201 CHAPTER IX.

NORTH-WESTERN SUDAN.

COUNTRY WEST OF THE NILE, SOUTH OF LAT. 22° AND NORTH OF KORDOFAN.

This district readily lends itself to division for description into three sections, viz. : — 1.— Desert west of the Nile, north and west of Wadi El Gab, including Arbain road (for detailed report of which vHe Appendix. P.art III, Vol. II.).

2.— Wadi El Gab.

3. — Bayuda Desert.

Section 1. — Desert West of Nile, North and West of Wadi El Gab.

The country west of the Nile from Haifa to Kerma merits little description. Desert of the most arid description comes down close to the banks of the river, west of which all is uninhabited and waterless, with the exception of the few oases, for as far as is known upwards of 300 to 400 miles. The desert itself varies from hard, often stony sand or gravel-covered plains, to undulating moving sand dunes and rocky hills of lime, granite, or basalt. Remains of petrified forests are occasionally met. The amount of mineral wealth discovered in this inhospitable region is not yet definitely known.

Here and there a very limited amount of vegetation is met, at some spot where the water of one of the rare rainstorms that pass over this district has chanced to collect, but more often one may travel for miles and miles over country devoid of any vestige of animal or vegetable life.

The whole of this desert region, including the wells and oases, is uninhabited. It is, however, visited occasionally by roving bands of Hawawir and Kababish in search of natron or wild dates, as also by raiding parties of the Bedaiat, a tribe living to the north of Darfur, who only recently drove off camels grazing within 80 miles of Dongola.

The following is an extract from a report by Captain H. Hodgson, February, 1903, descriptive of the country west of the Wadi El Gab.

'' Beyond the limits of the Wadi El Gab, on the western side, there seems to be a belt of country in which water is easily found, but is undrinkable. Of the two water pans I have tried, namely Murrat and Butta, the one is very bitter and the other has a distinct smell of sulphuretted hydrogen — Arabs use these waters medicinally as purgatives.

" I reached and ascended the plateau of Jebel Abiad at what I reckon, roughly, to be 100 miles west from the river Jebel Aliiad. at Khandak. In 1!)01 I found the northern extremity of this range to be 98 miles from the river at Dongola. It is, on the eastern side, a high steep bluff, exposing the white rock (gypsum) from which it gets its name. It extends continuously from where I stood, both north and south, as far as the horizon.

" The surface of the plateau is shingle and sand ; it slopes gently down on the western side. "I reached the Natrun valley on the 31st January. It is not literally a valley, but an undulating plain Wadi stretching south and south-west as far as the horizon. From south-east to north-east it is bounded by a Natnin. high range of steep hilh of black rock ; from north-east to north-west by high broken rocky ground with isolated conical hills ; to the west, by low gravel hills. On the distant horizon, north-west, is a high range of hills. Close under the bluff on the eastern side of the plain are two thickets of selem bushes, growing luxuriantly and suffering in places from over supply of water. This is very plentiful and near the surface, the sand being brown and damp, but it is not the best water in the valley. The southern of these two thickets is called Melani. An isolated peak in the northern centre of the plain, called Jebel Kashaf, lies at a bearing of 315° mag. from Melani. The best water, called Bir Sultan, lies 3 miles from Melani at a bearing of 278° mag. and due south of Jebel Kashaf. On the ground called Bir Sultan (which includes an area of about J square mile, covered with tussocks of Haifa grass, etc.), I found three or four pans of good water, the soil below the sand being white clay. There is a small clump of date seedlings near the biggest spring.