Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 7, 2025
"So dreadful a desert is this between Korosko and Abou Hammed, that Said Pasha ordered the route to be closed; but it was re-opened upon the application of foreign consuls, as the most direct road to the Soudan. Our Bishareen Arabs are first-rate walkers, as they have performed the entire journey on foot.
After an early march of three hours and twenty minutes, we arrived at the town of Berber, on the Nile, at 9.35 A.M. We have been fifty-seven hours and five minutes actually marching from Abou Hammed, which, at two and a half miles per hour, equals 143 miles. We have thus marched 373 miles from Korosko to Berber in fifteen days; the entire route is the monotonous Nubian desert.
Situated half way between Korosko and Abou Hammed, the well of Moorahd is in an extinct crater, surrounded upon all sides but one by precipitous cliffs about three hundred feet high. The bottom is a dead flat, and forms a valley of sand about two hundred and fifty yards wide. In this bosom of a crater, salt and bitter water is found at a depth of only six feet from the surface.
Everything he could think of was done for their comfort; and in order to prevent the poor black women and children from feeling strange and frightened, he ordered colonel Duncan to ask a German woman living at Korosko to be ready to meet and help them. In Khartoum itself there were no fevers or pestilence, and food was given daily to the very poor.
Every evening the camels found an ample supply of pasturage, and could quench their thirst freely in the basins of water that sparkled in the hollows of the rocks. The passage of the Korosko Desert usually occupies eight or nine days; but as Alexina advanced very leisurely, by daily stages not exceeding seven or eight hours each, she consumed nearly three weeks in the journey.
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.
A few buildings, however, attain to the dignity of two storeys. At the northern end of the town a group of fairly well-built houses occupy the river-front, and a distant view of the clusters of palm-trees, of the white walls, and the minaret of the mosque refreshes the weary traveller from Korosko or Shellal with the hopes of civilised entertainment.
The boat returned, and left us on the east bank of the Nile, with the great Nubian desert before us. Korosko is not rich in supplies. A few miserable Arab huts, with the usual fringe of dusty date palms, compose the village; the muddy river is the frontier on the west, the burning desert on the east.
In 1812, John Ludwig Burckhardt, of Swiss nationality, the first among Europeans, made a pilgrimage to Mecca and then travelled up the Nile to Korosko, after which he crossed the desert to Berber and Shendy. His death occurred after his return to Cairo, and he left a valuable collection of Oriental manuscripts to the University of Cambridge, England, which were published after his death.
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.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking