THE ADVANCE ON DONGOLA
“_14th Oct._—I arrived at Sheykh Obeyd and remained there only a
fortnight, going on from Cairo up the Nile to visit Upper Egypt and
Nubia, a part of the Nile Valley still new to me. I travelled on this
occasion alone, my family not having yet arrived, and got as far south
as what was then the extreme frontier of Egypt towards the Soudan.
“_29th Oct._—Left Sheykh Obeyd for the Upper Nile, taking Ali Suffraji
with me as body servant.
“Passing through Cairo called on Gorst, who begged me to inquire on my
journey whether there was any ill-feeling in Upper Egypt between Moslems
and Copts, and on other points to get him what information I could. He
told me that as to Philæ, the reservoir scheme was for the time laid by,
the finances being not quite safe, and the political conditions too
uncertain.
“At sunset I drove out beyond the Kasr el Nil bridge, to enjoy the cool
breeze and see the villages still partly surrounded by water and at nine
I started by train. I travelled all night, comfortably enough but for
the exceeding dust, with a fine moon in its second quarter, and a
splendid morning star, showing the country still half inundated. People
are beginning to sow their beans and wheat in the immense flats of mud.
In other places the plain is covered with sheep feeding on the new green
grass before it is ploughed. Sugar cane is the only growing crop.
“_30th Oct._—At half-past ten reached Girgeh, where the railway ends,
and took boat in a stern-wheel steamer leaving at one. No first-class
passenger besides myself, except three French engineers connected with
the railway now being constructed to Keneh. With one of them, Megie, I
had some interesting talk. He has been thirty-five years in the country,
having come as a boy with his father, a _protégé_ of Linant Pasha—now
for eight years in Upper Egypt—intelligent and kindly. He tells me there
is absolutely no ill-will between Moslems and Copts—never was any, even
in the time of Arabi—knew Arabi—considered him a _brave homme_—had
remained at Kaliub till after the bombardment, when he left by the last
train for Suez—could have stayed on, if he had liked, in security at
Cairo, though perhaps not in the villages. I asked him whether the
fellahin were better off now or in Saïd Pasha’s time. ‘Dans le temps de
Saïd,’ he answered, ‘les œufs se vendaient cent pour une piastre. Voilà
ce que j’appelle la misère. Pour le bien être, oui. Ils étaient à leur
aise, et les impôts étaient moins élevés. Mais ils n’étaient pas au
courant de la civilisation.’ A characteristic French answer. This is a
good specimen of the ideas even intelligent foreigners have, and he
certainly spoke with sympathy of the fellahin. Stopped for the night at
Farshut, where they are making the new railway bridge. It has been
sweltering hot all the afternoon, thermometer 85, but cool after sunset.
“_31st Oct._—Travelling due east, a pleasant wind in our
faces—multitudes of birds, not yet scared away by the tourists’ guns,
herons, pelicans, little white herons, cormorants, pied kingfishers,
hoopoes—few signs of European life—immense crops of millet, taller than
a camel and rider, this makes the banks green. The Nile has fallen three
metres, and the _shadoufs_ are at work. This is the season to see the
Upper Nile, or any part of it for that matter. I never had a pleasanter
fortnight at Sheykh Obeyd than since the 12th, when I returned there—the
garden a paradise of birds and beasts, two wolves every evening in the
palms at El Kheysheh, and numberless foxes—millions of sparrows roosting
nightly in the orange trees (so that the whole garden smelt in the
morning like a bird-cage), everything perfection.
“Past Keneh there are splendid reaches of the river, with banks
beautifully wooded with _sont_ trees in full flower besides _abels_,
_nebuks_, and palms of both sorts—no _lebbeks_ nor _gemeysehs_, though I
saw a huge dead trunk of a _gemeyseh_ by the water side. The _lebbek_,
though an old Egyptian tree, seems to have become almost extinct till
the present century, when it was reintroduced with the other modern
improvements. There can be none in the country older than seventy or
eighty years, big trees as they are.
“_1st Nov._—Luxor. The Luxor Hotel is open, but empty with the exception
of an invalid doctor (Dr. Ruffer) and his wife, and Newbury, an
archæologist, who comes in for meals, having been here through the
summer. Tourists there are none. I went out before sunrise and looked at
the temple, and later to Karnak. The ancient Egyptians seem always to
have built on the Nile mud, a mean foundation.
“The Consul, Ahmed Eff. Mustafa, called on me and invited me to
luncheon, an Egyptian meal served with much hospitality. He is an
honest, good man, of the fellah type, very proud of his visitors’ book,
which dates from 1855, and is a pretty complete history of modern Egypt.
I found my brother Francis’ name and Alice’s, and Lady Herbert’s party,
and the Mures and Spencers, who were here in _dahabiyahs_ in (the autumn
of) 1863, and Lady Dufferin’s in 1858, with a vast number of others
recalling old memories, Strangford’s, Beaufort’s, down to ‘H. M.
Stanley’s of the “New York Herald,”’ and General Gordon’s in 1884, and
Lord Waterford’s last year, who shot himself a month ago—nearly all dead
now.
“_2nd Nov._—Across the river before sunrise to the statue of Memnon and
the temples of Gournah and Medinet Habou. The latter is a really fine
thing, and I was able to see it alone without guides or fellow
sightseers. But I am left with the impression that the Nile itself, with
its great flow of water and its ever green banks and eternal youth is
the really interesting thing, far finer than its monuments. These are
interesting as part of the river’s history, not the Nile because of
them. The greatest of human works are a very small matter, after all,
and the world would be hardly poorer if mankind had never been—greatly
richer, indeed, seeing how much beauty we have destroyed. To Karnak
again in the evening, and rode through by the light of the full moon.
