Ferdinand Werne

“ The very pretty straw-huts present nothing worth having to our rapacious eyes, and near them we remark the sleeping-places, and a large, glimmering heap of dung, serving at night for fire and a bed. The cow-dung is collected in little heaps in the enclosure, surrounded with palings, where the beast is tied, and is still quite fresh: notwithstanding this, it is very certain that we expect in vain the return this evening of these beautifully spotted cattle. Standing on an old trunk of a tree, I remarked a large village on the right shore at a quarter of an hour up the river. ”

“ It thunders, and we go with a west-wind right into the dark clouds. Half-past eleven o’clock, the rain has fortunately come on; the wind has changed from W. to N.E., and we go with oars again to E.N.E. A quarter before twelve, the wind blows freshly on the right shore of the reeds, where we make a whirl again, because the crew are tired out by their sleepless nights. Drops of rain only are falling, but the pell-mell confusion in which the vessels navigate is enough to drive one to despair: no taking to the oars—no wish to do anything—no command—the tailor-captain is sitting at his handy-work. ”

“ We go to the north. A poor little hamlet, surrounded and shaded by trees, on the left shore. Right and left the vessels squat, and accident alone makes us take the middle road. At the right, two small islands, distinguished, as usual here, by nothing except their succulent grass or reeds. Yet our vessel, proud at the start already gained, goes smack on the flat left shore, as if Nature did not shew shallows there to the most inexperienced mariner. One shock, and—we stick fast. Once more tokuls [96] peep through the trees of the left shore at some distance; negroes are collecting on the shore. ”

“ Now it is no longer so, the vessel goes far lower: where the wood does not grow on the shore, there is only a melancholy low country, and the cheerful ambak-acacias lie dry on the ground bent and dismembered, throwing out in vain their long shoots with small leaves and solitary little flowers, on the soil where some moisture still remains. ”

“ He first, for a long time, squats, as he used to do in the land of Sudàn, with the people here; plays with the glass beads,—holds the larger ones by themselves against the light, as if they were jewels; and the good Ethiopians become so confident and longing, that they can hold out no longer; and then he is very slow in giving any, so that the value increases in their eyes. They are not only, as I have before said, very mistrustful in this barter, but also so undecided, like children, that beads and goods are often given away and returned. ”

“ Priests or sorcerers do not appear to be assembled at these public sittings in judgment, which remind us of the ancient German institutions, because not a trace has been found, so far as I know, of any such men among these people. The great king, therefore, does not crack the criminal’s skull with the club-sceptre he usually carries, as I imagined on his first visit; but the very same views of a death without dishonour seem to prevail here as among the Shilluks, who do not slay the Arabs taken prisoners by them with the honourable spear, but beat them to death like a dog with the hassaie. ”

“ Perhaps the white faces of another world, our vessels larger than their palaces, in which we go up the river without oars, when the wind is favourable, and especially the thunder and explosion of our cannons and guns, might have been the principal motive that induced the wise council to come to the reasonable opinion that it would be a ticklish affair to spit us like bats, or to kill us like dogs with clubs. ”

“ Easterly deviations follow in the afternoon, and the mountain with two peaks seen from the mast before noon, shews itself in N. The river gains a majestic breadth for the short track it is free of islands; the anterior part of the shores is low and bordered with grass. Nile buffaloes which are in incredible numbers here, owing to the grass on the islands, greeted us twice to-day, and with such blows that Rassulla Effendi became quite pale. ”

“ We can form a tolerable idea of the momentary life and vigour there by comparing in Europe, acacias, planes, and poplars, on suitable soil; it is the most cheerful awakening after a long repose: but part of the limbs always continues in a sleep-like death, whether it be under the bark of the stem, or a bough that the sun scorches, or a runner become dry, which disfigures the whole tree. ”

“ Judging from the analogy of the stone hills I had seen in Kassela, and being fully persuaded that no violent rains from the mountains above, or flood from the Nile, could have so placed them, I took them to be ancient tombs, and searched for potsherds and other memorials of buildings that might have stood here, but in vain. Negro villages and cities disappear the moment they are not inhabited, like ignited bundles of straw, and the ashes do not remain on the ground. ”

“ When I view the steep and high slope of the shores of the Sobàt, and the proportionate thin layer of earth on the immovable strata of clay or original soil, which here is twenty to twenty-five feet higher than on the shore or in the bed of the Nile, I return to my former conviction, that the immeasurable particles of stone and plants stream by means of the breach, and flowing away of the lakes of the Ethiopian highlands, to the lake of the basin-shaped valley of the White Stream which flows off with the Nile, as the deepest point ”

“ Nine shots were fired one after the other, Suliman Kashef’s was the last, and it hit the animal behind the ear: the blood spouted up, and the monster fell, slain by man’s art, not by his courage. We had him dragged by the tow-rope of the sàndal to our landing-place, and I then found that the balls had pierced his neck and back, which might well happen, when we consider that the distance was only fifteen paces and that the beast had a fat hide, with no other shield than the yielding rumples, extending crossways over the back. ”

“ Was Africa, therefore, although in the same latitude as other countries,—for example, Arabia,—exclusively created for the black species, who, so far as I have had experience of them, will never leave the low grade of intelligence in which they have been for so long a time, until they come into a closer and more continuous association with whites? Anthropophagy, indeed, makes the Nile the partition-wall between Asia and Africa, instead of the Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea. ”

