|
Voyage to Meroe and the White Nile in 1819-1822, by Frederick Cailliaud. (Published in 1823-1826 by the Imprimerie Royale in Paris.)
Chapter 44
Interview
with Divan Effendy. - Report on Ibrahim Pasha's expedition. - Dinka
Province. - Character and customs of the Negroes who inhabit it. -
Their food. - Interview with Toussoun bey. - Departure from Sennàr;
aspect of the country. - Passage of the Blue River. - Arrival at Halfay
(p.74).
ON February 27 [1822], at daybreak, I went up to the
city and knocked on the door of our old home. I found our good
hostesses there, and the pleasure of seeing each other again was equal
on both sides. They expressed the surprise and joy they felt at our
return, and congratulated us effusively on having escaped the dangers
we had encountered. In less than half an hour, we were arranged in our
accommodation. I immediately paid a visit to Divan-Effendy, who
commanded the garrison. He seemed charmed by my arrival, and
overwhelmed me with questions about all the particularities of our
laborious and almost insignificant campaign. When I told him that the
income from these gold mines on which we relied so much did not merit
that we prolong (p.75) the current expedition, nor that we undertake
new ones, his face blossomed; because he had no doubt that if it had
been otherwise, his turn would soon have come to travel through these
wild regions, of which I had no reason to paint an attractive picture
for him. I gave him the letters that Ismayim had sent for him after
having read them, he told me that they contained the order to provide
me with all the camels I would need to return to Egypt; that he was
also instructed to advance me the necessary funds for this trip.
As
I could obtain some in Dongofah, I only took five thousand Turkish
piastres, and I gave notice to my correspondents in Cairo, so that they
could reimburse it to the khazneh of Ismàyi pasha. Divan-Effendy told
me about all the worries he had never ceased to be prey to, either
about our fate or that of the troops entrusted to his command. The
'couriers that Ismayi sent were stopped on the roads. The rebels,
taking advantage of this total interruption of communications, spread
the most sinister rumors about the disasters of the Pasha's army. The
persuasion that this army no longer existed had emboldened the natives;
the sedition took on the most alarming characteristics. (p.76);
Already, in some villages, the soldiers who were garrisoning there had
been massacred.
Fortunately, the arrival of Ibrahim's troops had
suppressed the excitement; but there were still symptoms of
insurrection in the provinces of Haifay and Chendy. This last
circumstance was very worrying for us. The boat in which we had come
had immediately continued on its route; However convenient this way of
traveling was, it could not agree with my plans: the boat had to stop
anywhere; I would therefore have had to renounce all kinds of
explorations, and it was a course that I would only have wanted to take
at the last extremity. I therefore decided to make my return to Egypt
by land. The state of languor in which Mr. Letorzec still found himself
obliged me to leave soon. Divan-Effendy promised that he would have me
escorted to Arbagui, and that he would give me an order so that all the
village chiefs would then have me accompanied by trusted men.
I
had hoped that I would see ibises again on my return to Sennàr; but it
was no longer possible for me to discover a single one [1]. The natives
call (p.77) this bird assimbira; it is black with a few bronze-green
feathers on its wings; the beak and tail are of medium size. We also
find Sennarunibis Mane; It's called bilibily. These birds only inhabit
the valley of the Nile a few months before the rains fall; blacks
especially are very common. They are quite familiar, and often perch on
the top of cabins. At the start of the rainy season, they disappear
completely. In the countries covered with woods that we traveled, up to
10 degrees north, not a single one was ever visible to our eyes. When
these birds appear in the Nile mud, we only see a small number of them
reaching up to i'Atba.rah. We ate one on the island of Meroe; its meat
tasted like fish.
