Travels and discoveries in North and Central Africa, Vol. 5 (of 5) : $b being a journal of an expedition undertaken under the auspices of H.B.M.'s Government, in the years 1849-1855Barth, Heinrich
History
Travels and discoveries in North and Central Africa, Vol. 5 (of 5) : $b being a journal of an expedition undertaken under the auspices of H.B.M.'s Government, in the years 1849-1855
Barth, Heinrich
Africa, Central -- Description and travel; Africa, North -- Description and travel
The first part of this day’s march led through a flat country, which
some time before had been entirely inundated. Even at present, not only
on the south side of the path, towards the river, were extensive
inundations to be seen, but on the left, or north side, a large open
sheet spread out. Having passed numbers of Tawárek, who were shifting
their tents, as well as two miserable-looking encampments of the
Shémman-Ámmas, whose movements afforded some proofs of the disturbed
state of the country, we ascended the higher sandy bank, where I first
observed the poisonous _euphorbia_, called here “abári e’ sebúwa,” or
“táboru,” which generally grows in the shade of the trees, especially in
that of acacias, and is said frequently to cause the death of the lion,
from which circumstance its name is derived. Pursuing our easterly
course, and keeping along the sandy bank, with a deep marshy ground on
our right, we then reached a group of two encampments, one belonging to
the Ídenan, and the other to the Shémman-Ámmas, and here halted during
the hot hours of the day. Both the above-mentioned tribes are of a
degraded character; and the women were anything but decent and
respectable in their behaviour.
Having here decided that it was better to go ourselves and fetch the
rest of our party whom we had sent in advance from Bóse-bángo, instead
of despatching a messenger for them, although the place lay entirely out
of our route, we started late in the afternoon, leaving our camels and
baggage behind. Returning for the first mile and a half, almost along
the same road we had come, then passing the site of a former encampment
of the two chiefs named Mushtába and Rummán, whom I have mentioned
before, we entered the swampy ground to the south along a narrow neck of
land thickly overgrown with dúm-palms and brushwood, and thus affording
a secure retreat to the lion. In the clear light of the evening,
encompassed as the scenery was on either side, by high sandy downs
towards the south on the side of the river, and by a green grassy ground
with a channel-like sheet of water on the other it exhibited a very
interesting spectacle highly characteristic of this peculiar watery
region.
Having kept along this neck of land, which is called Temáharót, for
about two miles, and reached its terminating point, we had to cross a
part of the swamp itself which separates this rising ground from the
downs on the bank of the river, and which less than a month previously
had been impassable, while at present the sheet of water was
interrupted, and was only from three to three and a half feet in depth
at the deepest part. We then reached the downs, and here again turned
westward, having the low swampy ground on our right, and an open branch
of the river on our left.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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