Hadji Achmet was
a hardy, powerful, dare-devil-looking Turk, while Hadji Velli was the
perfection of politeness, and as gentle as a lamb.
My new allies
procured me three donkeys in addition to the necessary baggage camels,
and we started from Berber on the evening of the 10th of June for the
junction of the Atbara River With the Nile.
Mahomet, Achmet, and Ali are equivalent to Smith, Brown, and Thompson.
Accordingly, of my few attendants, my dragoman was Mahomet, and my
principal guide was Achmet, and subsequently I had a number of Alis.
Mahomet was a regular Cairo dragoman, a native of Dongola, almost black,
but exceedingly tenacious regarding his shade of color, which he
declared to be light brown. He spoke very bad English, was excessively
conceited, and irascible to a degree. He was one of those dragomans who
are accustomed to the civilized expeditions of the British tourist to
the first or second cataract, in a Nile boat replete with conveniences
and luxuries, upon which the dragoman is monarch supreme, a whale among
the minnows, who rules the vessel, purchases daily a host of unnecessary
supplies, upon which he clears his profit, until he returns to Cairo
with his pockets filled sufficiently to support him until the following
Nile season. The short three months' harvest, from November until
February, fills his granary for the year. Under such circumstances the
temper should be angelic.
But times had changed. To Mahomet the very idea of exploration was an
absurdity.
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