Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/317

 KASSALA- -SABDERAT— ALGADEX— DOLKA. 249 crowds, whom they never attack, whilst their own lives ore protected by the sheikh of Gul&bat. Most of the residents in Metammeh are Tukruri, who set the example of work and industrial pursuits to the neighbouring peoples. Not only do the Tukruri import skins, coffee, salt, some stuffs and beasts of burden from Abyssinia, bartering them with the merchants of the Nile, but they also deal in the products of their own country, honey, wax, tobacco, maize, gum, incense, dyes, and drugs. They supply the Arabs with more than half of the cotton they use in weaving their togas. From the provinces of the Sudan they receive more especially glass trinkets, arms, and the iahri, or Maria-Theresa crown-pieces, which are the exclusive currency in northern Abyssinia. The slave trade in this district, till recently more active than all the others, although officially forbidden at different times, has always been carried on. But it is no longer openly conducted in public ; in 1879, the sum obtained by the sale of slaves amounted to more than £20,000. At the time of the Egyptian rule, the governor of Khartum maintained a garrison of two thousand men in Gal&bat. At present Gulabat has become an independent principality, no longer paying tribute either to Egypt or Abyssinia. G EDAREF — Tom AT. Doha, on the route from Metammeh to Abu-Ahraz, is a commercial outpost of Gul&bat situated at the confluence of the Rahad with the Blue Nile. But in this lowland region the chief, if not permanent at least temporary, market is Suk- Abu- Sin, or " Market of Father Sin," also called Gcda re/ alter the province in which it is situated. During the rainy season Suk- Abu-Sin is visited only by the nomads in the vicinity ; but directly the kharif is over, when the Atbara and the other rivers of the plain are again fordable, and when the merchants have no longer to dread the attacks of the venomous flies on their camels, the caravans arrive from all parts, and as many as fifteen thousand persons are often assembled on the market-place. Before the war, gum, wax, salt, cereals and cattle were the chief wares in the market of Abd-Sin, and Greek merchants mingled with the crowds of Arabs and Bejas. Tomat, at the junction of the Settit with the Atbara, is also a town where a few exchanges take place ; Gos-Rejeb, on the left bank of the Atbara, lies on the caravan route between Shendi and the port of ^lassawuh. The ruins pointed out by Burckhardt are a proof that the Egyptian merchants also passed through this region on their journey from Meroe to the coast at Adulis Bay. KaSSALA— SaBDERAT — AlOADEX — DOLKA. At the present time the most important town of the country is Kmsah-el-Luz, capital of the province of Taka, and, since 1840, the chief fortress of all the region comprised between the Nile and the Red Sea ; it is also called Gush by the natives, after the stream whose right bank it skirta. After having served as a