520 
THE NILE CATARACTS. 
their lazy methods, so they proceeded to destroy the horse wherever 
they found him. 
The breed of horses called Dongola is a distinct one and of extra¬ 
ordinary hardiness. They are of larger size than the Syrian Arab in 
use in Egypt, they have white faces and, nearly always, four white 
stockings, but the best have three; the mouth is hard, almost as the 
bit in it, the roughest ground seems able to offer no impediment to their 
speed, and a Shagghiea Arab is as thoroughly at home on their backs 
as any rider in the world. One feat these Shagghiea were in the 
habit of performing with their horses, which was almost peculiar to 
them, they were accustomed to swim these hardy little horses across 
the broadest part of the Nile by day or night in any stage of water. 
It was this power that made them such formidable raiders in the ages 
preceding the Turkish conquest, and the islands in mid channel, with 
three-quarters of a mile of water running swiftly on either side, were 
almost as liable to ravages at their hands as were the villages on the 
mainland. 
As we approach the upper end of the two hundred miles of good 
water between the two great series of cataracts, a remarkable steep 
sided and flat-topped hill becomes visible on the proper right bank of 
the Nile. This is Gibil il Barkal of the Arabs. At its foot, and be¬ 
tween it and the river, the ground is encumbered with immense ruins, 
prostrate columns, the debris of great temples, sphinxes, &c. On the 
ridge of the desert, behind the hill, are many pyramids still in excellent 
preservation ; the entire scene is a very striking one—here, 1500 miles 
from the Mediterranean, the evidences of a remote civilisation are 
everywhere to be seen. 
This place was, in fact, the chief centre of Ethiopian power in the 
earliest recorded ages. Here stood the city of Nepata, the residence 
of Queen Candace, and probably of the Queen of Sheba. There is 
still a village on the river bank close by that bears the name of 
Shibbeh. In the days of the Shagghiea it was the residence of the 
magicians of the tribe, whose amulets were supposed to protect the 
wearer from bullets in battle; but, after the action near Korti, where 
so many of the Shagghiea fell under the fire of the Turkish guns, the 
first act of the retreating Arabs was to kill all their magicians. 
Ten miles above Gibil Barkal begins once more the troubled water 
of cataracts, a series of ripples in every respect more formidable than 
that which lies between Wady Haifa and Dongola. 
For 150 miles above this point the Nile still keeps the great bend 
to the north which it began at Debbeh, but throughout the greater 
portion of that distance it is a river rent by rocks, foaming through 
many channels, seldom held by a single stream between its banks, but 
filled with large rocky islands which sometimes overlap each other in 
mid-channel, so that between the proper east shore and west there will 
frequently be three or four islands lying, one behind the other, many 
of them being from five to ten miles in length, and all filled with 
precipitous rocks and rugged hills of considerable elevation. Winding 
amid these rugged islands the river pours its flood through channels 
