86 Desert East of Kerma — The Athai.

Drainag:e.

Vegstation.

Inhabitante.

Cultivatioii. BomIs.

Limits.

Bisbarin country.

Drainage.

From Kerma, as far aa Old Dongola, practically no hills are visible from the river, and the sand hills are piled up on the very edge of the watr. At Old Dongola the ground rises, and from there, as far as J. Barkal, near Merowe, rocky elevations approach the river here and there, or are seen in the distance, without, however, always encroaching on the fertile belt on the right bank.

From J. Barkal to Abu Hamed there is a rough and rocky belt of hills a few miles from the river, though the elevations are inconsiderable.

Rain falls at long intervals in very heavy and local showers. From the upper part of the country it is carried off by a number of wide shallow wadis, whose beds are hardly distinguishable when crossed, though the slight remains of grass they sometimes contain show them up clearly when looked down on from the top of a hill.

As these wadis reach the rocky belt along the river, their beds contract so much that after heavy rain regular torrents descend them, sweeping away anything they find in their path. Much damage occurred in this way to the camp at Akasha in 189(5, though no rain fell in the vicinity.

South of the crest of the spur the chief drainage lines are the two Wadis Keheli, one of which rises near J. Kuror and joins the Nile, about 40 miles below Abu Hamed ; the other rises near No. 5 Station and is followed by the railway under the name of Wadi Gaud, and eventually reaches the Nile a little west of Mograt Island.

Some of the wadis contain a little grass and a few stunted selem bushes, but there is no grazing for flocks except within a few miles of the Nile. Firewood also is very rarely met with.

The riverain inhabitants graze their flocks a few miles into the desert. Besides these shepherds there are no inhabitants.

There is none.

Except in the hilly belt along the river, camels can go anywhere. The only track at all well-known is that from Dongola (Naui) to Merowe, cutting off the great bend of the Nile to the south.

(A) Country East of Halfa-Abu Hamed Railway, or " The Atbai." The Atbai is roughly the name applied to the country bounded on the north by the Kena-Kosseir road, on the south by the Berber-Suakin road, on the east by the Red Sea, and on the west by the Nile from Kena to Haifa, and thence by the Sudan Government Railway to Berber. It lies, therefore, approximately, between N. lat.

26 °and 20°. The northern half, which is inhabited by the Ababda, belongs to Egypt ; the southern portion, inhabited by the Bisharin and the Amarar, etc., near Suakin, belongs to the Sudan. Although on many maps this country is generally labelled " Nubian Desert," much of it is by no means desert in the true sense of the word. Comparatively little is known even now of the more southern districts* of the Atbai, and the following descriptive notes must be taken to apply chiefly to the country between north lat. 21° and 22° 30'.

The country of the Bisharin, which is bounded on the north by an irregular line rather north of lat. 22°, and to the south extends as far as Mitateb on the Atbara, contains wide stretches of gravelly, sandy, or stony desert, intersected by frequent bare sandstone and granite ranges, but, at the same time, on the eastern side especially, it contains many more or less fertile and quite luxuriantly wooded wadis, in which water is sometimes found within 2 or 3 feet of the surface.

East of the railway the hills become more frequent and larger, and the drainage lines more conspicuous.

Generally speaking, the watershed between the Nile and the Red Sea, which lies between 35° and 35° 30' E. long., consists of a mass of hills from 30 to 40 miles in width. These hills, which consist of agglomerations of rather small features, out of which a bolder peak, such as J. Eigat, occasionally rises, are intersected by very numerous rocky khors, which feed a few large and weU-wooded wadis. West of the watershed, from as far south as 20° 30', all the drainage escapes north by the wadis Alagi and Gabgaba, which unite to the east of Korosko and join the Nile near Sayala.

Of these the Gabgaba has the longest course, as its head waters rise much further south than those of the Alagi. Much of its basin is still unexplored, in fact, the only well known portion is the plain south-east of Murrat wells, which is painfully arid and deficient in vegetation.

Many of the wadis, however, that descend to it on the east are well wooded as long as they are in the hills, and even for a few miles after they have emerged from them.

The scheme of drainage here is exactly the reverse of that west of the railway. Instead of water-courses beginning broad and ending narrow and deep, here they commence with narrow defined rocky channels, gradually becoming broader, sandier, of more gentle slope, and in many places with fine trees and much " tabas " grass. When the hills are left, however, the trees die away, the grass disappears, and the bed becomes ill-defined or completely lost. South of the parallel of Murrat the country appears to become more open, and probably very wide plains exist with little to offer to even a desert Arab.

* Vide p. 89.