LIFE IN KHARTOUM.
The American Flag—A Rencontre—Search for a House—The Austrian
Consular Agent—Description of his Residence—The Garden—The
Menagerie—Barbaric Pomp and State—Picturesque Character of
the Society of Khartoum—Foundation and Growth of the City—Its
Appearance—The Population—Unhealthiness of the Climate—Assembly
of Ethiopian Chieftains—Visit of Two Shekhs—Dinner and
Fireworks.
At the time of my arrival in Khartoum, there were not more than a dozen
vessels in port, and the only one which would pass for respectable in
Egypt was the Pasha’s dahabiyeh. I had but an open merchant-boat, yet my
green tent and flag gave it quite a showy air, and I saw that it created
some little sensation among the spectators. The people looked at the flag
with astonishment, for the stars and stripes had never before been seen
in Khartoum. At the earnest prayer of the raïs, who was afraid the boat
would be forcibly impressed into the service of the Government, and was
anxious to get back to his sick family in El Metemma, I left the flag
flying until he was ready to leave. Old Bakhita, in her dumb, ignorant
way, expressed great surprise and grief when she learned that Achmet and
I were going to desert the vessel. She had an indefinite idea that we
had become part and parcel of it, and would remain on board for the rest
of our lives.
I took Achmet and started immediately in search of a house, as in those
lands a traveller who wishes to be respectable, must take a residence on
arriving at a city, even if he only intends to stay two or three days.
Over the mud walls on either side of the lane leading up from the water,
I could look into wildernesses of orange, date, fig, and pomegranate
trees, oleanders in bloom and trailing vines. We entered a tolerable
street, cleanly swept, and soon came to a coffee-house. Two or three
persons were standing at the door, one of whom—a fat, contented-looking
Turk—eyed Achmet sharply. The two looked at each other a moment in mutual
doubt and astonishment, and then fell into each other’s arms. It was a
Syrian merchant, whom Achmet had known in Cairo and Beyrout. “O master!”
said he, his dark face radiant with delight, as he clasped the hand of
the Syrian: “there never was such a lucky journey as this!”
The merchant, who had been two years in Khartoum, accompanied us in our
search. We went first to the residence of the shekh of the quarter,
who was not at home. Two small boys, the sons of one of a detachment
of Egyptian physicians, who had recently arrived, received me. They
complained bitterly of Soudân, and longed to get back again to Cairo. We
then went to the Governor of the city, but he was absent in Kordofan.
Finally, in wandering about the streets, we met a certain Ali Effendi,
who took us to a house which would be vacant the next day. It was a large
mud palace, containing an outer and inner divan, two sleeping-rooms, a
kitchen, store-rooms, apartments for servants, and an inclosed court-yard
and stables, all of which were to be had at one hundred piastres a
month—an exorbitant price, as I afterwards learned. Before engaging it,
I decided to ask the advice of the Austrian Consular Agent, Dr. Reitz,
for whom I had letters from the English and Austrian Consuls in Cairo. He
received me with true German cordiality, and would hear of nothing else
but that I should immediately take possession of an unoccupied room in
his house. Accordingly the same day of my arrival beheld me installed in
luxurious quarters, with one of the most brave, generous and independent
of men as my associate.
As the Consul’s residence was the type of a house of the best class in
Khartoum, a description of it may give some idea of life in the place,
under the most agreeable circumstances. The ground-plot was one hundred
and thirty paces square, and surrounded by a high mud wall. Inside of
this stood the dwelling, which was about half that length, and separated
from it by a narrow garden and court-yard. Entering the court by the
gate, a flight of steps conducted to the divan, or reception-room, in the
second story. From the open ante-chamber one might look to the south over
the gray wastes of Sennaar, or, if the sun was near his setting, see a
reach in the White Nile, flashing like the point of an Arab spear. The
divan had a cushioned seat around three sides, and matting on the floor,
and was really a handsome room, although its walls were mud, covered
with a thin coating of lime, and its roof palm-logs overlaid with coarse
matting, on which rested a layer of mud a foot thick. In the second
story were also the Consular Office and a sleeping-room. The basement
contained the kitchen, store-rooms, and servants’ rooms. The remainder
of the house was only one story in height, and had a balcony looking on
the garden, and completely embowered in flowering vines. The only rooms
were the dining-hall, with cushioned divans on each side and a drapery
of the Austrian colors at the end, and my apartment, which overlooked a
small garden-court, wherein two large ostriches paced up and down, and a
company of wild geese and wild swine made continual discord. The court at
the entrance communicated with the stables, which contained the Consul’s
horses—a white steed, of the pure Arabian-blood of Nedjid, and the red
stallion appropriated to my use, which was sent by the King of Dar-Fūr to
Lattif Pasha, and presented by him to the Consul. A _hejin_, or trained
dromedary, of unusual size, stood in the court, and a tame lioness was
tied to a stake in the corner. She was a beautiful and powerful beast,
and I never passed her without taking her head between my knees, or
stroking her tawny hide until she leaned against me like a cat and licked
my hand.
