Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, Volume 4 (of 5): In the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773Bruce, James
History
Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, Volume 4 (of 5): In the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773
Bruce, James
Egypt -- Description and travel; Ethiopia -- Description and travel; Ethiopia -- History; Natural history -- Ethiopia; Nile River
In the afternoon we walked out to see the village, which is a very
pleasant one, situated upon the bottom of a hill, covered with wood,
all the rest flat before it. Through this plain there are many
large timber trees, planted in rows, and joined with high hedges,
as in Europe, forming inclosures for keeping cattle; but of these
we saw none, as they had been moved to the Dender for fear of the
flies. There is no water at Beyla but what is got from deep wells.
Large plantations of Indian corn are everywhere about the town. The
inhabitants are in continual apprehension from the Arabs Daveina
at Sim Sim, about 40 miles south-east from them; and from another
powerful race called Wed abd el Gin, _i. e._ _Son of the slaves of the
Devil_, who live to the south-west of them, between the Dender and the
Nile. Beyla is another frontier town of Sennaar, on the side of Sim
Sim; and between Teawa and this, on the Sennaar side, and Ras el Feel,
Nara, and Tchelga, upon the Abyssinian side, all is desert and waste,
the Arabs only suffering the water to remain there without villages
near it, that they and their flocks may come at certain seasons while
the grass grows, and the pools or springs fill elsewhere.
Although I went early to bed with full determination to set out
by day-break, yet I found it was impossible to put my design in
execution, or get from the hands of our kind landlord. One of our
girbas seemed to fail, and needed to be repaired. Nothing good, as he
truly said, could come from the Shekh of Atbara. A violent dispute
had arisen in the evening, after I was gone to bed, over their bouza,
between the king's servant and that of Shekh Adelan. It was about
dividing their fees which they had received from Shekh Fidele. This
was carried a great length, and it was at last agreed that it should
be determined by the Shekh of Beyla in the morning, when both of them,
as might be supposed, should have cooler heads. For my part, I took no
thought or concern about it, as no circumstance of its origin had been
notified to me; but it took up so much of our time, that it was after
dinner before we were ready.
On the 21st of April we left Beyla at three o'clock in the afternoon,
our direction south-west, through a very pleasant, flat country, but
without water; there had been none in our way nearer than the river
Rahad. About eleven at night we alighted in a wood: The place is
called Baherie, as near as we could compute, nine miles from Beyla.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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