Having Been Drunk Every Day
In Khartoum, And Now Being Separated From His Liquor, He Is Plunged Into
A Black Melancholy.
He sits upon the luggage like a sick rook, doing
minstrelsy, playing the rababa (guitar), and smoking the whole day,
unless asleep, which is half that time:
He is sighing after the merissa
(beer) pots of Egypt. This man is an illustration of missionary success.
He was brought up from boyhood at the Austrian mission, and he is a
genuine specimen of the average results. He told me a few days ago that
"he is no longer a Christian." There are two varieties of convolvolus
growing here; also a peculiar gourd, which, when dry and divested of its
shell, exposes a vegetable sponge, formed of a dense but fine network of
fibers; the seeds are contained in the center of this fiber. The bright
yellow flowers of the ambatch, and of a tree resembling a laburnum, are
in great profusion. The men completely done: I served them out a measure
of grog. The "Clumsy" not in sight.
Jan. 8th. - Waited all night for the "Clumsy." She appeared at 8 A.M.,
when the reis and several men received the whip for laziness. All three
vessels now rounded a sharp turn in the river, and the wind being then
favorable, we were soon under sail. The clear water of the river from
the Bahr el Gazal to this point, does not exceed a hundred and twenty
yards in width. The stream runs at one and three-quarter miles per hour,
bringing with it a quantity of floating vegetation. The fact of a strong
current both above and below the Bahr el Gazal junction, while the lake
at that point is dead water, proves that I was right in my surmise, that
no water flows from the Bahr el Gazal into the Nile during this season,
and that the lake and the extensive marshes at that locality are caused
as much by the surplus water of the White Nile flowing into a
depression, as they are by the Bahr el Gazal, the water of the latter
river being absorbed by the immense marshes.
Yesterday we anchored at a dry spot, on which grew many mimosas of the
red bark variety; the ground was a dead flat, and the river was up to
the roots of the trees near the margin; thus the river is quite full at
this season, but not flooded. There was no watermark upon the stems of
the trees; thus I have little doubt that the actual rise of the
water-level during the rainy season is very trifling, as the water
extends over a prodigious extent of surface, the river having no banks.
The entire country is merely a vast marsh, with a river flowing through
the midst. At this season last year I was on the Settite. That great
river and the Atbara were then excessively low.
The Blue Nile was also low at the same time.
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