Passing through a side-door into the garden, we came upon a whole
menagerie of animals. Under the long arbors, covered with luxuriant
grape-vines, stood two surly hyenas, a wild ass from the mountains of
the Atbara, and an Abyssinian mule. A tall marabout (a bird of the crane
species, with a pouch-bill) stalked about the garden, occasionally
bending a hinge in the middle of his long legs, and doubling them
backwards, so that he used half of them for a seat. Adjoining the stable
was a large sheep-yard, in which were gathered together gazelles, strange
varieties of sheep and goats from the countries of the White Nile, a
virgin-crane, and a large _antilopus leucoryx_, from Kordofan, with
curved horns four feet in length. My favorite, however, was the leopard,
which was a most playful and affectionate creature except at meal-time.
He was not more than half grown, and had all the wiles of an intelligent
kitten, climbing his post and springing upon me, or creeping up slyly and
seizing my ankle in his mouth. The garden, which was watered by a well
and string of buckets turned by an ox, had a rich variety of fruit-trees.
The grape season was just over, though I had a few of the last bunches;
figs were ripening from day to day, oranges and lemons were in fruit
and flower, bananas blooming for another crop, and the pomegranate and
_kiskteh_, or custard-apple, hung heavy on the branches. There was also a
plantation of date-trees and sugar-cane, and a great number of ornamental
shrubs.
In all these picturesque features of my residence in Khartoum, I fully
realized that I had at last reached Central Africa. In our mode of life,
also, there was a rich flavor of that barbaric pomp and state which one
involuntarily associates with the name of Soudân. We arose at dawn, and
at sunrise were in the saddle. Sometimes I mounted the red stallion, of
the wild breed of Dar-Fūr, and sometimes one of the Consul’s tall and
fleet dromedaries. Six dark attendants, in white and scarlet dresses,
followed us on dromedaries and two grooms on foot ran before us, to
clear a way through the streets. After passing through Khartoum, we
frequently made long excursions up the banks of the two Niles, or out
upon the boundless plain between them. In this way, I speedily became
familiar with the city and its vicinity, and as, on our return, I always
accompanied the Consul on all his visits to the various dignitaries,
I had every opportunity of studying the peculiar life of the place,
and gaining some idea of its governing principles. As the only city of
Central Africa which has a regular communication with the Mediterranean
(by which it occasionally receives a ray of light from the civilized
world beyond), it has become a capital on a small scale, and its society
is a curious compound of Christian, Turk and Barbarian. On the same day,
I have had a whole sheep set before me, in the house of an Ethiopian
Princess, who wore a ring in her nose; taken coffee and sherbet with the
Pasha; and drank tea, prepared in the true English style, in the parlor
of a European. When to these remarkable contrasts is added the motley
character of its native population, embracing representatives from almost
every tribe between Dar-Fūr and the Red Sea, between Egypt and the Negro
kingdoms of the White Nile, it will readily be seen how rich a field of
observation Khartoum offers to the traveller. Nevertheless, those who
reside there, almost without exception, bestow upon the city and country
all possible maledictions. Considered as a place of residence, other
questions come into play, and they are perhaps not far wrong.
Khartoum is the most remarkable—I had almost said the only example of
physical progress in Africa, in this century. Where, thirty years ago,
there was not even a dwelling, unless it might be the miserable _tokul_,
or straw hut of the Ethiopian Fellah, now stands a city of some thirty
or forty thousand inhabitants, daily increasing in size and importance,
and gradually drawing into its mart the commerce of the immense regions
of Central Africa. Its foundation, I believe, is due to Ismaïl Pasha (son
of Mohammed Ali), who, during his conquests of the kingdoms of Shendy
and Sennaar, in the years 1821 and 1822, recognized the importance, in a
military and commercial sense, of establishing a post at the confluence
of the two Niles. Mohammed Bey Defterdar, who succeeded him, seconded
the plan, and ere long it was determined to make Khartoum, on account
of its central position, the capital of the Egyptian pashalik of Soudân.
Standing at the mouth of the Blue Nile, which flows down from the gold
and iron mountains of Abyssinia, and of the White Nile, the only avenue
to a dozen Negro kingdoms, rich in ivory and gum, and being nearly
equidistant from the conquered provinces of Sennaar, Kordofan, Shendy and
Berber, it speedily outgrew the old Ethiopian cities, and drew to itself
the greater part of their wealth and commercial activity. Now it is the
metropolis of all the eastern part of Soudân, and the people speak of it
in much the same style as the Egyptians speak of their beloved Cairo.
