Upon Our Arrival At Sofi We Were Welcomed By The Sheik, And By A German,
Florian, Who Was Delighted To See Europeans.
He was a sallow,
sickly-looking man, who with a large bony frame had been reduced from
constant hard
Work and frequent sickness to little but skin and sinew.
He was a mason, who had left Germany with the Austrian mission to
Khartoum, but finding the work too laborious in such a climate, he and a
friend, who was a carpenter, had declared for independence, and they had
left the mission. They were both enterprising fellows, and sportsmen;
therefore they had purchased rifles and ammunition, and had commenced
life as hunters. At the same time they employed their leisure hours in
earning money by the work of their hands in various ways.
I determined to arrange our winter quarters at Sofi for three months'
stay, during which I should have ample time to gain information and
complete arrangements for the future. I accordingly succeeded in
purchasing a remarkably neat house for ten piastres (two shillings). The
architecture was of an ancient style, from the original design of a
pill-box surmounted by a candle extinguisher. I purchased two additional
huts, which were erected at the back of our mansion, one as the kitchen,
the other as the servants' hall.
In the course of a week we had as pretty a camp as Robinson Crusoe
himself could have coveted. We had a view of about five miles in extent
along the valley of the Atbara, and it was my daily amusement to scan
with my telescope the uninhabited country upon the opposite side of the
river and watch the wild animals as they grazed in perfect security. We
were thoroughly happy at Sofi. There was a delightful calm and a sense
of rest, a total estrangement from the cares of the world, and an
enchanting contrast in the soft green verdure of the landscape before
us, to the many hundred weary miles of burning desert through which we
had toiled from Lower Egypt.
Time glided away smoothly until the fever invaded our camp. Florian
became seriously ill. My wife was prostrated by a severe attack of
gastric fever, which for nine days rendered her recovery almost
hopeless. Then came the plague of boils, and soon after a species of
intolerable itch, called the coorash. I adopted for this latter a
specific I had found successful with the mange in dogs, namely,
gunpowder, with one fourth sulphur added, made into a soft paste with
water, and then formed into an ointment with fat. It worked like a charm
with the coorash.
Faith is the drug that is supposed to cure the Arab; whatever his
complaint may be, he applies to his Faky or priest. This minister is not
troubled with a confusion of book-learning, neither are the shelves of
his library bending beneath weighty treatises upon the various maladies
of human nature; but he possesses the key to all learning, the talisman
that will apply to all cases, in that one holy book, the Koran.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 26 of 175
Words from 12986 to 13501
of 90207