I questioned
some natives about the sudden and general desertion of the ibises. They
told me that these birds act like men, who flee, at the same time as
them, the (p.78) pernicious stay of the banks of the river, and that
they retreat towards the wooded and deserted regions of the interior,
where they feed on small reptiles and insects. This fact would once
again confirm the reports of ancient authors, who said that the ibises
emigrate part of the year to go and fight the snakes on the limits of
the desert, a benefit for which their recognition deserved great fame.
Mr.
Linan, a French traveler, whom Mr. Binks, a scholar from London,
employed to draw ancient monuments, had come to Sennàr during our
absence. He had followed Ibrahym, whose failing health forced him to
return to Egypt
I did not want to leave without having gathered
exact information on the expedition of this pasha in the province of
Dinka, and on the people who inhabit it. No one was better suited to
provide me with it than Mr. Asphar, a Coptic doctor, who spoke French,
and he obliged with extreme kindness.
Ibrahym did not go beyond
eI-Qérébyn; his illness, worsening from day to day, forced him, as I
have said, to leave command. After fourteen days of marching from
(p.77) the Blue River his troops arrived at Dinka, on the White River.
On
September 27, the majority of the negroes had fled; However, we managed
to catch five or six hundred. The village of Dinka gives its name to
the province which begins at approximately Sennâr, and continues in the
southwest very far along the river. It would have been important to fix
the position of this village; I estimate that it is at 11° latitude, in
the parallel of Fazoql. The products of the province seem to be the
same as those of Bertàt. The Negroes there are well built, strong and
vigorous; they go naked. The women gird themselves with a skin in the
form of a short petticoat; the girls only wear a small skin which
covers the lower part of their backs and is tied in front. The chief's
distinctive hairstyle was a white turban, with a plume of ostrich
feathers. The children of rich families wear a bell hanging from their
behinds; elderly people have one attached to their arm. Depending on
their wealth, women and especially girls adorn themselves in greater or
lesser quantities with necklaces and belts made of Venetian tales [2],
although Venice is not the only country where this article is made,
(p.80) ivory buttons, ivory or iron bracelets, and rings, also in iron;
when children reach the age of puberty, they have their four lower
incisor teeth removed; these teeth, according to the way of seeing
these Negroes, are useless and disfigure the face; men and women shave
their heads; they remove the hair from the rest of their husbands'
bodies, who reciprocally render the same service to them. A man can
take as many wives as he can give oxen or cows. On the wedding day, the
new spouses take care to smear their bodies and faces with a large
quantity of grease, which soon makes them exhale an unbearable stench:
in their eyes it is nonetheless a highly sought-after cosmetic, and
which in no way harms their sense of smell. They leave the marital
cabin, covered in a very thick layer of tallow, and expose themselves
to the sun to melt it and rub themselves. These frictions are the
delight of the Dinka negroes, and they obtain this enjoyment as
frequently as they can; they claim, which one can easily believe, that
they are very beneficial to their health; but it is also (p.81) a
matter of coquetry, especially for women.
Before
contracting marriage, the future must build a cabin: this is where the
nuptial feast is given. He who has the means kills an ox; he sells to
his neighbors the meat that he judges to exceed what his guests will
consume. When a negro who has become old, I have been told, has wives
who are still young, he gives his male children, if he has any, the
right to replace him with them. The women are astonishingly fertile;
They most often give birth to two children at the same time. It is not
uncommon to see a mother breastfeeding a child, followed by another who
can barely walk, and carrying two or three of them on her back in a
sort of leather haversack. If a husband surprises her woman in
adultery, he kills the man who seduced her, then drags him by the feet,
digs a deep pit, and buries him there. In winter, and in the rainy
season, the nights being very cold, they lie down to sleep in warm
ashes.
