CHAPTER X. 



DAE-FOR. 



A 



AE,-FOR, or the " Country of For," more commonly called Darfur, 

 by fusing the two words in a similar fashion to that in whicli the 

 French say " Angleterre," instead of "Pays des Anglais," is the 

 region which stretches west of Kordofân on the route to the 

 river Niger. Dar-Fôr does not entirely belong to the Nile basin. 

 Its western slope, which has as yet been explored but by few travellers, appears to 

 lose its waters in depressions with no outlet ; but if the rainfall were sufficiently 

 abundant the wadies of this region, changed into permanent watercourses, would 

 ultimately reach Lake Tsad. 



The streams draining in the direction of the Nile also run dry in the plains, 

 except in the season of the kharif, when the streamlets rising in the southern 

 part of Mount Marrah fall into the Bahr-el-Arab. Wady-Melek, or Wed-el-Mek, 

 that is to say the " Royal Valley," also called Wady-Mas-SCd, which runs to the 

 north-east of Dar-Fôr towards the great bend of the Nile, is also flooded with 

 ■water during rainy years, possibly for ten or fifteen days together ; but it never 

 reaches the Nile, its mouth being blocked by shifting sands. The enormous 

 fluvial bed, nearly always dry, might roll down a volume equal to that of the 

 Rhône or the Rhine. Its sandstone or limestone cliffs, here and there interrupted 

 by lava streams, are from 3 to 30 miles apart, whilst the hollows are filled with 

 trees, which form a continuous line like a band of verdure in the midst of the 

 desert. 



The eastern half of Dar-Fôr, belonging to the Nile basin, is the most important 

 part from a political point of view, probably on account of the commercial 

 attraction exercised by the Nilotic towns, and because, in the neighbourhood of 

 the mountains, where water is more plentiful, the people naturally settle down in 

 larger numbers. In this respect Dar-Fôr is a second Kordofân, but on a much 

 larger scale. Around a central district dotted with settled villages stretches the 

 zone of the wilderness and grassy savannahs. 



A country of this description can scarcely have any fixed boundaries ; here 

 camps, wells, clumps of acacias or brushwood, and bleached bones are the signs by 

 which the traveller knows he is crossing from one district into another. As far as 



