From Juan Maria Schuver's Travels in North-East Africa, 1880-1883, edited by Wendy James, Gerd Baumann, and Douglas Johnson (1996)
Illustration by Angela Dominguez
Nubia is charming, with its black rocks, bathed in glaciers of the most golden sand in the world; ravishing are its little valleys with green carpets, with groves of slender palms; in silent solitude, listening to the rustling of the rapids; one does not pass these deserted and charming riverbanks without experiencing a certain sadness that one has not yet reached the point where one could pitch one’s tent for the last time, to finish life in contemplation like the Sanyasis of Brahmanism. Korosko, a miserable village, is where one leaves the Nile to enter the desert. We leave it tired from three days of argument on the subject of scurvy camels, ropes of dom-palm leaves, water skins and greedy officials.
The desert, here a mixture of rocks as black as charcoal and vast windy plains, has its miseries as well as its charms. I would not wish upon my worst enemy to be woken each morning unduly early by the raucous howls of a dozen camels. I made the entire journey of 15 days on foot, with a facility I would not have expected; the pure and dry air of the desert, the serene sky which had not been disturbed for six months by a single cloud, acted as a vigorous stimulant on the nerves; the sand is rarely other than firm, except in the slopes and descents of several small passes.