They smoke tobacco which they harvest; their pipes can
contain two or three ounces; the tube they adapt to it is a large reed
three to four feet long. Their way of living differs little from that
of the other peoples of (p.82) Bertât. They grind, between two stones,
the dough they make with the durah flour, and leave it to ferment for
twenty-four hours so that it sours; then they cook it in earthenware
vessels, and eat it hot, after having been seasoned with fat and salt,
sometimes with sour milk, or with pounded and boiled okra; in the
absence of these fruits, they dry green durah stalks over the fire,
pound them, boil them in the same way, and obtain sugared water which
serves as a condiment. They are very fond of beef flesh, and have very
little regard for that of goat or sheep; the flesh of the elephant is
strong in their taste; They also eat this from giraffe, deer, wild ox
and other animals. These meats are brought to them by the Arabs of
Bertât and Bouroum, and they give sheep or spun cotton in exchange.
Their weapons are very heavy spears (fig.2), the iron with which they are
equipped is up to a foot and a half in length and five inches in width.
They also mount straight, sharp horns on sticks, and sometimes iron
darts. Finally, they use a type of short club, large at one end and
pointed at the other. They throw this weapon with skill (p.83) at a
great distance, giving it a rotational movement, so that One of the two
ends must hit the goal. Their shields, made, it is said, of elephant
skin, are very large and very heavy.
By their courage and their
numbers, they made themselves formidable to their neighbors of Bouroum
and Bertàt, among whom they made incursions. These hostilities
sometimes attract unfortunate reprisals from the latter, who come
together to take revenge. When accepting combat, they place their wives
and children in their midst, and await the enemy firmly. As soon as he
advances, platoons of six or eight detach themselves alternately, and,
vibrating their heavy lances with a sure and practiced hand, make them
fly towards him at an interval of thirty or forty paces. If they see
themselves unable to put up any longer resistance, they flee and leave
their women and children there, who remain in the power of the victors.
If the women recognize that the enemy is too numerous for it to be
possible to face him with any hope of success, they throw themselves on
their husbands, seize them by the middle of the body and conjure them
to (p.84) not expose themselves to inevitable danger.
They yield
to these exhortations, throw down their spears, their shields, and sit
on the ground next to their women. Their adversaries then run up and
seize them without firing a shot. In the event that, although in force,
a party of negroes begins to give up, the women take part in the action
and fight fiercely if fortune betrays their courage, they show their
rage by biting everything that comes within their reach. reach, and
tear with their teeth the hands of their conquerors who come to chain
them. When an enemy leader falls under their blows, they subject him to
the mutilation of which I have already spoken, place his body on a pyre
and burn it.
Dressing wounds is reduced to washing them; if the
river is near the battlefield, the wounded person is immersed in it.
The strength and beneficent mood of the Dinka negroes make them seek
out neighboring meliks, who endeavor to attract them into their troops,
or to make them auxiliaries, by sending them messages. presence of
livestock. This is how the meliks above Sennâr are always on good terms
with these negroes. Every year, during the rainy season, they come to
Bouroum, to (p.85) their neighbors of the Goui, Rore, Qérébyn
mountains, who depend on the Sennâr to exchange slaves and cattle, and
stock up on durah. A large ox is given for two calves, five or six
sheep for one ox, a large ox for a small cow in terms of domestic
animals, females always have a higher market value. On their way back,
if they find a small village, they kidnap men, women, children,
livestock and crops. The following year, they will on the other hand
exchange the prisoners they have in their hands; and it sometimes
happens that relatives find and thus redeem some of their relatives who
have been taken from them.
Their cabins are built like those I
have already described. They use hollowed-out tree trunks to navigate
the White River, and steer them with oars with wide tips. They kill
with spears the animals whose meat they want to eat; if it is an ox,
they tie its four feet and make it fall first.
The stars, I was
told, are the object of their worship. They have a dialect that is
their own. It is assured that the negroes who live above (p.86) them
are cannibals and use poisoned arrows, and that to the west of the
river, there are other negroes no less barbaric, than we call Chelouks.
At Dinka, the river is very wide. The inhabitants of Mount Goul and
Rore, like those of et-Hérébyn, call themselves Muslims and practice
circumcision.