“_3rd Nov._—Again across the river to see some minor monuments not worth
visiting. I was followed by a troop of little girls whom the tourists
have debauched with bakshish. I thought at first they were Ghazawiyeh,
so shameless were they, a sight I have never seen before in all the
lands of Islam. Coming in, I received a visit from Minshatti Bey the
Ababdeh Sheykh to whom I had sent to tell him I was here. He is a
delightful old man, whom our military people have quarrelled with,
suspecting him of Mahdist tendencies. Kitchener deposed him from the
Sheykhat and put in another, Beshir Bey, in his place, who now lives at
Assouan under the eye of the Government, and does their business with
the tribe. But Minshatti is the real Sheykh. The young Khedive, when he
was here, sent for Minshatti, and made much of him, and gave him a robe
of honour. This was made one of the points of Kitchener’s quarrel with
the Khedive. The old man tells me that the Sirdar now treats him better,
and he is allowed to go about where he likes, and is not molested by the
police. He promised—but I think rather doubtingly, for he is probably
afraid—to send one of his relations with me if I went travelling, as I
intend to do this winter, among the Ababdeh.
“Had some talk with Dr. Ruffer, who is a distinguished man of science, a
bacteriologist. He had a paralytic stroke six months ago (it was a case
of blood poisoning caused by one of his experiments), and is here for
his health. He is looking for bacteria in the desert sand.
“Later I went to Minshatti’s house, which is just outside the town, a
clean, new building, where he received me with carpets spread on the
_mastaba_, a nice cool place. I asked him about the Soudan, and the
Mahdi, and the Khalifa, and he told me much that was interesting. He
never saw the Mahdi himself, but several of his relations knew him when
he was a _najar_ (carpenter), a boat builder at Dongola. He was an
_alem_ and a _faki_; but his political fortunes were the work originally
of Jaffir Bey, who had quarrelled with the Government. He said the Mahdi
was a good man; and as long as he lived everybody in the Soudan believed
in him as the true Mahdi. But the Khalifa had ruined everything. The
reason of the Baggara power was that the Khalifa had put forward all the
best men of the other tribes to fight, and these had got killed in the
wars, while the Baggaras were held in reserve and reaped the profits.
The Khalifa had got possession of all the firearms in the country on the
pretext of having them in readiness to resist an invasion, and so the
Baggaras, his own tribe, were the only ones thus armed. El Nejumi had
made his expedition, which ended at Toski [this was the battle won by
Grenfell, see later], because an attempt had been made to poison him,
and he wanted to get away somewhere where he should be his own master.
The chiefs of the tribes when not killed in war had been got rid of on
various pretexts by the Khalifa. They had been accused of treason and
put into a kind of fetter which Minshatti described to me as being a
long tube of iron holding the arms straight out from the shoulder to the
wrist. A man with his arms thus fettered was helpless and died in a
month. Thus only children were left in the tribes, and the Baggaras, an
ignoble tribe with whom the Jaalin and Kababish and Hadendowas and
Ababdeh would not in former times intermarry, had got all power into
their hands.
“I did not, however, gather from him that the fellahin were ill off. He
told me _durra_ was at three _reals_ the _ardeb_, and all things were
plentiful. But the richer people suffered exactions, so that it was the
common cry that the Baggaras’ rule was worse than the rule of the Turks.
He talked a good deal about Salatin (Slatin) and Neufeld. He said that
an expedition from the Government would be joined by everyone in the
Soudan. I asked him if it would be so if the expedition was an English
one. He said that the opinion now in the Soudan had changed, and that
the people there no longer regarded the _gufara_ (infidels, meaning
Christians) as they did ten years ago. Many of them had been wounded and
taken prisoners, and had afterwards been released, and had related at
home that the _kufara_ had treated them well. As Minshatti was certainly
suspected of being in league with the Mahdists, and probably was so a
few years ago, his evidence is of more value than most. But I expect
that the Baggaras are stronger in the country than he quite makes out.
The noble tribes are doubtless jealous of them, as there are always
jealousies among Arab tribes. Of his own position he said that he was
one of the three great Sheykhs of the Ababdeh, the others being Beshir
and Saleh Ibn Khalifeh, lately killed at Murad. They each used to
received £40 a month from the Government, but Beshir’s allowance had
been reduced to £32, and his own to £5. He asked me to try and get his
raised. I said I would try to do so, but fear there is no chance.
“_4th Nov._—On board the _Ibis_. We passed Erment this morning where
there are many lebbek and gemeyseh trees apparently twenty years old,
also larger factories and some cotton cultivation. I did not notice any
dogs there, though Erment is famous for its large rough breed. The dogs
generally of the Upper Niles are rougher than those in the north.
Matana, a beautifully wooded place, was one of the Khedive Ismaïl’s
properties. Esneh in the afternoon, away from the river with two square
masses of ancient stonework on mounds of rubbish. Stopped for the night
at Silsilis, the moon very splendid, as red and bright as a fire lit
just under it when it rose.
“My companions on board are three or four English officers of the
Egyptian army, with the limited conversation of their kind. But I like
young Broadwood who commands the cavalry at Wady Halfa.
“_5th Nov._—Some attractive desert places on the left bank where
cultivation has been abandoned and its place taken by _halfa_ grass and
green bushes—the palms gone wild. There are a good many horses turned
out, tethered in the barley to graze, and on the _durra_. Some of them
are bays with white faces and four white legs, probably of the Dongola
breed—tall, with straight shoulders and drooping quarters. Kom Ombo
close to the river, temple and fort on a natural mound. The river is now
generally from a kilometre to a mile broad, a few mud banks beginning to
show in places.
