100 Sefit and Athara Rivers, etc.

Description of country.

Roads.

Natural products.

Abyssinian outlaws.

Gallabat. The people living at this village are Takruris. The village of Nogara, which lies 10 miles S.S.E. from J. Lukdi, belongs to Abyssinia, and is under Dejaj Gasessa (1904). Many of its inhabitants were formerly under Mek Nimr, and are a mixture Jaalin, Takruris, and Sudanese, the majority of whom are said to be robbers and runaway slaves.

The country bordering the Setit to as far south as J. Lukdi belongs to the Hamrans, south of them the country, including the Bahr El Salam, belongs to the Debania, and further south again the country, including Gadabi, belongs to the Takruris, of Gallabat.

Between the Setit and the Bahr El Salam rivers the country is flat and waterless, and its surface is badly cracked, cotton soil, overgrown with high grass, and generally wooded, but with here and there wide open spaces. South of the Bahr El Salam, though the trees, grass, and soil continue much the same, the Abyssinian foot hills approach nearer to the Atbara and the ground becomes more undulating and intersected by khors, in some of which, though chiefly in the extreme south, water stands throughout the year.

As the inhabitants are few, roads are proportionately little used, and consequently bad and overgrown. Off the track, the going is execrable, and grass, bush, and cotton soil make the following of game paths a necessity.

All roads lead to Nogara, the asylum for illegitimate hunters and renegade blacks from the Sudan. They are : (1) Gedaref to Nogara (70 miles, approximate), vv( Sofi, Geif El Hamara (on Setit), and J. Lukdi. About 25 miles without water between the two latter places. At Lukdi, a large well, filled with sand, requires cleaning out ; now (1904) only contains rain water for a few months.

(2) Um Hagar (on Setit) to Nogara (38 miles). Water comparatively plentiful up to December, after that only obtainable by digging in bed of Khor Royan and Khor Bowal (17 miles interval). The Italians hope this road will be a trade route from Abyssinia into Eritrea. With this object in view a road has been cut by them from the Khor Gash to Um Hagar.

(3) Abu Gulud to Nogara, viA Abu Siteib (50 miles). Water at Tabarakalla (17 miles), also Atbara, Abu Siteib, Bahr El Salam.

(4) Nogara to Gallabat (83 miles), via Abu Siteib, Khor El Dom, Gadabi, and Um Sai. Water plentiful in December, probably scarce between Abu Siteib and Gadabi (37 miles) later. Very little used and much overgrown.

Honey and gum are practically the only products of this country. A good deal of game still exists, but it has suffered both from the depredations of cattle plague, as well as from professional game dealers with their parties of armed natives who have hunted this district for years : these are now rigidly excluded by the Sudan Government. The inhabitants of Nogara are also mostly armed with modern breechloading rifles.

Two Abyssinian outlaws have haunted this region both during and since the Mahdia. One, whose name is Hakos,* reputed to have some 150 rifles, has lately (1902) been actively raiding villages along our frontier. Kidana Miriam, the other brigand chief, has remained comparatively inactive, and is now (March, 1903), reported to be on the Upper Bahr El Salam or Angareb with 50 to 200 rifles.

(/) The AxBARAf and Tributaries.

The Atbara. — The Atbara rises near Chelga in Abyssinia, where it is known as the R. Goang. Coal is found in the valley of the Goang near its source. Both the Atbara and Setit in their course through the Sudan flow for the most part through a flat alluvial plain, and have cut for themselves a deep channel, which is, in the upper reaches of the Atbara at any rate, over 1.50 feet below the level of the plain. The banks, too, have been washed away by the drainage from either side and are cut up into numerous ravines and khors for several miles on either side of the actual bed.

Thus it is that the banks of the Atbara from Gallabat, to a point 15 miles north of Goz Regeb, are so intersected with ravines and watercourses, that it is seldom possible to march within 2 or 3 miles of the river, which is only approached at intervals. At Gallabat the width of the bed, which is generally shingle, and in which during the dry season the water stands in pools as it does throughout its course from here to the Nile, varies from a minimum of twenty yards at a spot where the river passes through perpendicular cliffs of rock to an average width of 100 to 150 yards. At Asubri the width between the banks, which are some 15 to 30 feet high, is about 350 yards. At Gallabat (1899) the spate commenced to come down on 17th May, and the river was still just fordable at Fasher in the same year on the 15th June ; after about that date it does not again become fordable until the beginning or middle of November. The flood water reaches the Nile about the end of June.

There are usually ferries at Sofi, Fasher, Suweihil (near Asubri), and Goz Regeb during the flood season. South of Sofi a road leads up the left bank to Gallabat.

♦ Hakos is reported to have been killed on the Abyssinian siJe of the frontier, December, 1903, whilst Kidana Miriam apijears to have settled down in Abyssinian territory.

r Vide Sir W. Garstin's " Repjort on the Basin of the Upper Nile." Foreign Office Blue Book, Egypt No. 2, 1!)04.