The town is larger, cleaner and better built than any of the cities of
Upper Egypt, except perhaps Siout. It extends for about a mile along
the bank of the Blue Nile, facing the north, and is three-quarters of a
mile in its greatest breadth. The part next the river is mostly taken up
with the gardens and dwellings of Beys and other government officers,
and wealthy merchants. The gardens of the Pasha, of Moussa Bey, Musakar
Bey and the Catholic Mission are all large and beautiful, and towards
evening, when the north wind rises, shower the fragrance of their orange
and mimosa blossoms over the whole town. The dwellings, which stand in
them, cover a large space of ground, but are, for the most part, only one
story in height, as the heavy summer rains would speedily beat down mud
walls of greater height. The Pasha’s palace, which was built during the
year previous to my visit, is of burnt brick, much of which was taken
from the ancient Christian ruins of Abou-Haràss, on the Blue Nile. It is
a quadrangular building, three hundred feet square, with a large open
court in the centre. Its front formed one side of a square, which, when
complete, will be surrounded by other offices of government. For Soudân,
it is a building of some pretension, and the Pasha took great pride in
exhibiting it. He told me that the Arab shekhs who visited him would not
believe that it was the work of man alone. Allah must have helped him to
raise such a wonderful structure. It has an inclosed arched corridor in
front, in the Italian style, and a square tower over the entrance. At the
time of my visit Abdallah Effendi was building a very handsome two-story
house of burnt brick, and the Catholic priests intended erecting another,
as soon as they should have established themselves permanently. Within a
few months, large additions had been made to the bazaar, while the houses
of the slaves, on the outskirts of the city, were constantly springing up
like ant-hills.
There is no plan whatever in the disposition of the buildings. Each man
surrounds his property with a mud wall, regardless of its location with
respect to others, and in going from one point to another, one is obliged
to make the most perplexing zigzags. I rarely ventured far on foot, as I
soon became bewildered in the labyrinth of blank walls. When mounted on
the Consul’s tallest dromedary, I looked down on the roofs of the native
houses, and could take my bearings without difficulty. All the mysteries
of the lower life of Khartoum were revealed to me, from such a lofty
post. On each side I looked into pent yards where the miserable Arab
and Negro families lazily basked in the sun during the day, or into the
filthy nests where they crawled at night. The swarms of children which
they bred in those dens sat naked in the dust, playing with vile yellow
dogs, and sometimes a lean burden camel stood in the corner. The only
furniture to be seen was a water-skin, a few pots and jars, a basket or
two, and sometimes an _angareb_, or coarse wooden frame covered with a
netting of ropes, and serving as seat and bed. Nearly half the population
of the place are slaves, brought from the mountains above Fazogl, or from
the land of the Dinkas, on the White Nile. One’s commiseration of these
degraded races is almost overcome by his disgust with their appearance
and habits, and I found even the waste plain that stretches towards
Sennaar a relief after threading the lanes of the quarters where they
live.
Notwithstanding the nature of its population, Khartoum is kept
commendably neat and clean. It will be a lucky day for Rome and Florence
when their streets exhibit no more filth than those of this African
city. The bazaars only are swept every morning, but the wind performs
this office for the remainder of the streets. The _soog_, or market, is
held in a free space, opening upon the inland plain, where the country
people bring their sheep, fowls, camels, dourra, vegetables and other
common products. The slaughtering of animals takes place every morning
on the banks of the Blue Nile, east of the city, which is thus entirely
free from the effluvia arising therefrom. Here the sheep, cows, goats
and camels are killed, skinned and quartered in the open air, and it
is no unusual thing to see thirty or forty butchers at work on as many
different animals, each surrounded by an attendant group of vultures,
hawks, cranes, crows and other carnivorous birds. They are never molested
by the people, and we sometimes rode through thousands of them, which had
so gorged themselves that they scarcely took the trouble to move out of
our way.