The Turkish troops remained eight days at Dinka;
and, retracing their steps as far as Rore, they made a small incursion
from there on Mounts Bouck and Taby, where we had gone [3] ourselves.
They took two hundred negroes from Tàby, and returned by eI-Qërébyn to
Sennâr.
Toussoun Bey, who remained head of Ibrahim's army corps,
had endeared himself to the troops. He had not allowed the captured
Negroes to be treated with this revolting inhumanity which had so often
broken my heart; he wanted their needs to be provided for as best as
possible, and above all that they should not be made to endure the
agonies of thirst. I went to visit him and he made me have coffee and
smoke a pipe. He then told me that he wanted to give me a very amusing
show. Armed with a rifle loaded with bullets, he began to take aim at
an Arab who was in the river: the shot went off, this man took the
(p.87) dive and reappeared a moment later.
The same process
begins several times; and each time the reappearance of the Arab
excites long, loud bursts of laughter from the spectators. Finally he
came out of the water and came to kiss the hand of the bey, who gave
him a few piastres. For eight years, Toussoun told me, he had been
shooting at this man without being able to catch him. I hastened to
take leave of him, for fear that he might take the fancy to start up
again a pastime which did not seem at all laughable to me. Like Ismayi,
he recommended that I tell Mohammed-AIy that he had been given an
infinitely too advantageous idea of the country where his troops had
suffered so much, without any results of any importance. As for him,
all his wishes were to return to Cairo: chiefs, soldiers, servants, all
congratulated us and wished for the happiness we would soon have in
seeing the beautiful sky of Egypt again. I would have liked to pass
through Kourdofan, where Mohammed Bey commanded; I would have found in
him a former protector, and in his doctor, Doctor Marucki, a true
friend; finally this country would have offered me a soil that the eyes
of no observer had yet explored.
I was (p.88) forced to give up
this attractive project; my unfortunate companion would have succumbed,
undoubtedly to the length of the journey. There was no one to whom I
could entrust him in the state of weakness in which he found himself. I
got myself a karmut [4] which we attached to a camel; we then laid him
down inside; and we left Sennâr on March 1, accompanied by a village
sheikh and some troops who came with us as far as Arbagui. In the
evening, we stopped at the large village of Taïbah. I was surprised to
find it abandoned; the inhabitants, already overburdened with taxes by
the pasha, seeing themselves still plundered with each passage of
troops, had decided to retire to the other bank of the river, and lived
there wandering in the woods. Masters of our time, we only did short
days of five to six hours of (p.89) walking.
We
slept on March 2 at Ad-deneyqeyieh, a village on the river, and also
almost deserted; the 3rd, at eI-Qesseyreh, and the 4th at Ouad Modeyn.
We had passed through several villages where the same solitude still
reigned. I was bored with the sad and tiring monotony of this flat
country, where the view is constantly lost on immense and uncultivated
piaines, and only at large intervals discovers a few bouquets of
acacias, and especially nebkas, trees which are very common up to the
height of Ouâd-Taraby. Through Mirage Window, these masses of plants,
which almost always appeared in the distance to the west, had the
appearance of green islands dominating above the waters.
Ismayl,
who had not forgotten the murderous influence that their stay in Sennâr
during the rainy season had exerted on his soldiers, had charged me
with looking for a suitable position to camp there when this disastrous
time returned; I had received the same recommendation from
Divan-Effendy. I judged that the neighborhood of Ouad-Modeyn met your
required conditions, and I let them know. I subsequently learned that
this opinion had been adopted.
On
March 5, the road deviated further from the (p.90) river we left behind
us many large villages, a second among others called Taïbah, located a
league from the river. Everywhere we passed, the kaïmajtans [5] eagerly
came running to us, to learn news of Ismâyl's expedition. We slept at
el-Massalamy.
