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We left Wadi Gabeit next morning, and on the following day another messenger from Sawakin met us with a similar mandate; but as we were now journeying in a presumably safe direction we annexed him too, and went on our way rejoicing. Personally we felt that we knew the condition of the country better than the authorities of Sawakin, who had never been there.
These things officials told us when we reached Sawakin; but, to do our guides justice, I must say they treated us very well, and inasmuch as we never believed a word they said, the fact that they were liars made but little difference to us. Some of the men had very fine profiles, and one was very handsome.
The morning after we reached Wadi Gabeit an express messenger reached us from Sawakin, bidding us return to the coast at once, as we were supposed to be in considerable danger. Dervish raids were expected in this direction, and the authorities were evidently afraid of complications.
We eventually gave it to a sergeant at Sawakin, and have reason to believe that it is at present taking part with its regiment in the Soudan campaign. That day, Sheikh Mohamed Ali Hamed, who was riding a loaded camel, came to me so much disgusted with the smell of a box covered with black American cloth, that he asked me if it were not made of pig-skin.
It is a veritable frying-pan. We had hardly room to pitch our tents, or to get into them when pitched, by reason of the big boulders and steep hollows where water swirled about. There was good water quite close. We had another messenger from Sawakin, Hassan Gabrin, to guide us by land, or, if we went by sea, to say we should go quickly.
In course of time the Bedjas seem to have disappeared from the face of the earth and left nothing but their tombs and a few ruined towns behind them; and for some centuries it would appear that the coast of the Red Sea north of Sawakin was uninhabited until in later years came fresh colonists from the Nile Valley, whose descendants still occupy it.
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.
These tombs, which are found dotted over the island, bear a remarkable resemblance to the tombs of the Bedja race, once dwelling on the shores of the Red Sea to the north of Sawakin, and subject to the Ethiopian emperor; they consist of enormous blocks of unhewn stone, inserted in the ground to encircle and cover the tombs, and this forms another link connecting the remains on the island with Abyssinia.
Sheikh Ali Debalohp, the chief of the Kilab tribe, was to take us to his district, Wadi Hadai and Wadi Gabeit, some way inland at the back of the Erba mountains, which group we insisted on going entirely round. He was a tall, fine specimen of a Bishari sheikh, with his neck terribly scarred by a burn, to heal which he had been treated in hospital at Sawakin.
He was chief of the large and powerful Kilab tribe, half of which owns avowed allegiance to the Khalifa, and the other half, with their chief, is put down as wavering by the Government at Sawakin.
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