanced and receded a few paces, playing on the pipes or singing. Melody or tune, to my untutored ear, there was none; the old men, however, as well as the rest of the audience, listened apparently entranced. Silence prevailed through the whole camp; only the shiekh, and occasionally one or two of the elders, ventured at intervals to whisper, “Teiyib, teiyib” (Good, good). The boys at length were tired, and, without saying a word, simply went away into the outer circle, and sat down and joined the spectators. Other three boys came forward after the lapse of two or three minutes, and repeated the performance with the same instruments, without varying the monotony in the least.

Throughout the long tedium of this terrible _fantasìa_ my lovely Arab friend was seated near me on the sand. Each of us was equally absorbed, she in intently watching the movements of the three droning musicians, I in contemplating the beauty of her dreaming moonlit face. I disturbed her from time to time to give her a cigarette, which I always previously lighted, as is the custom from a servant to a superior, or when the giver is desirous of doing honour to the person who accepts.

The _fantasìa_ continued until 10 or 11 o’clock, when a middle-aged woman, probably her mother, reminded the girl that the goats and sheep were still scattered abroad. She rose, and, wrapping her ten feet of Old Dongola cloth more closely round her form, proceeded to execute her mother’s commission. I took my departure shortly after, as all my interest in the _fantasìa_, which was interrupted only for a time, was now at an end. Half a mile distant I overtook her, directed to her presence by the sound of her voice, calling to collect the flocks, which was certainly more musical than the strains to which I had listened in the camp above. I expressed my appreciation of the _fantasìa_, and congratulated her upon the termination of the long feud which had existed between the Welled Ochbeh and the Otoobeh. Her sudden exclamation was, “La, la, la, la!” (No, no, no, no), and she energetically waved her forefinger in front of her face in order to emphasize her negative. _Fantasìas_ as great, or greater, even with six boys singing, and two men making additional music on tomtoms, had been held three or four times every year, as long as she could remember, with the object of reconciling the families; but this had always failed, the quarrel still remained, and would remain for ever. When the great shiekh was away, either a murder or some other outrage would be committed; then the shiekh would come back and cause another fantasia to be held, which would end, as all the others had ended, in effecting friendship only for a very short time.

The sheep and goats collected round her in obedience to her calls, and we wended our way slowly back to the neighbourhood of the camp. The music had recommenced, and sounded somewhat better from the distance.

We parted with many expressions of friendship and good-will, and I walked thoughtfully home to dream of the nut-brown Kabbabbeesh maid, whose like, for beauty and purity of face and soul, it has not been my lot to meet again in this or any other land.

[Decoration]