Khartoum, and the Blue and White Niles, Vol. 2 (of 2)

"Khartoum, and the Blue and White Niles, Vol. 2 (of 2)" by George Melly is a travel narrative written in the mid-19th century. It chronicles an overland and river journey through Nubia and the Bayuda Desert to Khartoum, mixing day-to-day travel scenes with notes on antiquities, wildlife, local customs, and the Egyptian administration in the Sudan. The party—family members, a dragoman, servants, and Bedouin camel-drivers—cross rivers and deserts by boat and camel, observing villages, markets, missions, and the meeting of the Blue and White Niles. The opening of the work follows preparations and delays at Wady Halfa, the loading of camels, and the first desert camps, with hunting episodes and a visit to the painted temple at Samneh. Melly sketches a vivid routine of desert travel—pre-dawn starts, grumbling camels, midday shade and luncheon, encounters with Nubian children, and evening tents—then moves through Sakkut’s sands to palm-groved villages where dates, milk, and informal medical aid are exchanged. After partridge shoots, a fruitless gazelle chase that leaves them briefly lost, and sights of flowers and birds, the party reaches Dongola, crosses a waterless tract punctuated by a lone well, and emerges gratefully to the Nile’s green belt near Gebel Berkel, inspecting pyramids and temples and often reading their landscapes through Biblical imagery. Pressing on via wells and pastoral scenes to Wady Bashava (complete with Bedouin feasting and a makeshift Christmas dinner), they arrive at Khartoum, where Governor Latiffe Pasha offers a house, boat, and transport; Melly then tours the town’s bazaar and gardens, meets European residents and an exiled scholar forced to found a nominal school, notes trade, superstition, and military display, hosts a formal dinner for the governors, and ends this section with a dromedary excursion and observations on village life and the appearance of Nubian women.