Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/157

 tuined by the slave-dealers. Dem Idris, the chief town of the Golo country, is one of the great centres of the ivory trade. When Bohndorff, Juncker's fellow-traveller, escaped northwards towards the end of 1883, elephants' tusks were here heaped up in the stores. Hud the river not been blocked by the revolt. Governor Lupton valued the merchandise that he could have forwarded to Khartum at 125 tons of ivory and 15 tons of indiarubber. Dem Ziber, or Dem Suleiman, the chief town of the "Dwems," named after the two slave-dealers, father and son, whose power was overthrown by Gessi in 1878, is one of the largest places in the Nilotic basin above Khartum. The Egyptians have made it the capital of the province of Bahr-el-Ghazal. The king of Uganda's envoys on reaching this "great city" believed that they had arrived in England, of whose wealth and wonders they had heard so much. Its stores are stocked with European merchandise as well as with local produce, exotic fruits and vegetables acclimatised in the surrounding gardens. Here jewellers have established themselves, and sculptors here carve ivory tastefully as bracelets, sword and dagger hilts, and many other articles of vertu, and manage to keep within the law which claims elephants' tusks as the Khedive's property. Dem Suleiman is the only town of the riverain countries possessing a mosque.

To the north of Fertit, Gessi chose as the garrison station on the Arab frontier the town of Hiffi, situated in the vicinity of large forests near the sources of the streams flowing towards the Bahr-el-Arab, but which run quite dry during a part of the year. The Togoi, one of the neighbouring tribes, belonging probably to the same race as the Krej, are savage, ugly, and debased; whilst other peoples, such as the Inderi and Shir, have features which, according to Felkin, are almost "European," and are distinguished for their high moral qualities. The village of Gondu, about 24 miles north of Hiffi, is a citadel of the Shir, perched on the top of a hill rising some 300 feet above the plain; a rough path winds up the side of the hill, which, however, the Arab invaders have vainly attempted to scale. The Shirs, with no other weapons than arrows and stones, have always repulsed their assailants. Having remained independent and retained their bravery, they have lost nothing of their good qualities. At the sight of a stranger they leave their work and run forward, offering him refreshment and food. The Shir have little of the Negro type, their lips being thin and the nose shapely. They daub the body with oil and red ochre, which gives them a resemblance to their namesakes, the Shirs of the Nile Valley. Like the Madi and so many other peoples of the Upper Nile region, they pass a great part of their life in dressing their hair. Their favourite shape is that of a halo composed of long tresses.

The Mandara, or Mandula, north of the Shirs in the direction of the Baggara Arabs, form the most advanced section of the Negro populations. According to Gessi, they are immigrants from Baghirmi, near Lake Tsad, who, flying from the slave-traders, took refuge in a country which, however, had been most devastated by