252 NOETH-EAST APEICA. 



village by preaching, praying, and selling amulets ; in this way they have con- 

 verted the population of Algaden, who are mainly of Bazen origin. In a neigbour- 

 ing plain, the people of Algaden and Sabderat in 1870 gained a sanguinary victory 

 over an army of Abyssinians, 10,000 of whom were left on the battle-field. 



To the south-east of Algaden, in the Barea country, between the Gash and the 

 Barka, the Egyptians have recently founded two military stations, Kufit and Amideh. 

 The first was abandoned in 1875, but Amideb was still occupied at the general 

 rising of the tribes ; it is one of the places that England has by treaty handed over 

 to the Abyssinians. Dolka, on a rock which rises to the east of the valley of the 

 Anseba, long resisted the attacks of the Khedive's troops. In the neighbour- 

 hood are the ruins of a town and some Christian churches which bear a few 

 Abyssinian or Himyaritic inscriptions. The principal town of the Habab country 

 is Af-Ahad, or Tha-Mariam, situated in a circular plain, at the foot of a precipitous 

 mountain pierced with grottoes. * 



Ed-Damer — Berber. 



Below Kassala on the Gash, and Gos-Eejeb on the Atbara, there is only one 

 town in the basin, Ed-Damer, lying south of the confluence in the southern 

 peninsula formed by the Nile and the mouth of the Atbara. Here dwelt the 

 Makaberab tribe, whom Schweinfurth and Lejean believe to be the somewhat 

 legendary Macrobians of ancient writers. But this town, which was formerly a 

 brisk market, has lost its commercial importance and become a city of " saints and 

 teachers." It has schools, formerly celebrated, hotbeds of the Mussulman propa- 

 ganda, but it is no longer a rendezvous for caravans. 



Some 30 miles lower down on the same bank of the river, is the commercial 

 centre of the great river and its north Abyssinian tributaries. Berber, till recently 

 capital of an Egyptian province, is the largest mart between Khartum and the 

 Egyptian frontier, properly so-called. Berber, so named from the Barâbra people, 

 who occupy this region of Nubia, is officially called El-Mehheir, El-Mukheircf, or El- 

 Mesherif. Before the present war, during which Berber has been almost entirely 

 destroyed, the town skirted the river bank for a distance of several miles, its white 

 terraced houses standing in the midst of acacia and palm groves. A few gardens 

 surround the town, beyond which immediately commence the uncultivated, almost 

 desert, spaces, visited only by the Bisharin nomads. 



Berber is the starting point of the most frequented caravan route between the 

 Middle Nile and the Eed Sea. At this point, the distance which separates the river 

 from the sea is, following the winding desert route, only 250 miles. If well suj^islied 

 with food and water, travellers can easily complete this journey in less than a week, 

 although they usually take fifteen days ; sooner or later a few hours will suffice, 

 thanks to a railway already commenced, and on which military trains were running 

 in 1885 from Suakin, for a few miles inland, to Otao, the present terminus on the 

 route to Berber. When this line is completed, Berber will become the port by 