“At 1:30 arrived at Assouan. It has a European appearance. The approach
to it is fine. Having made acquaintance on board with Mustafa Bey
Shakir, deputy mamur of Assouan, I inquired of him what government lands
there were for sale—this for Evelyn, who has an idea of purchasing
here—and he sent me on a donkey to look at a building belonging to the
Government known as the Mukhtab el Miri el Buhari, about two miles down
the river. There are well wooded gardens near it, which the guard said
might be bought from the fellahin owners for £10 and £15 the feddan. The
Government is asking £300 for the building. In a few years the railway
will be brought near it, and it might not be a bad purchase.
“Then by train to Shellal, put my things on board the steamer, and spent
the evening sailing about Philæ and the edge of the cataract, one of the
loveliest things I remember of the kind. Indeed, the only recollection I
can compare with it is the boating expedition we made on the great tank
at Hyderabad ten years ago. It was a perfect evening, and the rocks and
swirling water in the twilight, and the boat with the Berber crew
singing were everything one could imagine in Philæ.
“_6th Nov._—Rode on donkey-back before sunrise to see the position of
the proposed dam, which is a mile or so below Philæ. Philæ as it is, is
perhaps the one perfect thing in the world, and anything added to or
taken from it would probably spoil it. So I trust they will leave it
alone. At the same time if they would be content with banking the river
to the natural height of the Nile at flood, I do not see that it need do
a great harm. But of course they want more, and to make it the biggest
engineering thing in the universe. The situation is tempting to an
engineer, as the solid boulders of granite would make it an heroic bit
of stonework.
“At eight we started again up the river. The change of scenery above the
cataract is most sudden and complete, made more so by the as sudden and
complete change in the inhabitants, who are here Berbers. Indeed, Egypt
ends abruptly at Assouan. The Soudan begins at Philæ. These upper
reaches, between piled-up granite boulders, are very attractive, as
there are many places one might use as hermitages, islands of rock with
a few sont trees and palms, some having the remains on them of
buildings. At Kalabsheh a new and still narrower gate is passed. This is
where the French chose their site for the dam. It is difficult to say
which of the two sites would be the best for the purpose. Thus, all day
long, between endless granite boulders on the eastern shore, and the
same, partly covered with drift sand, on the western, the cultivation
almost nil, a narrow fringe of palms and _sonts_ and _seyyals_, with
here and there a patch of vegetables sown at the river’s edge or a field
of _durra_.
“_7th Nov._—We stopped for the night at Dendur, and in the morning light
found ourselves outside the narrow gorge, and among drifts of
_nefud_—red sand—on the western bank, apparently encroaching. Broadwood
tells me there is a long line of _nefuds_ running north-west which is
impassable for camels. This, as I understand him, west of the road to
the oases. But I doubt if he has been far enough to know.
“I have made friends on board with a military doctor, Mohammed Eff.
Towfik, who began by quarrelling with me as an Englishman for the
occupation of Egypt, but we speedily came to an understanding, and I
find him to be a friend of Mohammed Abdu’s, and a staunch Nationalist of
the fellah party. Though still a young man, perhaps thirty-five, he
remembers the Russian war of 1877, and knew Arabi. He told me very
frankly that there were people who suspected me of having stood in with
our diplomacy in 1882. It was pleasant to find a man so fearless and
outspoken, especially as much of our conversation was within hearing of
the English officers, Broadwood, Lawrie, and a third, Healy, who
understands Arabic. The doctor is a fellah, proprietor of 300 feddans
near Benisouef, and declares that the fellahin are in a worse condition
materially than before the rebellion. I doubt this. But I think it
likely he is right about Upper Egypt. Certainly all this district south
of Assouan shows traces of decline; and the Berber population is lean
and hungry. He was eager to know about the Armenian question, and about
the condition of India, and I explained both to him. He is a very
intelligent, worthy man, of the kind most required. He admitted freely
the personal liberty now enjoyed and the liberty of the press, but
complained bitterly of there being no self-government, no constitution.
I agree with him on all points, except that of the material poverty. He
is opposed to the reservoirs, but in favour of an advance on the Soudan,
at least to Dongola. My own impression is that it would have been best
in 1885 to have made Assouan the boundary of Egypt, instead of Wady
Halfa. It is a much stronger frontier and far less costly. The only
reason for an advance now is to forestall a European one, either Italian
or French.
“We stopped for the night at Korosko, and I went ashore with the
Commandant, Ibrahim Bey Fathy, a fine looking fellah soldier, who showed
us round the barracks by starlight. They are making surveys for a
railway to Murad, and Broadwood tells me they intend, whenever the
advance to Khartoum is made, to take that route. But there is nothing in
contemplation at present. The English officers are good fellows, and are
very polite and amiable to their Egyptian brother officers; but it is
easy to see that there is no real intimacy or knowledge of each other’s
thoughts. Broadwood complains of this; and I should think that, if it
came to a pinch, the Egyptian officers could not be implicitly relied
on. I fancy they all resent the superior commands being English. They do
not mess with the English officers, and live much apart. This is no
doubt partly because the English know very little Arabic. Ibrahim Bey
spoke excellent English, and dined with us on board. There are two young
fellows, Englishmen of the Royal Engineers, who have been sent out here
to make the railroad to Murad, excellent ingenuous youths of perhaps
twenty-three or twenty-four, to whom it is great fun and solid
advancement, as they are given the rank of majors in the Egyptian army.
