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Both the Rahad and Dinder rise in the mountains of Abyssinia, at no great distance from each other, and during the rains they convey a large volume of water to the Blue Nile. Upon arrival at Abou Harraz, four miles to the north of the Rahad junction, we had marched, by careful dead reckoning, two hundred and eighty miles from Gallabat.
At night we heard a lion roar, but this, instead of being our constant nightingale, as upon the Settite river, was now an uncommon sound. The maneless lion is found on the banks of the Dinder; all that I saw, in the shape of game, in the neighbourhood of that river and the Rahad, were a few hippopotami and crocodiles.
The whole of the above-mentioned rivers i.e. the Atbara, Settite, Salaam, Angrab, Rahad, Dinder, and Blue Nile are the great drains of Abyssinia, all having a uniform course from southeast to northwest, and meeting the main Nile in two mouths; by the Blue Nile at Khartoum, 15 degrees 30 minutes, and by the Atbara, in lat. 17 degrees 37 minutes.
My intention was to thoroughly examine all the great rivers of Abyssinia that were tributaries to the Nile. These were the Settite, Royan, Angrab, Salaam, Rahad, Dinder, and the Blue Nile. If possible, I should traverse the Galla country, and crossing the Blue Nile, I should endeavour to reach the White Nile.
He then struck his camp, and marched back along the east bank of the Blue Nile, with the intention of crossing the river near its confluence with the Rahad, and so joining the Khalifa in Kordofan. His Dervishes, however, did not view this project with satisfaction. Their families and women had been left with large stores of grain and ammunition in Gedaref, under a strong garrison of 3,000 men.
Wherever we slept we were besieged by gaping crowds of Arabs: these people were quite unaccustomed to strangers, as the route we had chosen along the banks of the Rahad was entirely out of the line adopted by the native merchants and traders of Khartoum, who travelled via Abou Harraz and Katariff to Gallabat.
FOR some days we continued our journey along the banks of the Dinder, and as the monotonous river turned towards the junction with the Blue Nile, a few miles distant, we made a direct cut across the flat country, to cross the Rahad and arrive at Abou Harraz on the Blue Nile.
Nothing would be more simple than to form a succession of weirs across the Rahad and Dinder, that would enable the entire country to be irrigated at any season of the year, but there is not an engineering work of any description throughout Upper Egypt, beyond the sageer or water-wheel of the Nile.
From Cairo he started on a journey up the course of the Nile. When he had reached Berber, he chose the course of the At-bara, or Blue Nile, the branch which receives the floods of water from the Abyssinian table-lands. He travelled up the western frontier of Abyssinia, proceeding as far as the river Rahad, a river flowing into the Blue Nile from the Egyptian side.
To the Arabs and Tokrooris I gave all the hides of rhinoceros, elephants, &c. that I did not require, and, with our loads considerably lightened, we started from Gallabat, 12.30 P.M., 28th April, 1862, and marched due west towards the river Rahad. The country was hilly and wooded, the rocks were generally sandstone, and after a march of three hours we halted at a Tokroori village.
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