410 
Browne's journey. 
obtain with the peculiar manners of the interior 
Africans, and the suspicions of the natives would 
be removed by his favourable reception in one of 
the interior kingdoms. He beheved that it would 
be equally easy to penetrate into Abyssinia by 
Kordofan, or to traverse Africa from east to west 
by a route which would afford an opportunity of 
determining various geographical positions, and 
of observing numerous important facts, both in 
manners and in commerce. He was informed 
that the inhabitants of Darfur extended their se- 
leteas, or armed expeditions for procuring slaves, 
above forty journeys to the south, along the banks 
of the Bahr-el-Abiad, which he conceived to be 
the true Nile unexplored by Europeans, and 
therefore believed, that, by accompanying one of 
these expeditions, he should not only accomplish 
this discovery, but traverse at least five degrees 
of unknown country. With these views, having 
provided himself at Assiut with five camels, at 
the price of ^.13 each, he joined the Soudan 
caravan, and departed from the vicinity of Assiut 
on the 28th of May 1793. They journeyed over 
a sterile mountainous track, and, on the 31st, ar- 
rived at Gebel Ramlie, a rugged mountain of 
tufa, where, by a steep descent, they entered 
the desert. From the rock they beheld before 
them a valley of unbounded extent, covered with 
rocks and sand, diversified with scattered date- 