This is a sample of what leads to discontent among the native officers,
for the work is an absolutely simple one, and could be performed by any
of their own engineers. Yet these young Englishmen have it. Again, the
command of the cavalry at Halfa is left during the summer months to a
native officer, but as soon as the winter begins, when there are
manœuvres and parades of the kind soldiers love, young Broadwood comes
to take his place. My friend the doctor is eloquent on these things, and
I have no doubt reflects the general sentiment.
“_8th Nov._—Passed the battlefields at . . . and Toski, the former
fought with an advanced body of the Dervishes, the latter with the main
body under Wad el Nejumi. The English officers gave me an account of the
two actions. By their showing, it was little more than a massacre, for
the Dervishes were in the last stage of exhaustion from hunger and
thirst, their camels dying, and their women and children. The way they
had come is still marked by the skeletons left on the sand. They marched
some five miles from the river, along the left bank, sending the women
and children at night to get water, the English-Egyptian army meanwhile
cruising comfortably parallel to them in boats. They had forced the
Berber inhabitants of the left bank to cross over the river and take all
eatable things with them, so that Nejumi’s army found nothing. Then,
when the Dervishes were quite worn out, the troops were landed and drove
the dervishes into a gully, where these made their final stand, and were
all shot down. Mohammed Towfik, who was there, says that of all the
4,000 who left Dongola with Nejumi, only 300 combatants remained to
fight at Toski. The action at . . . was a smaller affair than Toski,
and, if I understood rightly, one of cavalry on the Egyptian side. The
left bank in this part is a desolate region of drift sand with a few
bushes, but at Toski there is palm cultivation for a mile or two. The
right bank, where there is no sand, is mostly planted.
“At four we came to Abu Simbel and stopped for a quarter of an hour, so
that we were able to land and look at the temple. Broadwood showed me a
pompous marble tablet let into the rock outside, of which he was
ashamed. It recorded the gallant victory of General Grenfell over ‘the
rebels.’ The temple is very fine, and has the great merit of being no
ruin, but a perfectly habitable place cut out of the rock, and very
little injured by time. There was a party outside it clearing away the
sand. There is a grave, too, where an English officer is buried who
happened to die on board a passing steamer—‘a rotten place,’ Laurie
remarked, ‘to bury an Englishman in.’ The Berbers are a poor, narrow-
chested, feeble, half-starved people, reminding one much of the natives
of Southern India. There can hardly be a greater contrast than between
them and the Egyptian fellahin. The Berbers are exempted from
recruiting, and should be exempted from taxation. They live almost
entirely on dates, and are much subject, it is said, to fever. At night
we passed a Government steamer having on board the English acting
commandant of Wady Halfa, Lewis, a little talkative man of whom
Broadwood and Laurie, who are fine young fellows, made light. We stopped
to pay him a visit and then went on in the dark.
“_9th Nov._—Arrived at Wady Halfa, a beautiful cool morning, with a
strong north wind blowing over the plain. Wady Halfa has the advantage
of being placed where the hills are low and stand back from the river.
Otherwise a quite uninteresting place—low military huts fronting the
river, with bits of trees and gardens about them, officers’ quarters and
the rest.
“I lunched at the Commandant’s quarters with Lewis, who has returned,
and then went with Broadwood to Sarras by train. From the railway one
sees the cataracts well, a wild and pretty country with plenty of small
trees, principally _urdi_, a kind of acacia, on the islands. The palms
have been all cut down by the Dervishes in their hunger. They occupied
Sarras for two years, and, Broadwood tells me, had no commissariat of
any kind, living on anything they could get. They used to make raids on
the villages under Government protection, and on one occasion cleared
out Towfikieh, the civilian quarter of Wady Halfa, killing some 600, and
driving the Greek drink-sellers into the river, where several were
drowned. The country between Wady Halfa and Sarras has been in part re-
peopled, but beyond Sarras it is still No Man’s Land, the Dervish out-
post being now at Akasheh, 100 miles away. We were entertained in the
fortified camp by Sellem Bey, an English officer, who recaptured Sarras
from the Dervishes, a good fellow and intelligent.
“_10th Nov. (Sunday)._—Walked round the camp with Broadwood and then
back to Halfa in time to see the camel corps, 275 strong, marching in
from a field day—a really fine sight—the camels mostly white ones.
“Several Berbers came to seek my intervention with Lewis to get
permission to return to Dongola, their native country. They told me that
there would be _amán_ for them there; that the Khalifa was pleased at
the return of refugees, and that they could re-occupy their lands
without hindrance; that there was less oppression than there had been,
and that they would be better off there than here; that the population
of Dongola had been so thinned by the emigration of seven years ago, and
afterwards by the famine, that there was land for all comers, dates in
plenty, _durra_ at thirty piastres the _ardeb_, and wheat at fifty. I
asked them about the taxes, and they told me that the Khalifa took a
tithe in kind, but that the Baggaras entrusted with the government did
this in a very arbitrary way, as, for instance, if there was an _ardeb_
of dates, they would count it an _ardeb_ and a half; also that nobody
dared make a display of wealth, all superfluity being taken to the _beyt
el mal_. People, however, were not interfered with if they were content
to cultivate a few feddans and live on the produce. If they made money,
they must hide it in the ground. As far as I could gather from them,
they considered the independence of the country (_wátani_) from the
Government an advantage, now that there was no longer excessive
oppression. They assured me that, out of 4,000 or 5,000 refugees in
Egypt, most would be glad to return. I promised to talk to Lewis about
it, and, failing his permission, to bring their general case before
Cromer. It seems absurd to keep them starving in Egypt, now they are
willing to return.
