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This country was a vast tract of wonderfully fertile prairie, that nearly formed an island, surrounded by the Rahad, Blue Nile, Great Nile, and Atbara; it was peopled by various tribes of Arabs, who cultivated a considerable extent upon the banks of the Rahad, which for upwards of a hundred miles to the north were bordered with villages at short intervals.
Pressing on in a southerly direction between the 15th and 16th degrees of N. lat., Cailliaud next identified the mouth of the Bahr-el-Abiad, or White Nile, visited the ruins of Saba, the mouth of the Rahad, the ancient Astosaba, Sennaar, the river Gologo, the Fazoele country, and the Toumat, a tributary of the Nile, finally reaching the Singue country between the two branches of the river.
Marching due west from that point I arrived at the river Rahad, in about lat. 12 degrees 30 minutes; descending its banks I crossed over a narrow strip of country to the west, arriving at the river Dinder, and following these streams to their junction with the Blue Nile, I descended that grand river to Khartoum, having been exactly twelve months from the day I had left Berber.
This country swarmed with Arabs, and abounded in supplies: superb fat oxen were seven dollars each; large fowls were a penny; and eggs were at the rate of nine for a penny farthing. We arrived at a large village, Sherrem, on May 11, having marched 118 miles in a straight line along the course of the Rahad.
Throughout the course of the Rahad the banks are high, and, when full, the river would average forty feet in depth, with a gentle stream, the course free from rocks and shoals, and admirably adapted for small steamers. The entire country would be a mine of wealth were it planted with cotton, which could be transported by camels to Katariff, and thence direct to Souakim.
The principal affluents of the Blue Nile are the Rahad and Dinder, flowing, like all others, from Abyssinia. The Rahad is entirely dry during the dry season, and the Dinder is reduced to a succession of deep pools, divided by sandbanks, the bed of the river being exposed. These pools are the resort of numerous hippopotami and the natural inhabitants of the river.
"The Rahad does not exceed eighty or ninety yards in breadth. The rain that had recently fallen in the mountain had sent a considerable stream down the hitherto dry bed, although the bottom was not entirely covered.
The banks of the Rahad are in many places perpendicular, and are about forty-five feet above the bed.
This river flows through rich alluvial soil; the country is a vast level plane, with so trifling a fall that the current of the river is gentle; the course is extremely circuitous, and although, when bank full, the Rahad possesses a considerable volume, it is very inferior as a Nile tributary to any river that I have visited to the east of Gallabat."
On the evening of the 23d May we arrived at the Rahad close to its junction with the Blue Nile: it was still dry, although the Dinder was rising. I accounted for this, from the fact of the extreme length of the Rahad's bed, which, from its extraordinary tortuous course, must absorb a vast amount of water in the dry sand, before the advancing stream can reach the Nile.
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