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Our Turk, Hadji Achmet, returned on his way to Berber; we discharged our camels, and prepared to start afresh from this point for the Nile tributaries of Abyssinia. BY dead reckoning, Cassala is ninety-three miles S.S.E. of Gozerajup, or about 340 miles from Berber. We had ridden about 710 miles from Korosko, 630 miles of which had been through scorching deserts during the hottest season.
Under a tree, upon a comfortable bed of dry sand, we wer obliged to lay her for several hours, until the paroxysm passed, and she could remount her dromedary. This she did with extreme difficulty, and we hurried toward Cassala, from which town we were only a few miles distant. For the last fifty or sixty miles we had seen the Cassala mountain at first a blue speck above the horizon.
At once there was total silence, disturbed only by the crackling of the fires or by the cry of a child; and with faces turned to the east, in attitudes of profound devotion, the wild but fervent followers of Mahomet repeated their evening prayer. On the next day my wife's fever was renewed, but she was placed on a dromedary and we reached Cassala about sunset.
Upon arrival at Katariff we were hospitably received by a Greek merchant, Michel Georgis, a nephew of the good old man from whom we had received much attention while at Cassala. The town was a miserable place, composed simply of the usual straw huts of the Arabs; the market, or "Soog," was bi-weekly. Katariff was also known by the name of "Soog Abou Sinn." I extract an entry from my journal.
The river was narrower than in its passage through the desert, but was proportionately deeper. The name of the village on the opposite bank was Goorashee, with which a means of communication had been established by a ferry-boat belonging to our friend and late host, Malem Georgis, the Greek merchant of Cassala.
After nine hours' journey we arrived at the, valley of the Atbara, in all sixteen hours' actual marching from Cassala. There was an extraordinary change in the appearance of the river between Gozerajup and this spot.
At the time of my visit to Cassala in 1861 the Arab tribes were separately governed by their own chiefs or sheiks, who were responsible to the Egyptian authorities for the taxes due from their people. Since that period the entire tribes of all denominations have been placed under the authority of that grand old Arab patriarch, Achmet Abou Sinn, to be hereafter mentioned.
These were little contretemps that could hardly disturb the dignity of so great a man. Mahomet met several relatives at Cassala.
As we approached within about twenty-five miles o Cassala, I remarked that the country on our left was in many places flooded; the Arabs, who had hitherto been encamped in this neighbourhood during the dry season, were migrating to other localities in the neighbourhood of Soojalup and Gozerajup, with their vast herds of camels and goats.
Among our visitors was an Abyssinian merchant, Jusef, whose acquaintance I had formerly made at Cassala; he was an agreeable and well-informed man, who had been in Paris and London and spoke French and English tolerably. I accompanied him for a stroll through the market, and was introduced by him to a number of the principal Abyssinian merchants.
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