“I left Halfa with Lewis in the Government steamer for Assouan—with us
several of the officers who were going as far as Sarras on a shooting
excursion. I noticed a pair of _hubaras_ (frilled bustards) on the right
bank, and had seen one yesterday between Halfa and Sarras. We stopped at
four, and they all went shooting except me, bringing back a few ducks,
gadwells, shovellers, and teals, also a snipe and a cormorant. Sarras is
a very pretty place, with a lake in the sandhills well grown over with
tamarisks, unlike anything I have seen north of the Fayum—a village and
a little cultivation in the tamarisk scrub, just now beautifully green.
“Much military talk in the evening, my host being a loquacious little
man with a crudest of ideas political. According to him, we are to have
an English fleet in two years’ time which will enable us to do what we
like in the world, when we are to annex Egypt and Constantinople too. An
empty-headed little fellow, who has been eight years in the Egyptian
service and has acquired a certain command of _qui-hi_ Arabic most
comic, which he imagines to be the purest dialect—all pronounced as
written, in a plain English accent. But his servants and men are used to
it and make out his meaning. The relations between the English officers
and the natives seem to be much what they are in India—that is to say,
there is absolutely no community of ideas or sympathy on either side.
Broadwood and one or two of them try to be polite and kind, but they
know so little Arabic, and have so little knowledge of Eastern good
manners that they are unintentionally rude and inspire no affection,
only just such respect as their power to reward and punish gives. They
would be deserted, I am sure, by their men if it came to any real
difficulty. They seem to feel their position rather a precarious one,
and would all leave the Khedive’s service if the British occupation
ceased.
“_11th Nov._—Arrived at Korosko at four. Walked to the top of the hill
overlooking the road to Abu Hamid, the road Gordon took on his last
journey. It is a rough bit of country, a wilderness of black wadies and
ravines which extends they say for twenty miles, when the open plain or
plateau begins. The young engineers pointed out the road of their new
railway.
“Dined at the Egyptian officers’ mess. Here at Korosko the battalion is
wholly Egyptian, a really capital set of fellah officers commanded by
Fathy Bey, a big fellah Colonel reminding me not a little of Arabi in
1881. They mess together and live on the friendliest terms; and here,
entertaining Lewis and me, and the two young engineers, their demeanour
was quite different from what I had noticed at Halfa, and they seemed to
be most pleasant in their relations with the English officers. At Halfa
they chafe at being under them. Here they are on an equal footing. I sat
between Fathy Bey and a captain, Emir Eff. Fowzi, the latter a very good
fellow with whom I talked much in Arabic about affairs in Arabia, at
Constantinople, and in India, and in Tunis. He had just been on the
pilgrimage and complained greatly of the Ottoman misgovernment there. We
also talked about Arabi, and I was pleased when Fathy Bey, who joined
our conversation, expressed himself warmly about Arabi, and in favour of
his being allowed to return to Egypt.
“_12th Nov._—Arrived early at Shelláll, and descended the cataract in a
_feluka_—no very hazardous affair. Lunched at Assouan with the English
mess and met there Beshir Bey and Ahmed Bey Khalifa of the Ababdeh. Then
on board the steamer for Cairo.
“_13th Nov._—We stopped two hours at Edfu, which gave us time to see the
temple, the most perfect in Egypt. Indeed, it might be ‘restored to
public worship’ without the smallest repair. Mere ruins are tiresome,
but this is not one. We have half-a-dozen tourists on board, the first
of the season—Dr. Ruffer and his wife, a Spanish diplomatist from
Constantinople, an old Frenchwoman, and an English geologist. Stopped at
Esneh, where there is a temple partly underground, and arrived at Luxor,
and for the night, Kus.
“_Nov. 14th._—A quite cold morning with clouds to the west and a feeling
of dampness in the air. There has probably been rain at Alexandria, and
very likely a south-west gale in the Mediterranean, where Anne and
Judith are to embark to-day. Arrived at Girgeh, where our few passengers
got out; but I have decided to go on to Cairo by steamer with the
Ruffers. A wonderful sunset, followed by thunder and lightning and some
rain—this off Ahmim, a very beautiful part of the river. The night too
dark to go on, so after running aground, we stopped for the rest of it.
“_15th Nov._—I have had much talk with Dr. Ruffer, who is a superior man
of science. He was for two years a pupil of Pasteur at Paris, and speaks
of him with enthusiasm. He tells me that Pasteur had a physical dislike
for surgical operations and, he believes, never was present at the
experimental ones made on live animals. But he did not hesitate to have
them performed by others. I asked him how much truth there was in the
accusations made against him of having kept dogs for months under
torture, and he said that Pasteur had made a mistake in experimenting on
dogs for hydrophobia, as they were much more dangerous to handle; that
it had now been found that all the symptoms of hydrophobia could be
equally well studied in rabbits; that, after inoculating dogs with the
disease, it was necessary to keep them and watch whether or not they
went mad, and so he had kept some of them for years, but that they were
well treated—some twenty-five of them at the time he was there. He said
it was a choice between making experiments of this kind and not
proceeding with the inquiry. But I gather from him that he is not
certain whether the object has been obtained. The difficulty of being
certain was that only some fifteen per cent. of cases of bites from a
certainly mad dog led to hydrophobia. He talked of Pasteur as the one
great man of Science France had produced. He described him as a most
simple-minded man, entirely destitute of humour, and incapable of
thinking about more than one thing at a time. If you started him on a
conversation he could not change the subject till he had exhausted it.
This was the secret of his success. His mind was not a French one.
