516 
THE NILE CATARACTS. 
passed there is no serious obstacle until Kaiber is reached, and that 
crossed, there remains only the bad water of Shaban, and the so-called 
Third Cataract, to be overcome, until the open river, 40 miles below 
Dongola is reached. This Third Cataract is, in reality, the seventh of 
importance counting from Wady Haifa. I have gone up and down it 
many times, and can safely say that as an obstacle to navigation it is 
not of greater magnitude than at least three of those which intervene 
between it and the Second Cataract at Wady Haifa. The progress of 
the railway, however, to Abu Fatmeh, at the head of the so-called 
Third Cataract, will obviate all necessity for using the river between 
Wady Haifa and Dongola, and will enable men and stores to be con¬ 
veyed in two days over a track of country which took an average of 
about twenty days to accomplish in the expedition of 1884. 
Arrived at Abu Fatmeh, we begin an unbroken stretch of navigation 
which extends through the entire province of Dongola, and into the 
province of Shagghiea for fully 220 miles. 
And here at Abu Fatmeh it will be well to devote a few words to 
the people and products of the land we have now reached, the 
province of Dongola. 
The Dongolavi, or Dangala are of a race distinct from the people 
of Egypt, the old Nubian race, dark skinned, and straight haired, 
the true Ethiopian, whose family is still to be found in all its pristine 
vigour, and warlike prowess, amid the mountains of Abyssinia. This 
race in its Nubian representation, has undergone a sad deterioration 
since its conquest by the Arabs, some 400 years ago. Indeed, it may 
be said that the riverain population along the whole course of the Nile 
from Wady Haifa to Berber are marked by the same dishonest, un¬ 
stable, cruel characteristics. This Nile has for hundreds of years 
been the high road of slavery, the Dongolavi has been the middleman, 
the “ gillab,” the slave trader; first Christian, the mixed Moslem and 
Christian, then wholly Moslem, he has always been a trafficker in 
human flesh, a drunkard, and a liar. In addition to these traits, 
Successive waves of conquest and years of subjection have now made 
him an arrant coward. As to the products of the land, they are those 
of Egypt, but of very limited quantities; the Nile only inundates a 
narrow patch of level land, sometimes on one side of the river, some¬ 
times on the other, rarely upon both sides at the same time. Un¬ 
doubtedly, in the old days the cultivated extent was much wider than 
it is at present, and undoubtedly, too, the population must, at some 
period not more remote than 400 years, have been immensely in excess 
of its existing number. Dongola is to-day a land of ruin and sand- 
drift, there is no country in the world in which the tax collector can 
pursue his calling with so much ease as in Dongola; a boat on the 
river and a few Bashi Bazook tax-gatherers on either bank enable these 
narrow shreds of cultivation to be quickly gleaned of food or money. 
I have seen a Bashi Bazook tax-collector of the former Mudir of 
Dongola coolly firing his loaded rifle into a village at the opposite side 
of the river simply to hasten the inhabitants at their work of bringing 
the ferry boat across to him. It was also not an uncommon custom of 
