We passed a few mud and straw cottages and came to the village of Dal where we sent for the Shaikh, who in answer to our demand for lodging showed us to a tree surrounded by camel dung.
-Journal of a Visit to Some Parts of Ethiopia, Waddington and Hanbury, 1822
In 1988 we were received much more warmly by Ahmad Shahīn, the Shaikh of Dāl village deep in its unnumbered cataract where basement basalt erupts from the sand for a five mile run along the Nile’s bed, a place known as the Belly of Stone, a better name for such topography than any geologist might offer, and from there we crossed by rowboat over to Farka and then to Halfa, Aswan, and finally Binban, where we waited for the Dabouka to come in from the West.