No Vessel Ever Could
Have Gone Up It, And It Bore No Comparison With The Nile Itself.
The exaggerated account of its volume, however, given by the
expeditionists who were sent up the Nile by Mehemet Ali, did not
surprise us, since they had mistaken its position; for we were
now 3§ 42' north, and therefore had passed their "farthest point"
by twenty miles.
In two hours more we reached a settlement called Madi, and found
it deserted. Every man and woman had run off into the jungles
from fright, and would not come back again. We wished ourselves
at the end of the journey; thought anything better than this kind
of existence - living entirely at the expense of others; even the
fleecings in Usui felt less dispiriting; but it could not be
helped, for it must always exist as long as these Turks are
allowed to ride rough-shod over the people. The Turks, however,
had their losses also; for on the way four Bari men and one Bari
slave-girl slipped off with a hundred of their plundered cattle,
and neither they nor the cattle could be found again. Mijalwa
was here convicted of having stolen the cloth of a Turk whilst
living in his hut when he was away at the Paira plundering and
got fifty lashes to teach him better behaviour for the future.
A party of fifty men came from Labure, a station on ahead of
this, to take service as porters, knowing that at this season the
Turks always come with a large herd of plundered cattle, which
they call government property, and give in payment to the men who
carry their tusks of ivory across the Bari country.
We now marched over a rolling ground, covered in some places with
bush-jungle, in others with villages, where there were fine
trees, resembling oaks in their outward appearance; and stopping
one night at the settlement of Barwudi, arrived at Labure, where
we had to halt a day for Mahamed to collect some ivory from a
depot he had formed near by. We heard there was another ivory
party collecting tusks at Obbo, a settlement in the country of
Panuquara, twenty miles east of this.
Next we crossed a nullah draining into the Nile, and, travelling
over more rolling ground, flanked on the right by a range of
small hills, put up at the Madi frontier station, Mugi, where we
had to halt two days to collect a full complement of porters to
traverse the Bari country, the people of which are denounced as
barbarians by the Turks, because they will not submit to be
bullied into carrying their tusks for them. Here we felt an
earthquake. The people would not take beads, preferring, they
said, to make necklaces and belts out of ostrich-eggs, which they
cut into the size of small shirt-buttons, and then drill a hole
through their centre to string them together. A passenger told
us that three white men had just arrived in vessels at Gondokoro;
and the Bari people, hearing of our advance, instead of trying to
kill us with spears, had determined to poison all the water in
their country.
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