We had seen
the Atbara a bed of glaring sand--a mere continuation of the
burning desert that surrounded its course, fringed by a belt of
withered trees, like a monument sacred to the memory of a dead
river. We had seen the sudden rush of waters when, in the still
night, the mysterious stream had invaded the dry bed, and swept
all before it like an awakened giant; we knew at that moment "the
rains were falling in Abyssinia," although the sky above us was
without a cloud. We had subsequently witnessed that tremendous
rainfall, and seen the Atbara at its grandest flood. We had
traced each river, and crossed each tiny stream, that fed the
mighty Atbara from the mountain chain, and we now, after our long
journey, forded the Atlara in its infancy, hardly knee deep, over
its rocky bed of about sixty yards width, and camped in the
little village of Toganai, on the rising ground upon the opposite
side. It was evening, and we sat upon an angarep among the lovely
hills that surrounded us, and looked down upon the Atbara for the
last time, as the sun sank behind the rugged mountain of Ras el
Feel (the elephant's head). Once more I thought of that wonderful
river Nile, that could flow for ever through the exhausting
deserts of sand, while the Atbara, during the summer months,
shrank to a dry skeleton, although the powerful affluents, the
Salaam and the Settite, never ceased to flow, every drop of their
waters was evaporated by the air and absorbed by the desert sand
in the bed of the Atbara, two hundred miles above its junction
with the Nile!
The Atbara exploration was completed; and I looked forward to the
fresh enterprise of new rivers and lower latitudes, that should
unravel the mystery of the Nile!
CHAPTER XX.
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