Two of these Chiefs taken prisoners the Pasha ordered to be impaled in the market-place of Sennaar. They suffered this horrid death with great firmness. One of them said nothing but "there is no God but God, and Mohammed is his Apostle," which he frequently repeated before impalement; while the other, named Abdallah, insulted, defied, and cursed his executioners, calling them "robbers and murderers," till too weak to speak, when he expressed his feelings by spitting at them.[58] The third Chief was detained prisoner, in order to be sent to Cairo. During my stay in Sennaar, I endeavored to get information of the people of the country, and of the few caravan merchants found in the market-place of Sennaar, relative to the Bahar el Abiud and the Nile. The information I received was as follows: "The source of the Adit (so the people of Sennaar call the river that runs by their city) is in the Gibel el Gumara, (i.e. that great range of mountains called the Mountains of the Moon,) about sixty days march of a camel from Sennaar. in a direction nearly south. It receives, at various distances above Sennaar, several smaller rivers which come from Abyssinia and from the mountains south of Sennaar. The general course of the Bahar el Abiud (they said) was nearly parallel with that of the Adit, but its source was much farther off, among the Gibel el Gumara, than that of the Adit. The Bahar el Abiud, they said, appears very large at the place where the Pasha's army crossed it, because it is augmented from the junction of three other rivers, one from the south-west, and two others from the east, running from the mountains south of Sennaar."[59] On my asking them, "whether the Bahar el Abiud was open and free of shellals or rapids?" they said, "that at a place called Sulluk, about fifteen days march above its junction with the Adit, (i.e. above the place where we crossed the Bahar el Abiud,) there was a shellal, which they believed that boats could not pass.[60] On my asking whether, by following the banks of the Bahar el Abiud and the river that empties into it from the west, it was not possible to reach a city called Tombut or Tombuctoo?" They said, that "they knew nothing of the city I mentioned, having never been farther west than Kordofan and Darfour." This was all I could learn: but I am disposed to believe, that the main stream of the Bahar el Abiud cannot have its source in the same latitude with that of the Adit, because it commenced its rise, at least, this year, about twenty days sooner than did the Adit, and the different color of its waters proves that it flows through a tract differing in quality of soil from that through which passes the Adit. The interesting question, "whether the Niger communicates with the Bahar el Abiud?" will, however, very probably be determined before the close of another year, as the Pasha will probably send an expedition up that river.