This Fish Had Lungs Resembling
Delicate Branches Of Red Coral, And, If Kept Moist, It Would
Exist Upon The Land For Many Hours Like An Eel.
It smelt strongly
of musk, but it was gladly accepted by the Sheik of Sofi, who
immediately answered to the flag.
"While shooting this morning I came suddenly upon a small species
of leopard that had just killed a snake about five feet in
length; the head was neatly bitten off and lay upon the ground
near the body; the animal was commencing a meal off the snake
when it was disturbed, and I lost sight of it immediately in the
high grass.
"September 28.--The heat is most oppressive: even the nights are
hot, until about 2 A.M., at which hour a cool breeze springs up.
The wind now blows from the south until about 1 P.M., when it
changes suddenly to the north, and then varies between these two
points during the rest of the day; this leads me to hope that the
north wind will shortly set in. September, as in England, is the
autumn of this land; the wild fruits are ripe, some of which are
not unpleasant, but they are generally too sweet,--they lack the
acidity that would be agreeable in this burning climate. There is
an orange-coloured berry that has a pleasant flavour, but it is
extremely oily; this has a peculiarly disagreeable effect upon
the system, if eaten in any quantity. Several varieties of
excellent wild vegetables grow in great abundance throughout this
country: beans, three kinds of spinach; the juicy, brittle plant
cultivated in Lower Egypt, and known as the 'regle;' and lastly,
that main-stay of Arab cookery, 'waker,' well known in Ceylon and
India under the names of 'Barmian' and 'Bandikai.' This grows to
the height of thirteen or fourteen feet in the rich soil of the
table lands: the Arabs gather the pods and cut them into thin
slices; these are dried in the sun, and then packed in large
sacks for market. The harvest of waker is most important, as no
Arab dish would be perfect without the admixture of this
agreeable vegetable. The dried waker is ground into powder
between two stones; this, if boiled with a little gravy, produces
a gelatinous and highly-flavoured soup.
"September 29.--We have just heard that Atalan Wat Said, by whom
we were so well received, is dead! The Arabs have a disagreeable
custom of paying honours to a guest by keeping the anniversary of
the death of any relatives whose decease should be known to them;
thus, when Atalan Wat Said paid a visit to Sheik Achmet Abou
Sinn, the latter celebrated with much pomp the anniversary of his
(Atalan's) late father's death. The unfortunate guest, who
happened to arrive in Abou Sinn's camp upon the exact day upon
which his father had died in the precedimig year, was met by a
mourning crowd, with the beating of drums, the howling of women,
and the loud weeping and sorrowful condoling of the men. This
scene affected Atalan Wat Said to such a degree, that, being
rather unwell, he immediately sickened with fever, and died in
three days. In this country any grief of mind will insure an
attack of fever, when all are more or less predisposed during the
unhealthy season, from the commencement of July until the end of
October.
"This afternoon I took the rod, and having caught a beautiful
silver-sided fish of about a pound weight, I placed it upon a
large single hook fastened under the back fin. In about an hour
I had a run, but upon striking, I pulled the bait out of the
fish's mouth, as the point of the hook had not touched the jaw.
I had wound up slowly for about thirty yards, hoping that the big
fellow would follow his lost prize, as I knew him to be a large
fish by his attack upon a bait of a pound weight. I found my bait
was killed, but having readjusted the hook, I again cast it in
the same direction, and slowly played it towards me. I had him!
He took it immediately, and I determined to allow him to swallow
it before I should strike. Without a halt, about a hundred yards
of line were taken at the first rush towards the middle of the
river; he then stopped, and I waited for about a minute, and then
fixed him with a jerk that bent my bamboo like a fly-rod. To this
he replied by a splendid challenge; in one jump he flew about six
feet above the water, and showed himself to be one of the most
beautiful fish I had ever seen; not one of those nondescript
antediluvian brutes that you expect to catch in these
extraordinary rivers, but in colour he appeared like a clean run
salmon. He gave tremendous play, several times leaping out of the
water, and shaking his head furiously to free himself from the
hook; then darting away with eighty or a hundred yards of fresh
line, until he at last was forced to yield to the strong and
elastic bamboo, and his deep body stranded upon the fatal
shallows.
"Bacheet was a charming lad to land a fish: he was always quiet
and thoughtful, and never got in the way of the line; this time
he closely approached him from behind, slipped both his hands
along his side, and hooked his fingers into the broad gills; thus
he dragged him, splashing through the shallows, to the sandbank.
What a beauty! What was he? The colour was that of a salmon, and
the scales were not larger in proportion: he was about fifty
pounds' weight. The back fin resembled that of a perch, with
seven rays; the second, dorsal fin towards the tail had fourteen
rays; the head was well shaped, and small in proportion; the eyes
were bright red, and shone like rubies; and the teeth were very
small.
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