to Sittina his sister, to whom this country belongs, was then with them, so we did not fear them, otherwise there is not a worse set of fanatical wretches, or greater enemies to the name of Christian, than these are.
As we are here speaking of Arabs and their names, I shall once for all observe, that Wed, a word which I have frequently made use of in the course of this history, and which in this sense is peculiar to the kingdom of Sennaar, does not mean river, though that is its import in Arabic. Here it is an abbreviation of Welled, peculiar to the inhabitants of this part of Atbara, who seem to have an aversion to the letter l; Wed el Faal, the son of Faal; Wed Hydar, the son of Hydar, or the lion; Wed Hassan, the son of Hassan, and so of the rest. For the same reason, Melek Sennaar, the king of Sennaar, called Mek by throwing out the l; Abd el Mek, the slave of the king, instead of Abd el Melek. Here also I had the pleasure to find the language of the Koran that of the whole people in common conversation; and as this was the book in which I first studied the Arabic, I found now a propriety and facility of expression I had not been sensible of before; for that of the Koran, in Arabia, is a kind of dead language, rarely understood but by men of learning.
At Wed Baal a Nagga there is a ferry for those who go to Dongola by the desert of Bahiouda, Derreira is the landing-place on the other side; I suppose it is to avoid these Jaheleen that caravans ferry over at Gerri rather than come so low as Wed Baal a Nagga. We left Maia at half past three in the afternoon, and, after going three