“ Notwithstanding the violent north wind, we set out again at half-past one o’clock, without even thinking of a visit of reconciliation to Làkono. What can the man think of us now? We who have got so many weapons, spears, bows, and clubs, from his people, and who certainly, in his eyes, have equally as many guns, do not give him even a single musket! We row at first, but soon tiring of this work, the vessels are allowed to drift with the stream, “Allah kerim,” and be tossed by the wind wherever it may drive them. ”

“ The royal gentlemen, however, with whom we stood on an old river bed of six feet high, were restless, and in a great hurry to take home their presents of a red coat and glass beads. The city is like all other villages, but large: the king’s palace consists of several straw tokuls lying together, encompassed as usual with a seriba; this also Nalewadtshòn had told us. The Ethiopian palaces, therefore, have not much to boast of; it is sufficient if the men in them be pleased and happy, and not oppressed by the cares of government and want of sustenance. ”

“ This is here six feet high, whilst, a hundred paces up the Nile, behind the young water-reeds, no elevation of the shores is observed. We remark no strata of earth on our shore, but clay and humus are closely mixed. At nine o’clock we navigate further, without the lust of our crew for meat being gratified, for the people seem to have driven away their goats, and they have nothing else. ”

“ Half-past four o’clock, N.W. The Haba on the right rises on downs; we see dome-palms also on it, but upon firm, dark earth, whilst the sand lies only on the surface. Moreover, these dome-palms are considerably higher than the dhellèbs. Violent storms cannot take place in these regions; I have never seen a single tree torn up by the wind. A quarter before five o’clock, from N.E. to N.N.W. The Haba remains and consoles us more than sufficiently for the arid shore, although green reeds and weeds struggle up here and there, and strike the roots deep into the vivifying water. ”

“ Our blacks are generally very much afraid of the report of guns, and do exactly as the Greeks did at the commencement of their war for freedom; they lay the butt-end on the thigh, and fire at random. On the White River, also, the report of these unknown weapons was more feared than the real danger itself. They listened to me; but then came the vessel of Captain Mohammed Agà, a fool-hardy Arnaut, who is always trying to distinguish himself in some way or another. He shouted to the sandal to cut away the rope, although the men were still on land. ”

“ The north wind is favourable. The black princes look at the sails, and seem to understand the thing, although the whole must appear colossal to them in comparison with their surtuks, as we perceive from their mutually drawing each other’s attention to them. The king’s brother, whose name is Nikelò, has a friendly-looking countenance; and his handsome Roman-like head, with the tolerably long curled hair, is encircled with a strip of fur instead of the laurel. On the right he wears a yellow copper, on the left a red copper bracelet. ”

“ I saw, indeed, trees shooting forth at this time in Taka, which boiling and cauldron-shaped valley may perhaps contain a tropical growth, or something like it; and plants springing up from the morass with incredible celerity and luxuriance, as if by magic. But trees that have true manly vigour, and strive to shoot out with sound strong muscles, whose pith is still clearly to be seen in the bark, with not a bough injured,—not a branch hanging down withered,—these are sought for in vain in the Tropics, so far as I have seen. ”

“ They are real giants. Go on shore, look at the Turks, the Christians, and our other companions,—what children they seem standing in the middle of this crowd of Titans. Half-past four o’clock. Rocks shew themselves, for the first time, in the river. Three large, and several small ones form an ominous crossline for our voyage. At five o’clock we halt at an island near these rocks. Here there are picturesque materials enough, and nothing shall prevent me from taking a panorama of this region.
The people appear to be favoured of God as of heaven itself. ”

“ No beard is developed either in young or old, and yet it does not appear that they use a cosmetic to extirpate it. If Selim Capitan pleased them better with his smooth shaven chin, than the long-bearded Suliman Kashef, yet they exhibited a kind of horror when he shewed them his hairy breast, which perhaps appeared to them more fit for a beast than a man. ”

“ On all sides, therefore, plenty of mountains, stones, and rocks; the great buildings in the interior of Africa are no longer a fable to me! If the nation of Bari has had internal strength enough to pursue the road of cultivation for thousands of years, what has prevented it not only from rising from its natural state, but also from appropriating to itself the higher European cultivation? ”

“ So, also, the beautiful fine-grained salt, brought from thence to Bari, is not the rock-salt of the desert, but is extracted from the brackish water and slime, according to the form of the vessels in which it has been boiled. I have seen, however, in the great tract of country between the lower Atbara and the Red Sea, that a land subject to tropical rains—although, as in Africa, without rivers and streams—can provide, even in the dry season, men and animals with water from its earthly womb—that is, from the torrents and water-tanks. ”

“ Although he looks very fierce, yet he cannot renounce his nature as a tailor, and is continually asking me whether we are in any danger and begs me, for the holy Madonna’s sake, to take care that we return as speedily as possible, for he would rather a thousand times live with his devil of a wife, than venture again so far among the heathens. Arnaud is jealous at Suliman Kashef having purchased a young girl with his beads, and by the assistance of Duschoïl, the interpreter, prettier than his little sailor’s trull, whom he has hung with glass beads from head to foot. ”

“ Eight o’clock. N.W. On the left a long tokul-village of the Kèks, with ambak-hedges, instead of the solitary little court-yards of the houses; the sleeping-places open above, and plastered below. We no longer perceive magazines erected on stakes: the people here never seem to think of the morrow. On all sides uncultivated soil, and that has been the case for some time. ”