XLVI.

ALVAN S. SOUTHWORTH.

CROSSING THE NUBIAN DESERT.

HIS gentleman, a member of the American Geographical Society, has furnished, in the columns of The Sunday Magazine, the following picture of his experience in crossing the most perilous of the African deserts:

Those who have not actually undergone the hardships of African travel almost always believe that the most dangerous desert routes are found in the Great Sahara. Such is not the fact. The currency given to this popular delusion is doubtless due to the immensity of the arid waste extending from the Mediterranean to the Soudan, and which is deceptive in its imagined dangers because of its large area. All travelers who have made the transit of the Nubian Desert from Korosko, situated between the First and Second Cataracts, southward across the burning sands of the Nubian Desert, a distance of 425 miles, concur in the statement that it is an undertaking unmatched in its severity and rigors by any like journey over the treeless and shrubless spaces of the earth. "The Flight of a Tartar Tribe," as told by De Quincey, in his matchless descriptive style, carrying his readers with him through scenes of almost unparalleled warfare, privation, and cruelty, until the remnant of the Asiatic band stands beneath the shadow of the Chinese Wall to receive the welcome of their deliverer, but imperfectly portrays the physical suffering that must be endured in the solitude of the most dangerous of African deserts. Let me, therefore, briefly record my life in the

Nubian Desert, at a time when I was filled with the hopes and ambitions which led Bruce, in the last century, to the fountains of the Blue Nile, and but a few years since guided Speke and Grant, Sir Samuel Baker, and Stanley to the great basin of the major river, and determined the general geography of the equatorial regions.

It was in the middle of January, after a pleasant journey up the Nile from Lower Egypt, on board a luxuriously fitted up "dahabeah," that I arrived at Korosko, a Nubian village about a thousand miles from the Mediterranean. The ascent of the Nile was simply a prolonged feast in this comfortable sailing-craft, with the panorama of imposing temples and gigantic ruins relieving the dreary monotony of the river-banks. The valley of this ancient stream, from the First Cataract, where it ceases to be navigable, to Cairo, is remarkable alone to the traveler for its vast structures and mausoleums. The sikeahs and shadofs, which are employed to raise water from the river, in order that it may be used for irrigation, suggest that no improvement has been made in Egyptian farming for four thousand years. But the smoke curling away from tall chimneys, and the noise of busy machinery in the midst of extensive fields of sugarcane, remind us that Egypt has become one of the greatest sugar-producing powers of the East. From the site of ancient Memphis to Korosko, comprising about six degrees of latitude, the soil under cultivation rarely extends beyond the distance of a mile into the interior, while to eastward and westward is one vast, uninhabited waste, the campingground of the Bedouins, who roam from river to sea in predatory bands, leading otherwise aimless lives. Thinly populated, and now without the means of subsisting large communities, Upper Egypt can never become what it was when, as we are taught, the walls of Thebes inclosed 4,000,

000 of people, and the Nile was bridged from shore to shore. Turning from this strange land, I encamped on the border of the Nubian Desert, and prepared to set out on camelback toward the sources of the Nile.

In conjunction with the local officials I began the necessary preparations, which involved the selection of forty-two camels, three donkeys, and nineteen servants. My ample provision and preparation consisted of the camels' feeddurah and barley, stowed in plaited saddle-bags; filling the goatskins with water, each containing an average of five gallons. Eighty were required for the journey. Three sheep, a coup-full of chickens, a desert range, a wall-tent, with the other supplies, made up over 10,000 pounds of baggage as our caravan, entering the northern door of the barren and dreary steppe, felt its way through a deep ravine paved with boulders, shifting sands, and dead camels. We soon left the bluffs and crags which form the barrier between the Nile and the desolate land beyond, and then indeed the real journey began.

Our camp apparatus was quite simple, consisting of a few plates, knives and forks, blankets and rugs, a kitchentent, and a pine table; and this outfit formed the nucleus of our nomadic village, not omitting the rough cookingutensils. I recall now one of these strange scenes in that distant region, under the cloudless sky, beneath the Southern Cross. A few feet distant from my canvas chateau was my aged Arab cook, manipulating his coals, his tongs, and preparing the hissing mutton, the savory pigeons and potatoes. The cook is the most popular man on such an expedition, and is neither to be coaxed nor driven. The baggagecamels were disposed upon the ground, a few yards distant, eating their grain and uttering those loud, yelping, beseeching sounds-a compound of an elephant's trumpet

and a lion's roar-which were taken up, repeated by the chorus, and re-echoed by the hills. These patient animals, denuded of their loads and water, the latter having been corded in mats, became quiet only with sleep. Add to these scenes and uproar the deafening volubility of twenty Arabs and Nubians, each shouting within the true barbaric key, the seven-eighths nudity of the blacks, the elaborate and flashing wear of the upper servants, and the small asperities of this my menial world-all of these with a refreshing breeze, a clear atmosphere, the air laden with ozone and electric life, the sky inviting the serenest contemplation, with the great moon thrice magnified as it rose, and I recall an evening when I was supremely content.

Piloted by the carcasses of decayed camels, we took up our route in the morning, led by our guide, and soon emerged on the sublimest scenery of the desert. Our line of travel lay through the center of grand elliptical amphitheaters, which called to mind the Coliseum at Rome and the exhumed arena at Pompeii. These eroded structures, wrought by the hand of nature at some remote period, were floored over by hard, gravelly sand, inclosed by lofty, semi-circular sides, and vaulted only by the blue sky, and are among the grandest primitive formations I have ever seen. From the maroon shade of the sand to the dark, craggy appearance of the terraced rocks, there is as much variety as can be found in landscape without verdure and in solitude without civilization. These amphitheaters are linked together by narrow passages; and so perfect were the formations, that four doorways, breaking the view into quadrants, were often seen. The view broadened and lengthened day by day, until our journey lay through a plain of billowing sand. Then the sun grew fierce and intolerable. The lips began to crack, the eyebrows and mustache were burned to a light blonde,

the skin peeled, and the tongue became parched, while the fine sand, ever present in the hot wind, left its deposits in the delicate membranes of the eye. It is thus that a period of ten hours in the saddle, day after day, under the scorching sun, takes the edge off the romance of travel, and calls to one's mind the green lawn, the sparkling fountain, and the beauties of a more tolerable zone.

We were making about thirty miles a day, sleeping soundly at night, when the ever-watchful hyena, and occasionally a troop of wild asses, would pay us their nocturnal visits, and upon the fourth morning we began to approach the shores of the Mirage Seas. These atmospheric phenomenas on the Nubian Desert are not only very perfect imitations of real lakes, but have on many occasions inveigled expeditions away, to perish of heat and thirst. A little time before my expedition to Central Africa a body of Egyptian troops crossing this desert found their water almost at a boiling point in the skins, and nearly exhausted. They beheld, a few miles distant, an apparent lake overshadowed by a forest, and bordered with verdure and shrubbery. Although told by the guide that it was an illusion, they broke ranks, started off in pursuit of the sheet of water, chasing the aerial phantom, although it receded with the pace of their approach. At last they sunk down from thirst and fatigue, and died! Twelve hours on the Nubian Desert without water means a certain and terrible death; and even to this day, having been near such an end, with all of its indescribable anguish, I seldom raise a glass of water to my lips that I do not recall a day when I lay upon the burning sand, awaiting with impatience the moment that should snap asunder the vital cord and give peace to my burning body. A mirage certainly presents an incomparable scenic Once in its midst, you are encompassed by an im

effect.