“Dr. Ruffer is at the head of the Pasteur Institute of London. He tells
me he is only thirty-six, though he has grey hair and looks fifty. But
he was junior to George Curzon when at Oxford, so I suppose he is of the
age he says. More thunder and lightning in the evening, away to the
north-west. There must have been heavy rain in Jendali and probably on
all the hills between the Nile and the Red Sea. It is cold and damp and
raw. I am getting weary of the Nile and cannot understand the patience
of travellers not invalids who travel on it in _dahabiyahs_. We stopped
at Beni Hassan, but I did not go ashore, as I draw the line at tombs.
Beni Hassan, however, might, I think, be a good point of departure for
our winter’s journey. Farther down the river there are impassable places
where rocks come down to the water’s edge.
“_16th Nov._—Arrived at Cairo in the afternoon, and glad to get home.
The Lower River seems to me vastly superior to the Upper, and has a
familiar and pleasant aspect. I had the rare pleasure of seeing a real
_seyl_ come down into the Nile some forty yards across, and strong and
deep enough to carry away a camel—a great turbid flood which had broken
through the Nile bank and was rushing some two hundred yards out into
the river. It must have come from Wady Senhur, a few miles south of
Wasta.
“There has been an earthquake at Rome and a change of Ministry at Cairo.
Nubar, the old rogue, has retired, and Mustafa Fehmy is put into his
place.
“It was dark before I got to Sheykh Obeyd, and I had some difficulty in
making myself heard at the gate, but all is well. _El hamdul illah_.”
The disappearance of Nubar here recorded marks the beginning of the new
_régime_ in Egypt which was to last for nearly ten years, during which
Cromer was to be supreme in every branch of the Egyptian administration,
governing through merely dummy native Ministers, with Mustafa Fehmy at
their head. Lord Salisbury, now at the head of a strong Unionist
Government in England, had made up his mind at all hazards to continue
the military Occupation and retain Egypt permanently as a dependency of
the British Empire. He also, though we did not know it at the time, had
a settled design of avenging the death of Gordon and the disgrace of
Wolseley’s defeat by the Mahdi in 1884 as one of the two matters
necessary for England’s honour, the other being the defeat at Majuba in
South Africa. We know this from his own boast in 1902, shortly before he
retired from public life, and we have every reason to be sure that at
the back of his determination on both points stood his mistress, Queen
Victoria. The present chapter will show the first steps taken in
accordance with this policy on the Nile, in its commencement not
altogether with Lord Cromer’s approval, his objection to it being a
financial one, as certain to overburden the Egyptian Budget, and as such
premature, but, as will be seen, his opposition on this head was
overruled from Downing Street and financial caution, in large measure
overcome by the parsimonious ability of Lord Kitchener, to whom the
advance up the Nile was entrusted, and who ran it on the cheap.
Having made this brief explanation I resume my diary.
“_17th Nov._—There have been tremendous _seyls_ all round Sheykh Obeyd.
Part of our garden wall is broken down by it and the house at El
Kheysheh flooded, though no great damage done. Suliman Howeyti had his
tent carried away just outside. At Kafr el Jamus eleven houses are
ruined, and at Koubba a great _seyl_ from the hills broke through the
old railway embankment and destroyed fifty houses and a French public
garden, threatening even the Palace with flood. The like has never been
seen before. Old Deifallah is dying of old age, like Job, on a dung-hill
outside Dormer’s garden wall.
“Things have gone rapidly in Turkey during the last three weeks.
Disturbances everywhere in the provinces, the devil generally let loose.
“_20th Nov._—Anne, Judith, and Cowie arrived at Sheykh Obeyd. I dined
with Dormer last night.
“_28th Nov._—I wrote yesterday to Lord Cromer about the permission asked
by the Dongola people to return to their homes. I said that the story
they gave me was that they had emigrated into Egypt after the Mahdi’s
death to escape the tyranny of the Baggara chiefs who represented the
Khalifa’s government at Dongola; that they assured me that they would be
subject to no vexation now; that living there was cheap and land
plentiful; that I had mentioned their case to the Commandant at Wady
Halfa, who had told me that the chief reason for the prohibition was a
fear that the return of the refugees would hamper and endanger the spies
sent by the Intelligence Department, but that this seemed hardly a
sufficient reason for retaining in Egypt so many persons who were a
burden and a trouble. I suggested that perhaps the time was come when
the question might be reconsidered; there seemed to be no immediate
prospect of a military advance and the circumstances of the case had
changed since the frontier regulations were enacted.
“To-day I went to Cairo and saw Lord Cromer, who told me he had
forwarded my letter to Kitchener and would let me know when his answer
was received. He then talked of other matters and of the possibility of
Mohammed Abdu being named head of the Awkaf. This I, of course, strongly
commended. I also saw Gorst.
“_30th Nov._—Started with Anne for the eastern desert. On our return
“_3rd Dec._—Found a letter from George Wyndham with an account of little
Percy’s accident, touchingly told.
“_7th Dec._—A visit from Ibrahim ibn Abdallah Thenneyan ibn Saoud el
Nejdi who has just escaped from Constantinople. He gave much interesting
information. The Sultan is now entirely under the influence of Sheykh
Abul Huda; and Jemal ed Din is never received at the palace. Things are
going as badly there as possible. He has come to Cairo, hoping through
the Khedive’s influence to get back to Nejd. His father’s grandfather,
Thenneyan, was for a couple of years Emir of Nejd, while Feysul was in
captivity at Dar el Beyda. But when Feysul escaped and returned to Nejd,
he and his family were driven to Bagdad. Speaking of the Anazeh he
assured me their migration North dated from 200 or 300 years ago. The
Ibn Saouds are of Anazeh stock.
“_12th Dec._—I have written another long letter to Cromer about the
return of the refugees to Dongola. Kitchener, in reply to my first
letter, declared the road to be open to them _via_ Assouan and Berber.
