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Updated: May 11, 2025
Along the whole coast-line from Kosseir to Sawakin one may say that there are no permanent places of residence, if we except the tiny Egyptian military stations, with their fort and huts for the soldiers, at Halaib, Mohammed Gol, and Darour; it is practically desert all the way, and is only visited by the nomad Ababdeh and Bisharin tribes, when, after the rains, they can obtain there a scanty pasturage for their flocks.
Shellal itself reaches an elevation of 4,100 feet; Shindeh, 4,500 feet; Riadh, 4,800 feet; and Asortriba or Sorturba to the south seems, though we did not get its elevation, to be the highest of the group. On our return to Halaib we passed a Bisharin encampment, consisting of half a dozen beehive huts made of matting on rounded sticks.
Apparently this important Soudanese valley takes its rise in Bawati, to the south of Erba, and, after making first a bold sweep right through the heart of the Soudan, it reaches the sea to the north of Mount Elba, some twenty miles north of Halaib.
He appointed his son, a fine, intelligent young fellow of five-and-twenty, called the batran in the local dialect, to act as our guide and protector during our exploration of the Shellal range, which rises some miles inland at the back of Halaib.
The Morghani have the three cicatrices on either cheek, and as a confraternity they are not in the least fanatical, and are well disposed to Christians; very different to the Arabs we met in the Hadhramout, and very different to the Dervishes with whom they are on such hostile terms. While at Halaib I paid several visits to the wife and family of the mamour or governor.
I did not envy her her home in the drenching rain we had all night and half one day. She wore a string round under one arm, with seven or eight charms like good-sized pincushions or housewifes of different coloured silks. We made two expeditions from Halaib; the first was to the ruins now known as Sawakin Kadim, which are on the coast twelve miles north of Halaib.
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