THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 433
have you been travelling about ?" adds one of the others.
- ' Near twenty years," faid I. — " You muft be very young,
fays the king, to have committed fo many fins, and fo early ; they muft all have been with women ?" — " Part of them, 1 fuppofe, were, replied I ; but I did not fay that I was one of thofe who travelled on account of their fins, but that there were fome Derviflies that did fo on account of their vows, and fome to learn wifdom." He now made a fign, and a flave brought a cufliion, which I v;ould have refufed, but he forced me to fit down upon it.
I FOUND afterwards who the three men were who had joined in our converfation ; the firll was Ali Mogrebi, a na- tive of Morocco, who was Cadi, or chief judge at Sennaar, and was then fallen into difgrace with the two brothers, Mahomet Abou Kalec, governor of Kordofan,and ShekhAde- ian, prime minifler at Sennaar, then encamped at Aira at the head of the horfe and Nuba, levying the tax upon the Arabs as they went down, out of the limits of the rains, into the fandy countries below Atbara to protect their cattle from the fly. Another of thefe three was Cadi of Kordofan, in the interell of Mahomet Abou Kalec, and fpy upon the king. The third was a faint in the neighbourhood, confervator of a large extent of ground, where great crops of dora not only grow, but when threflied out are likewife kept in large excavations called Matamores ; the place they call Shaddly. This man was efteemed another Jofeph among the Funge, who accumulated grain in years of plenty, that he might diflribute it at fmall prices among the poor when fcarcity carne. He was held in very great reverence in the neigh- bourhood of Sennaar.
Vol. IV. . 3 1 .Th£