That would give them a journey of 1,000 miles to accomplish the 100
miles which separate them at Sarras from their homes. He pretends, too,
that the Dervishes are threatening the frontier. Our people are humbugs
about this almost more than about anything else. The officers when I was
there were all complaining that there was nothing for them to do on the
frontier if the Dervishes would make no move.
“We went to-day to look at some desert land 280 feddans outside Kafr el
Shorafa, for sale by the Government at 50 piastres the feddan, for first
price. I would give £2. Ibrahim ibn Saoud came to-day to luncheon. He
had been to the palace. He asked me for a letter to Lord Cromer,
explaining that his business was to invite English protection for Nejd.
He declared that six months ago Fawzi Pasha, Turkish Waly of El Hasa,
received orders from the Ottoman Government to send an expedition to
take over the Government of Riad and El Haryk. Fawzi was a Syrian, knew
Arabic, and would have been able to effect his purpose through the Arab
tribes. Correspondence had passed between the Sultan and Ibn Rashid, who
had consented to the aggression. Now, however, Ibrahim would wish the
British Government to undertake a protectorate as at Bahreyn and
Muscat—at least to forbid the Turkish advance inland. I gave him the
letter, but warned him not to trust too much to English magnanimity. If
we once got our foot into Nejd, it would be difficult to get us out
again. Perhaps the Turks might be worse, but we were dangerous too. For
that matter the Ottoman Empire was too near its dissolution to think
just now of any forward movement. Neither was it in the least probable
that England would undertake a protectorate or do anything. His seeing
Cromer cannot do much harm. So I gave him the letter.
“There is news of a great defeat of the Italians by the Abyssinians. I
am much pleased at this, as their aggression has been one of the most
abominable of our abominable age. Perhaps now the Dervishes may drive
them out of Kássala.” This was the least excusable of the many lawless
raids made by the Italians in Africa, prompted in part by the vanity of
the parvenu kingdom of Italy to show itself as aggressive as its older
neighbours, France and England, partly by mining speculation. Unlike
most of these raids undertaken by the Christian nations in our time, it
had not even the excuse of calling itself a crusade, seeing that the
Abyssinians were themselves Christians, of a wild, old-fashioned kind,
but still just as much Christians as the inhabitants of Calabria, while,
compared with the Abyssinian Emperor who is lineally descended from the
Queen of Sheba by King Solomon, the House of Savoy enthroned at the
Quirinal is but a stem of yesterday, yet not a shadow of reproof was
uttered by our statesmen in Downing Street, and the general remark about
the Italian expedition in the London Press was that the ending of the
Abyssinian monarchy would not be ‘felt upon the Stock Exchange.’
“_16th Dec._—Went in to Cairo to see the Khedive. He was very cordial as
usual, and made me a number of confidences, some very interesting. He
told me the full story of his visit to Constantinople this summer. His
object, he says, was not a political one, but to get permission from the
Sultan to build a house on the island of Thasos where, and at Kavala, he
has the direction of the Awkaf. He wanted a place to spend the summer in
with his wife and child, instead of going to Europe. He went to Stamboul
in his yacht, and found it so pleasant there that he stayed two months.
The Sultan was polite to him, and asked him constantly to dinner, and to
hear music, but would not talk business. At last he got tired of
waiting, and sent word that he wanted permission to go to Thasos, and
also to lay certain papers before the Sultan connected with the Halim
succession and the claim of the Azhar University to a part of it. But he
got a number of evasive answers. At one time he was told ‘yes’—at
another that the Sultan had a cold and could not see him—at another that
he had bad eyes and could not read the papers—and other foolish excuses.
In the meantime he had been dogged by spies, and on one occasion when he
had made an arrangement privately to see Sheykh Jemal ed Din he had been
followed so closely that he had turned on the spy and beaten him, and
had sent a message to the palace that if he was thus annoyed again he
would shoot his persecutors.
“At last a day of audience was fixed with the Sultan for him to say
‘good-bye.’ But after being kept waiting for an hour, Osman Pasha came
to him and began to talk about the Thasos plan, and to try and dissuade
him. At this he lost patience, and asked Osman straight whether he had
been sent with the message from the Sultan, and, on his admitting it, he
spoke his whole mind. ‘I told him,’ said the Khedive, ‘that I was tired
of the Sultan’s way of treating me, that I had been not yet four years
on the throne, and I had come three times to Constantinople to see him,
which was more than any of my predecessors had done, and yet he had not
spoken to me a reasonable word. My great-great-grandfather, I told him,
Mohammed Ali, had never gone to Constantinople, though he was near it
once, by way of Nezim and Kóniah. My great-grandfather Ibrahim had never
been, though he had a stronger army than the Sultan’s. My father was
eleven years on the throne, and he never went. I alone went, to do the
Sultan pleasure. I even, to please him, gave up last year my visit to
England. Her Majesty the Queen, who is Empress of India and 300 millions
of subjects, and on whose dominions the sun never sets, had done me the
honor of inviting me, and I had accepted the invitation; yet, on account
of a miserable bit of paper, a telegram from Constantinople, I broke my
engagement and went to the Sultan instead. I am tired of this. You may
tell the Sultan that this year I will not go to Thasos, but for the
future I shall know how to regulate my conduct towards him. While
talking thus—and I never talked so strongly in my life—Nuri Bey joined
us, and he and Osman were horror-struck at my words, and shook with
fear, and went at once to the Sultan, who sent for me and apologized and
loaded me with civilities. But I told him that it was no case for
apologies, that I understood now what his diplomacy was, and that I
should return to my own country, and forget as far as possible that I
stood to him in the relation of a subject. And so it has been. From that
day to this I have cut the Sultan’s name out of my prayer; I have never
been to the mosque where the prayer for the Sultan is made, and, when I
pray in my own mosque at Koubba, my chaplain omits the Sultan’s name. We
pray for “the welfare of Islam and all believers, but not for those (he
quoted the words in Arabic) who are bringing Islam to its ruin.”’
