458 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

OLD DONGOLA AND NEW DONGOLA.

Appearance of the Country — Korti — The Town of Ambukol — The Caravan reorganized— A Fiery Ride — "We reach Edabbe — An Illuminated Landscape — A Torment —Nubian Agriculture — Old Dongola — The Palace-Mosque of the Nubian Kings — A Panorama of Desolation — The Old City — Nubian Gratitude — Another Sand-Storm — A Dreary Journey— The Approach to Handak — A Houso of Doubtful Character — The Inmates — Journey to El Ordee (New Dongola) — Khoorshid Bey — Appearance of the Town.

I left Abdom on the morning of February twentieth. Our road lay southward, along the edge of the wheat-fields, over whose waves we saw the island-like groups of palms at a little distance. For several miles the bank of the river was covered with a continuous string of villages. After skirting this glorious garden land for two hours, we crossed a sandy tract, overgrown with the poisonous euphorbia, to avoid a curve in the river. During the whole of the afternoon, we travelled along the edge of the cultivated land, and sometimes in the midst of it, obliging my camels to stumble clumsily over the raised trenches which carried water from the river to the distant parts of the fields. Large, ruined forts of unburnt brick, exceedingly picturesque at a distance, stood at intervals between the desert and the harvest-land.