Accordingly he gave us a black corporal, so renowned as a sportsman that he went by the name of "El Baggar" (the cow), because of his having killed several of the oryx antelope, known as "El Baggar et Wabash" (cow of the desert).
After sixteen hours' actual marching from Cassala we arrived at the valley of the Atbara.

There was an extraordinary change in the appearance of the river between Gozerajup and this spot.

There was no longer the vast sandy desert with the river flowing through its sterile course on a level with the surface of the country; but after traversing an apparently perfect flat of forty-five miles of rich alluvial soil, we had suddenly arrived upon the edge of a deep valley, between five and six miles wide, at the bottom of which, about two hundred feet below the general level of the country, flowed the river Atbara.

On the opposite side of the valley the same vast table-lands continued to the western horizon.
We commenced the descent toward the river: the valley was a succession of gullies and ravines, of landslips and watercourses.

The entire hollow, of miles in width, had evidently been the work of the river.