458 ARRIVE AT THE NILE. [chap. xvii. 
where all was savage and unfeeling—ties that were 
painful to sever, and that caused a sincere regret to 
both of us when we saw our little flock of unfortunate 
slave children crying at the idea of separation. In this 
moral desert, where all humanized feelings were withered 
and parched like the sands of the Soudan, the guile¬ 
lessness of the children had been welcomed like springs 
of water, as the only refreshing feature in a land of sin 
and darkness. “ Where are you going ? ” cried poor 
little Abbai in the broken Arabic that we had taught 
him. “Take me with you, Sitty! (lady,) and he fol¬ 
lowed us down the path as we regretfully left our 
proteges, with his fists tucked into his eyes, weeping 
from his heart, although for his own mother he had not 
shed a tear. We could not take him with us ;—he 
belonged to Ibrahim; and had I purchased the child to 
rescue him from his hard lot and to rear him as a 
civilized being, I might have been charged with slave 
dealing. With heavy hearts we saw him taken up in 
the arms of a woman and carried back to camp, to 
prevent him from following our party, that had now 
started. 
We had turned our backs fairly upon the south, and 
we now travelled for several days through most beau¬ 
tiful park-like lands, crossing twice the Un-y-Ame 
stream, that rises in the country between Shooa and 
Unyoro, and arriving at the point of junction of this 
river with the Nile, in latitude 3° 32' N.. On the north 
bank of the Un-y-Ame, about three miles from the em¬ 
bouchure of that river where it flows into the Nile, 
the tamarind tree was shown me that forms the limit 
of Signor Mianis journey from Gondokoro, the ex¬ 
treme point reached by any traveller from the north 
until the date of my expedition. This tree bore the 
name of “ Shedder-el-Sowar ” (the traveller s tree), by 
which it was known by the traders' parties. Several 
of the men belonging to Ibrahim, also Mahommed 
Wat-el-Mek, the vakeel of Debono’s people, had ac¬ 
companied Signor Miani on his expedition to this spot. 
