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Like all the Arabs of Upper Egypt, they pay taxes to the Viceroy; these are gathered by parties of soldiers, who take the opportunity of visiting them during the drought, at which time they can be certainly found near the river; but at any other season it would be as easy to collect tribute from the gazelles of the desert as from the wandering Bishareens.
This tribe, which was peculiarly that of Abou Sinn, and from which he had sprung, was the Shookeriyah, one of the most powerful among the numerous tribes of Upper Egypt. From Korosko to this point we had already passed the Bedouins, Bishareens, Hadendowas, Hallongas, until we had entered the Shookeriyahs.
The Arabs that occupy the desert north of the Atbara are the Bishareens; it was among a large concourse of these people that we pitched our tents on the banks of the river at Collodabad. This being the principal watering-place along the deserted bed of the Atbara, the neighbourhood literally swarmed with doves, sand grouse, and other birds, in addition to many geese and pelicans.
And in the centre of the square stood or sat the natives, buying and selling, chaffering and gesticulating. Some were Bishareens, with straight forms and features, and black bodies almost covered with long strings and chains of beads. They stood about gracefully to be admired, with their wooly hair fluffed out at right angles to their head, for the occasion.
Abou Sinn had arranged to move northward on the following day; we therefore agreed to pass one day in his camp, and to leave the next morning for Sofi, on the Atbara, about seventy-eight miles distant. From Korosko to this point we had already passed the Bedouins, Bishareens, Hadendowas, Hallongas, until we had entered the Shookeriyahs.
We had now passed the hunts occupied by the Bishareens, and we had entered upon the country of the Hadendowa Arabs.
She never cared for staring into the little squares of glass that the girls of the village would buy in the market-place, nor coveted the long strings of blue glass beads that the Bishareens brought in such numbers to sell in Omdurman; nor did it specially please her to lay the beads against her neck, and see them slide up and down on her smooth skin as she breathed, though her companions would thus sit for hours cross-legged before their little mirrors, breathing deep to note how their beads rose and fell and glistened in the light.
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