On the 6th, we rested for an hour in the woods of
Arbagui, a memorable place in the splendor of the Foungis. It is there
that, coming from the River Bianc, they once fought the people who
inhabited the Sennâr, remained victorious and made themselves masters
of the country. Arbagui was a fairly important city, judging by the
ruins of buildings built in earth which are still scattered on its
site: woods populated by monkeys and other animals today surround these
ruins and partly cover them. We left the good sheykh who accompanied us
here and two hours later, we stopped at Ouâd-Eddefroué, to spend the
night. On the 7th, we passed Abo'cherâ, a large village of which I took
a view which will be enough to give an idea of all those in Sennâr.
(Vol. I, pl.VIII.) (p.91) We came to sleep at Ouàd-Taràby. Each day
brought us a few leagues closer to Egypt and there. France this thought
somewhat revived Mr. Letorzec's strength; the hope of seeing his
homeland again was finally reborn in his soul.
On March 8, at
two o'clock we arrived at the village of An-noubah, where the boats are
for passing the new ship; we had to cross it here, to follow the right
bank. At the sight of us, the boatmen fled; Our clothing of Osmanlis
had frightened them. We made every effort to encourage them to return
without fear; they had left their boat at our discretion but they had
taken the oars; my embarrassment was extreme. I showed them from afar
the money I wanted to give them; They seemed to believe that it was a
misleading suggestion that I was presenting to them. Finally I threw
them a Spanish piaster, and left so that they could come and collect
it. They approached trembling; one of them held out his hand as if to
give me back this coin, which seemed to them to be a very generous
salary from a man of my dress.
These poor people told us that
every day the soldiers beat them to pay for their pain; (p.92) that
this was the motive which had led them to flee. We got on a boat with
our luggage; two others swam our camels across. Over three quarters of
its width, the river had only 4 feet of water. We had only to be proud
of the zeal of our boatmen, who, for their part, were very pleased, but
very surprised that a Turk had provided them with such a good windfall.
We set foot on land in the province of Haifay, formerly the Island of
Meroe. After an hour and a half of walking, we slept in el-Hassalat, a
large village near the river.
I had almost always followed the
west bank of the river on my way; I now wanted to follow, as much as
possible, the eastern bank, to acquire a more accurate idea of the
country, and to accurately recognize the large bend that the Seuve
makes in the province of Robàtàt. On March 9, we encountered el-Eylfoun
and Hellet-Édris, two villages of some appearance, one of which is a
quarter of a league and the other half a league from the river.
We
passed early on the rubble of Sôbah I stopped there again, to travel
them again; I found nothing more than what Gavais observed when we then
left (p.93) the villages of Amdôm, Korkoi, Meryok. Here the road
deviates from the river to cut the angle that the Nile does in its
junction with the Blue River. The whole country between Ei-E'Ylfun and
Halfay is appointed Gouba Ayeli. At seven o'clock in the evening, we
arrived in Halfay.
Footnotes:
1. I consoled myself by
thinking that one of these birds, whose remains I had sent to Cairo,
was safe, but I learned later that Mr. Champion, vice-consul in Cairo,
whose home it was he had deposited and relinquished it in favor of a
Prussian naturalist. Let us hope that this curious object, lost to me,
will not be lost at least for the sciences because I learn that this
traveler has just arrived in Berlin, where he is busy publishing the
materials he has collected.
2.
We call conterie, Venice, different species of glassware, and this name
has spread in the trade, although Venice is not the only country
where this article is manufactured. We should write accounts.
3.
This circumstance, which upset me so much, really was the cause of our
salvation by prolonging our stay in these countries; impatient of the
yoke, we would have found ourselves in the middle of the uprisings and
massacres of which they later became the scene.
4. A kind of long
basket, in which the Arabs transport their women when traveling. (see
vol I. pl. LXIII, to the left of the drawing,)
5. Junior officers, responsible for ensuring the return of contributions.
[Continue to Chapter 45]
[Return to Table of Contents]
|
v |