Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/320

 252 NORTH-EAST AFRICA. Tillage by preaching, praying, and selling amulets ; in this way they have con- verted the population of Algaden, who are mainly of Bazen origin. In a neigbour- ing plain, the people of Algaden and Sabderat in 1870 gained a sanguinary victory over an army of Abyssinians, 10,000 of whom were left on the battle-field. To the south-east of Algaden, in the Barea country, between the Gash and the Barka, the Egj-ptians have recently founded two military stations, Kufit and Amideb. The first was abandoned in 1875, but Amideb was still occupied at the general rising of the tribes ; it is one of the places that England has by treaty handed over to the Abyssinians. Dolka, on a rock which rises to the east of the valley of the Anseba, long resisted the attacks of the Khedive's troops. In the neighbour- hood are the ruins of a town and some Christian churches which bear a few Abyssinian or Himyaritic inscriptions. The principal town of the Habab country is Af-Ahad, or Tha-Man'am, situated in a circular plain, at the foot of a precipitous mountain pierced with grottoes. Ed-Damer — Berber. Below Kassala on the Gash, and Gos-Rejeb on the Atbara, there is only one town in the basin, Ed-Damei% lying south of the confluence in the southern peninsula formed by the Nile and the mouth of the Atbara. Here dwelt the Makaberab tribe, whom Schweinfurth and Lejean believe to be the somewhat legendary Macrobians of ancient writers. But this town, which was formerly a brisk market, has lost its commercial importance and become a city of " saints and teachers." It has schools, formerly celebrated, hotbeds of the Mussulman propa- ganda, but it is no longer a rendezvous for caravans. Some 30 miles lower down on the same bank of the river, is the commercial centre of the great river and its north Abyssinian tributaries. Berber, *ill recently capital of an Egyptian province, is the largest mart between Khartum and the Egyptian frontier, properly so-called. Berber, so named from the Barabra people, who occupy this region of Nubia, is officially called El-Mekheir, El-Mukhe'iref, or El- Mesherif. Before the present war, during which Berber has been almost entirely destroyed, the town skirted the river bank for a distance of several miles, its white terraced houses standing in the midst of acacia and palm groves. A few gardens surround the town, beyond which immediately commence the uncultivated, almost desert, spaces, visited only by the Bisharin nomads. Berber is the starting point of the most frequented caravan route between the Middle Nile and the Red Sea. At this point, the distance which separates the river from the sea is, following the winding desert route, only 250 miles. If well supplied with food and water, travellers can easily complete this journey in less than a week, although they usually take fifteen days ; sooner or later a few hours will suffice, thanks to a railway already commenced, and on which military trains were running in 1885 from Suakin, for a few miles inland, to Otao^ the present terminus on the route to Berber. "When this line is completed, Berber will become the port by