“I am not sure that I have quoted the Khedive quite verbally, but this
is the sense of his words. He spoke with animation, and told the story
admirably. He told me also that he had seen Abdallah Nadim[14] at
Constantinople, and that he was allowing him to return to Egypt. Of the
prospects of Constantinople he said he feared the Sultan’s subjects
would never succeed in getting rid of him, though the European Powers
might depose him. He asked me about affairs in Arabia, and told me he
had seen Ibrahim ibn Thenneyan, but Sheykh Mohammed Abdu had warned him
that he was perhaps a spy of Sheykh Abul Huda’s. I told him that I did
not think this to be the case, though it might be well to be cautious.
Then he talked about the desert, and an expedition he intended to make
to El Arish in the Spring, and how he was having the post road repaired
to Dar el Beyda. He certainly is a charming young man, and brim full of
intelligence.
“I lunched with Gorst and talked to him about the affairs of the Soudan.
He told me, as an instance of the humbug that went on at the frontier,
of the way in which Wingate had got the credit of Slatin’s escape from
Khartoum. This has been represented as entirely Wingate’s cleverness,
whereas in point of fact Wingate was away at the time at Souakim, and
the plan was Slatin’s own. Maxwell (?), who was in charge of Wady Halfa,
received a letter from Slatin, addressed to whoever was in command,
asking him to pay the bearer £100, and to promise another £100 in case
of success. This Maxwell had done, but nothing more was thought about it
till Slatin arrived and embraced Wingate, who had meanwhile returned,
calling him his deliverer. Wingate then looked up the papers for the
first time, and promptly endorsed them, ‘I approve.’ There has been a
raid quite recently, thirty miles north of Wady Halfa, and sixteen
persons have been killed in a village.
“Left a card on the French Minister, M. Cogordan, who sent me a message
last summer through Mlle. Lagréné that he would like to see me.
“_19th Dec._—Eldon Gorst came, with his sister, to spend the day. We
took them to the sand hills and set up a shelter and lunched there. I
had a good deal of talk with Gorst. He is a worthy young man, very
painstaking and desirous to do rightly, but hardly a man of genius. One
does not understand why he should have been chosen, out of the many
thousand young men whose services are to be had, to be Prime Minister of
Egypt. I imagine that he would command at home perhaps £400 or £500 a
year. But this is one of the mysteries of Anglo-Egyptian rule. He has a
moderate knowledge of Arabic, having served an apprenticeship under
Cromer. The fact is, there is no country so easy to govern as Egypt is,
given fair intelligence and perfect honesty in the governor.
“_21st Dec._—M. Cogordan, with his secretary, lunched with us. Cogordan
is a man of about forty, of good presence and manners and very amiable.
We sat on the roof after luncheon and I took the opportunity of
explaining to him something of the history of Arabi’s revolution, as to
which the French have the absurdest ideas. The origin of my calling on
him and of his visit was a message I received in the summer from Mlle.
de Lagréné, saying he wished to make my acquaintance. Of current
politics we talked little, except as to the Khedive’s character, which
he praised highly.
“_24th Dec._—Kitchener gives a final answer about the refugees, refusing
on the ground that he does not wish the district re-peopled, for fear it
should serve as a basis for Dervish raids. Rubbish!
“There is a fine quarrel on between England and the United States about
Venezuela. Lord Salisbury is getting into nice hot water. He has a war
with Ashanti of the most causeless kind. His diplomacy at Constantinople
has entirely broken down, as the Turks are massacring the Armenians
worse than ever—and now he will have to fight or sing small—doubtless
sing small—in America. I should not be surprised to see the Egyptian
question raised at any moment as a European one.
“_29th Dec._—Went in to Cairo yesterday to see Ali Pasha Sherif’s
horses. They showed us half-a-dozen which were for sale. We shall bid
for two, a chestnut colt, two years old, very like Mesaoud, and a grey
filly, a Jellabieh, also a two-year-old. We did not see the best mares,
but we saw the stallions. They have nothing left now but Aziz, aged
nineteen, Ibn Nadir, aged twenty-four, and Ibn Sherara, also an old
horse. They are terribly in want of new blood.
“Ali Pasha Sherif has had a decree of interdiction passed on him as
incapable of the management of his affairs, and Shakir Pasha is
appointed Wakil. He has quarrelled with his seven sons and receives an
allowance of £500 a year. Such is the position of the man who a year ago
was President of the Legislative Council, by favour of the late Khedive
Tewfik and Lord Cromer.
“Afterwards to call on Riaz, whom I found with Tigrane, showing him his
estate accounts at Mehallet el Roh. These bring him in £10 an acre,
gross—expenses of cultivation £4 and tax £1. Net income £5 an acre. He
reviewed the state of agricultural things since he had first been in the
Government service in 1850. He said that the wars of Mohammed Ali had
ruined the country, much of which had gone out of cultivation, but that
under Abbas and Saïd the population had nearly doubled. The taxation was
then one third what it is now. Everyone was well off. Then Ismaïl ruined
it again. The price of land went up after his deposition and stood in
1880 at its highest. It was going down now with the fall in prices of
produce. On the other hand the public expenditure had increased since
the English occupation by two millions a year, and ten millions capital
had been added to the debt.”