In This Form
He Is Transported, Perhaps Some Hundred Miles, Slung Upon A Camel, With
The Thermometer Above 130 Degrees Fah.
In the sun, and he is conveyed to
the village that is so fortunate as to be honored with his remains.
It
may be readily imagined that with a favorable wind the inhabitants are
warned of his approach some time before his arrival.
Happily, long before we arrived at Sofi, the village had been blessed by
the death of a celebrated Faky, a holy man who would have been described
as a second Isaiah were the annals of the country duly chronicled. This
great "man of God," as he was termed, had departed this life at a
village on the borders of the Nile, about eight days' hard camel-journey
from Sofi; but from some assumed right, mingled no doubt with jobbery,
the inhabitants of Sofi had laid claim to his body, and he had arrived
upon a camel horizontally, and had been buried about fifty yards from
the site of our camp. His grave was beneath a clump of mimosas that
shaded the spot, and formed the most prominent object in the foreground
of our landscape. Thither every Friday the women of the village
congregated, with offerings of a few handfuls of dhurra in small
gourd-shells, which they laid upon the grave, while they ATE THE HOLY
EARTH in small pinches, which they scraped like rabbits, from a hole
they had burrowed toward the venerated corpse. This hole was about two
feet deep from continual scratching, and must have been very near the
Faky.
Although thus reverent in their worship, the Arab's religion is a sort
of adjustable one. The wild boar, for instance, is invariably eaten by
the Arab hunters, although in direct opposition to the rules of the
Koran. I once asked them what their Faky would say if he were aware of
such a transgression. "Oh!" they replied, "we have already asked his
permission, as we are sometimes severely pressed for food in the
jungles. He says, `If you have the KORAN in your hand and NO PIG, you
are forbidden to eat pork; but if you have the PIG in your hand and NO
KORAN, you had better eat what God has given you.'"
CHAPTER V.
A primitive craft - Stalking the giraffes - My first giraffes - Rare sport
with the finny tribe - Thieving elephants.
For many days, while at Sofi, we saw large herds of giraffes and
antelopes on the opposite side of the river, about two miles distant. On
September 2d a herd of twenty-eight giraffes tempted me at all hazards
to cross the river. So we prepared an impromptu raft. My angarep
(bedstead) was quickly inverted. Six water-skins were inflated, and
lashed, three on either side. A shallow packing- case, lined with tin,
containing my gun, was fastened in the centre of the angarep, and two
towlines were attached to the front part of the raft, by which swimmers
were to draw it across the river.
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