174 AFRICAN WANDERINGS.

an old Spanish blade of the fourteenth century. Oh, that such a knightly relic of the crusades could speak ! Most of these blades have been introduced by or procured from the slave-dealers, and probably brought from the south-west countries, Darfur, &c., as in the south and south-east, such blades are not to be seen. The chain armour, with which man and horse is covered in battle, comes from India, as all say ; in time of peace, the hoi'ses of the Arab chiefs only carry head and eye covering.

The land still continued sloping downwards, the vegetation became extremely luxuriant, and it was evident that water lay longer here than in other places ; so that during and after the rainy season, this neighbourhood must be a lake or swamp. Ere long we found ourselves in the great Gohr (the bed of a river only full in the rainy season), named el Gasch, which seems to have its main sources in the rain from the mountains of Makada (Habesch), and extends in a direction from south-east to north-west.

This it is that principally furnishes the watering of the land of Taka, and causes the fruitfulness of its fields, as well as the growth of the trees of the Chaaba. We beheld a considerable arm of this Gohr in el Sofi-a, the village of Mohammed Din ; and it also furnishes waters to the wells and springs of those lands, and by its sinking into the earth forms the subterranean rivulets, which principally maintain the high fruitfulness of the lands of the Haddenda. It is commonly said that it afterwards divides into many branches, and loses itself at last in standing pools in the Chaaba, that during the dry season evaporate under the sunbeams. But as, during the rainy season, the torrents of waters conveyed to it from the higher mountains are very considerable, and as, at the same period, very many other rain brooks pour their waters into it, it does not seem very probable that these grounds, so completely soaked themselves by the CharifF, can drink in this immense quantity of water also. In Berber we heard that a considerable rain torrent poui-ed itself into the Nile, either a little above or below that place, perchance that is the el Gasch ; it may, however, pour itself into the Mogren, a large river in the rainy season, which rushes into the Atbara, a day's journey higher up than its junction with the Nile. That it does not run into the Atbara under the name of the el Gasch, is well known.