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Updated: June 12, 2025
The Arabs call them 'houris' why, I cannot think for a more uncomfortable thing to sit in, when half full of water in a rolling surf, I never found elsewhere, except on a South-East African river. At the present moment the coast below Ras Bernas and above Sawakin is the hot-bed of the slave trade, carried on between the Dervishes of the Nile Valley and Arabia.
A rapid ride of three hours from Akelabillèh brought us back again to Mohammed Gol and the close of our expedition, for already the first murmurs of disturbances with the Dervishes were in the air, and the mamour of Mohammed Gol and the officers at Sawakin affected to have been very anxious for our safety.
Regular Egyptian coastguard boats keep matters pretty clear north of Ras Bernas, and we can testify to their activity, for we ourselves were boarded and searched by one; but south of this, before the influence of Sawakin is reached, there is a long stretch of country where the traffic in human flesh can be carried on undisturbed.
The people of this portion of the Soudan between the coast and the Nile Valley, who do not own allegiance to the Khalifa, belong to the Morghani confraternity of Mohammedans; their young religious sheikh, a self-possessed, clever lad of about twenty, lives at Sawakin, and his influence amongst the tribes not affecting Mahdism is supreme.
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.
Three large cisterns for water are still in a fair state of preservation, and I am told that a Kufic inscription was found here some years ago. There seems no doubt that this town is the one mentioned by the Arab geographers, Abou'lfida and Edrisi, by the name of Aydab, which was a place of considerable importance between Ras Bernas and Sawakin.
We duly reached Sawakin in the afternoon of March 4, where Hackett Pain Bey, who was acting-governor, kindly lent us two accommodation in the Government House, and we said farewell to the Taisir, its cockroaches, its mosquitoes, and its mouse; and the ship had immediately to be turned over on her side for repairs needed, as the coral reefs had done a good deal of damage.
There was another letter from the mamour and another from Sawakin and a most tremendous lot of consultations, and at last my husband sent a letter to the mamour: 'Your Excellency, I have decided to go by Erba and Sellala and hope to reach Mohammed Gol in a shorter time by that route.
Sawakin Kadim is like Berenice, nothing but a mass of mounds, but it must at some time or another have been a much larger place. We excavated one of these mounds, but found nothing earlier than Kufic remains, unless the graves, which were constructed of four large blocks of madrepore sunk deep into the ground, may be looked upon as a more ancient form of sepulture.
They have extended, probably in ancient times, to Upper Egypt, and occupy parts of Nubia; about Sawakin they are an important clan. They number few in the Sinaitic Peninsula and in Midian, but they occupy the very heart of the Arabian Peninsula. Those settled on Jebel Libn, we have seen, claim as their kinsman the legendary 'Antar, who was probably a negro of the noble Semitic stock.
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