The place labors under the disadvantage of being the most unhealthy part
of one of the most unhealthy regions in the world. From the southern
frontier of Nubia, where the tropical rains begin to fall, to the
table-land of Abyssinia on the south, and as far up the White Nile as has
yet been explored, Soudân is devastated by fevers of the most malignant
character. The summers are fatal to at least one-half of the Turks,
Egyptians and Europeans who make their residence there, and the natives
themselves, though the mortality is not so great among them, rarely pass
through the year without an attack of fever. I arrived during the most
healthy part of the year, and yet of all the persons I saw, three-fourths
were complaining of some derangement of the system. The military
hospital, which I visited, was filled with cases of fever, dysentery and
small-pox. I was in such good bodily condition from my journey through
the Desert that I could scarcely conceive the sensation of sickness, and
the generous diet and invigorating exercise I enjoyed secured me from
all fear of an attack. Travellers are not agreed as to the cause of this
mortality in Soudân. Some attribute it to the presence of infusoriæ in
the water; yet we drank the pure, mountain-born flood of the Blue Nile,
and filtered it beforehand. I am disposed to side with Russegger, who
accounts for it entirely by the miasma arising from decayed vegetation,
during the intense heats. The country around Khartoum is a dead level;
the only mountain to be seen is the long ridge of Djebel Gerrari, twelve
miles to the north. Behind the town, the White Nile curves to the east,
and during the inundation his waters extend even to the suburbs, almost
insulating the place. The unusual sickness of the winter of 1852 might
be accounted for by the inundation of the previous summer, which was so
much higher than ordinary that the people were obliged to erect dykes
to keep the water out of the streets. The opposite bank of the river
is considered more healthy; and in the town of Halfay, only ten miles
distant, the average mortality is much less.
I was fortunate in reaching Khartoum at a very interesting period. All
the principal shekhs of the different tribes between the Nile and the Red
Sea were then collected there, and as Dr. Reitz was on friendly terms
with all of them, I had the opportunity of making their acquaintance, and
could have readily procured a safe-conduct through their territories, if
I had been disposed to make explorations in that direction.
During the summer there had been trouble in the neighborhood of Sennaar,
and a general movement against the Egyptian rule was feared. In October
and November, however, Moussa Bey made a campaign in the regions about
and beyond the Atbara, and returned with the chief malcontents in chains.
They were afterwards liberated, but had been retained in Khartoum
until some disputed questions should be settled. On the night of my
arrival, the Consul received a visit of ceremony from the two principal
ones: Hamed, the chief shekh of the Bishàrees, and Owd-el-Kerim, son
of the great shekh of the Shukorees, which inhabit the wide territory
between the Atbara and the Blue Nile. They were accompanied by several
attendants, and by Mohammed Kheyr, the commander of the Shygheean cavalry
employed in the late expedition. The latter was a fierce-looking black in
rich Turkish costume.
Hamed was a man of middle size, black, but with straight features and a
mild, serious expression of face. He was dressed in white, as well as
his attendant whose bushy hair was twisted into countless strings and
pierced with a new wooden skewer. The Shukoree shekh arrived last. We
were seated on the divan, and all rose when he entered. He was a tall,
powerful man, with large, jet-black eyes and a bold, fierce face. He
wore a white turban and flowing robes of the same color, with a fringe
and stripe of crimson around the border. The Consul advanced to the edge
of the carpet to meet him, when the shekh opened his arms and the two
fell upon each other’s necks. Coffee and pipes were then served, and
water was brought for the washing preparatory to dinner. Hamed and the
Shygheean captain washed only their hands, but the great Owd-el-Kerim
washed his hands, face and feet, and occupied nearly a quarter of an hour
at his devotions, bowing his head many times to the earth and repeating
the name of Allah with deep emphasis. We passed through the garden to
the dining-room, where the shekhs were greatly amazed at seeing a table
set in European style. They all failed in managing the knives and forks,
except Owd-el-Kerim, who watched the Consul and myself, and did his part
with dignity. Achmet had made a vermicelli soup, which they eyed very
suspiciously, and did not venture to take more than a few mouthfuls. They
no doubt went away with the full belief that the Franks devour worms.
They were at a loss how to attack the roast mutton, until I carved it
for them, but did such execution with their fingers among the stews and
salads that the dishes were soon emptied.
After they had again partaken of coffee and pipes in the divan, the
Consul ordered two or three rockets, which had been left from his
Christmas celebration, to be sent up in order to satisfy the curiosity
of his guests, who had heard much of those wonderful fires, which had
amazed all Khartoum, three weeks before. The shekhs and attendants were
grouped on the balcony, when the first rocket-shot hissing into the
air, drew its fiery curve through the darkness, and burst into a rain
of yellow stars. “_Wallah!_” and “_Mashallah!_” were echoed from mouth
to mouth, and the desert chiefs could scarcely contain themselves, from
astonishment and delight. The second rocket went up quite near to us, and
sooner than was expected. Hamed, the Bishàree shekh, was so startled that
he threw both his arms around the Consul and held fast for dear life, and
even the great Owd-el-Kerim drew a long breath and ejaculated, “God is
great!” They then took their leave, deeply impressed with the knowledge
and wisdom of the Franks.