Fallow Years, 18441849 201 



very next afternoon. We settled to leave the boat, her captain and cr^w under the 

 charge of Bob, our Arab pipe boy, as our representative, who rose easily to the position 

 and they had orders to take the boat to Wadi Haifa and await us tlu-rc. This was in 

 mid January, we expected to return, as we did, early in March. We got off on camel 

 back in the afternoon and encamped 3 miles from Korosko and next morning started 

 fairly off. It was a desert, like the skeleton of the earth, with sand blown clean away 

 from the bare stones, or lying here and there in drifts, table topped hills. Evard had 

 some sort of eruptive fever and was frightfully depressed and lamenting, then Boulton 

 got it and bore bravely up. It was hard lines for them. The water 4 days from Korosko, 

 the only wells on the route, was brack and undrinkable ; that in our water skins was 

 horrible with the taste of leather. The waste of desert was terrible, and the way was 

 marked by bones of slaves and camels. Often a dead camel was desiccated; it looked 

 fairly right but when touched broke and crumbled into dust, all the inside was blown 

 away, or eaten away by the ants leaving the skin and part of the bones. These 

 desiccated bodies were so light, that I once held up what appeared to be half a camel 

 when first seen and as it lay untouched. Our guide, a son or nephew of the Great 

 Sheikh, was a jovial gay fellow and we all became excellent friends. Others joined 

 our caravan ; a man, his wife, baby and donkey, just like Joseph's flight. Also another 

 man on foot, with no possessions but an old French cuirassier sword, wherewith he 

 was going to join slave raids in Abyssinia. In 8 days from Korosko, we reached 

 Abu Hamed the sight of the Nile most refreshing, but we soon tired of the midges 

 and air, and were glad to travel on a little inland by camel to Berber. On the way 

 we stopped at the 5th cataract, where we waded with our guns across the river among 

 the many islands. At Berber the Pasha received us in state and gave us lemonade 

 from his own limes and it seemed delightful. He also lodged us in a mud house and 

 gave us permission to hire a boat for Khartoum. The people were troublesome when 

 we tried to start, and seized the rope and wanted to detain us. Barclay behaved with 

 much pluck, cast off the rope and made the 2 or 3 men who were on board hoist 

 the sail. We got away and after a little, the rest of the crew ran along the bank and 

 swam to us, and we got off. It was quite a small one-masted boat, cabin 4 feet high, 

 cockroaches all about but we made shift well enough. I recollect little of the sail 

 to Khartoum, except the mud pyramids of Meroe by the way. At Khartoum we got 

 (I suppose through the captain of our boat) a mud house facing the Blue Nile across 

 which the dust columns were seen in numbers dancing on the plain. We heard of the 

 existence of a wonderful Frank, possibly an Inglese; so we went to see. We knocked 

 and walked in and there was about the most magnificent physique of a man I have 

 ever seen, half-dressed in Arnaout costume, looking quite wild, and he turned out 

 to be Mansfield Parkyns recently arrived there after years in Abyssinia. He had 

 been at Trinity College as well as ourselves and having taken part in an awkward 

 row, found it best to leave, and had travelled ever since. He put us in the way of 

 all the "life'' in Khartoum and introduced us to the greatest scoundrels I think, that 

 could be found anywhere in a room, men who were too rascally for the Levant or 

 even Cairo. They were slavedealers, outlaws and I know not what else. Full of 

 stories about how A had been poisoned by B, B having just left the room before the 

 story was told Ac. Parkyns with perfect sang-froid and with all his wits well about 



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