Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/485

 which is part of his title, or, as it were, his Christian name added to that of his family. This prince was, nevertheless, but the Shekh of all the Arabs, to whom they paid a tribute to enable him to maintain his dignity, and a sufficient strength to keep up order and inforce his decrees in public matters. As for œconomical ones, each tribe was under the government of its own Shekh, old men, fathers of families in each clan.

The residence of this Arab prince, called for shortness Wed Ageeb, was at Gerri, a town in the very limits of the tropical rains, immediately upon the ferry which leads across the Nile to the desert of Bahiouda, and the road to Dongola and Egypt, joining the great desert of Selima. This was a very well-chosen situation, it being a toll-gate, as it were, to catch all the Arabs that had flocks, who, living within the rains in the country which was all of fat earth, were every year, about the month of May, obliged by the fly to pass, as it were, in review, to take up their abode in the sandy desert without the tropical rains. By the time fair weather returned in the fertile part of the country to the southward, and freed them from the fly, all forts of verdure had grown up in great luxuriancy, while hunger flared them now in the face among the lands to the northward, where every thing eatable had been consumed by the multitudes of cattle that had taken refuge there. The Arab chief, with a large army of light, unincumbered horse, flood in the way of their return to their pastures, till they had paid the uttermost farthing of tribute, including arrears, if any there were. Such was the state and government of the whole of this vast country, from the frontiers of