* * * * *
“The blue impillared vault of naked heaven
Had been his temple; God had taught him prayer.”
“This note was written upon gilt-edged paper
With a neat little crow-quill slight and new.”
BYRON.
* * * * *
A RIDE TO KOBBE.
A conclave. — Hyenas. — Mohommed’s love. — Mohommed’s prayer. — Its
effect. — A runaway camel. — A search for a lion. — The wake of the
“ship of the desert.” — A welcome supper. — Two scientific men. — Kobbe.
— A scrap of paper.
AS our work in El Fasher drew towards its close, a very serious
discussion arose among the members of the staff, involving a question of
no less importance than the very essence of the Fourth Commandment. The
Mohommedan Sabbath is Friday, and all our officers and men were
naturally very anxious that this day should, during our work in the
field, be kept as a day of rest to enable them to say the orthodox
number of prayers, and to take the requisite number of hours’ sleep in
order that they might be fit, both spiritually and temporally, for the
resumption of work on the following day. Our own Sabbath was of course
Sunday, and our anxiety that the day should be becomingly honoured by
grateful repose was not less heartfelt than that of the Mohommedans. For
ourselves to abstain from work on Sunday and let the men work would be
simply preposterous, as they could do nothing without our guidance; for
us to work on the Friday while the men were resting and praying, would
be, perhaps, more preposterous still, as we could do nothing without
their assistance. The question, therefore, arose—on which day should we
rest from our labour. Some were in favour of Sunday, others in favour of
Friday. To recapitulate the arguments adduced by the learned theologians
composing this conclave would be foreign to the nature of this work,
which is not theological. Happily an agreement was at length come to.
Mutual concessions, creditable to both sides, were made, and it was
resolved _nem. con._ that we should rest from our labours both on the
Friday and on the Sunday.
This arrangement was satisfactory to all parties concerned.
Availing myself of the opportunity thus presented, I determined late on
Thursday evening to set out that night on a journey to Kobbe, to
consider the intervening Saturday a _dies non_, and to return by the
following Sunday night or early on Monday morning. I had no map of the
country, but from inquiries judged the town, which was in the Wady el
Kho, to be distant between thirty and forty miles in a north-westerly
direction.
I made up my mind to go without a guide, as at that late hour, when
everyone in El Fasher was fast asleep, it would be impossible to find
one.
Mohommed Gadderâb was to accompany me; he had never been to Kobbe
before, but neither of us anticipated any difficulty in finding the way.
Our arrangements, two skins of water and one of cabin biscuits, were
soon completed, and we left the palace at about midnight. Passing
through the silent town we disturbed several hyenas, hard at work in the
market-place, making disgusting noises in their efforts to masticate and
gorge some delicate morsels too tough for their teeth and too large for
their throats. We soon left the last houses behind us, and, after
crossing the Wady el Kho, started across the trackless wilderness.
The night, like all the nights, was indescribably beautiful but more
than usually cold, and Mohommed pulled the date-basket more closely over
his ears, and rolled the ropes three or four times round his neck to
protect it from the air. We trotted gently side by side, and my faithful
friend and guide, generally, like all Arabs, so reticent, chatted gaily
as we went, and opened his heart, and, though I was younger than he,
called me his father. He told me of his mother and children, and how he
loved them, and of his wife whom he venerated and loved more than all
the others put together, and how there was only one thing more in the
whole world he wished for, and that was, when he grew rich, to marry
again—a beautiful daughter of a wealthy shiekh. When our expedition was
over and he obtained his money, an event he by no means considered a
certainty, he intended to do this, to give up guiding, and to settle
down in peace and contentment for the rest of his days—if the two wives
did not quarrel _much_. I liked the man, and he, I believe, was
sincerely devoted to me. I promised him, on our safe return to Old
Dongola, a substantial “backsheesh,” with the hope that it might help
him in carrying out his matrimonial projects. They were, however, never
realised, but abandoned before he reached his home, when his thoughts
had reference less to a second wife in this world than to the diviner
houris he anticipated meeting in the next.
The deep indigo of the night changed to the pale grey of the dawn, the
stars faded one by one in the sky,
“Till in the east a solitary orb
Was left the herald of approaching day.”
Venus’s light was soon put out, and in five more minutes the sun rose
and changed the whole of the heavens to blue and gold. Mohommed Gadderâb
unrolled the rope from his neck, loosened the date-basket on his head,
made his camel kneel down, and then, turning towards the rising sun,
knelt down too, and said from his simple heart his simple prayer.
The genuflexions, the sudden rises and falls, the many bowings down of
the head and date-basket and ropes into the sand in adoration of Allah
and of the Great Prophet Mohommed, produced in my camel, who was not in
the habit of witnessing so extraordinary a performance, a sudden and
great fear, and, with me on his back, he bolted, mad with terror, across
the desert.
This conduct on the part of my camel astonished me very considerably;
with the exception of one occasion, when he turned with me into the
thorny bush, his behaviour had always been irreproachable. He had
travelled for six hundred miles, and had met with many sudden surprises.
Thorns had entered his feet and had torn his sides; storm sand-spouts
had risen under his very nose; foxes and hares had started from between
his feet, and once a hyena, a horrid vision, rose only a yard before his
eyes; still he never flinched, but brought me safely to the end of my
journey. Mohommed’s prayer and the bobbing basket were, however, too
much for him; he became unsettled, his mind lost its balance,
“And Reason reeled down drunken from its throne.”
My position on the back of the terror-stricken and wildly-galloping
camel was one of pain and much anxiety. Properly to convey an idea of
the motion would be impossible, but a tolerably good imitation might, I
think, be obtained by mounting astride of two large rocking-horses, each
made to rapidly rock in such a manner that when the head of one was in
its zenith, the head of the other should be in its nadir.
First away went my hat, my Thresher and Glenny helmet, price thirty
shillings, on which I prided myself much, next the folded rug and the
jaguar-skin I had brought from South America, and placed on the saddle
to soften the seat and make it comfortable. My red morocco slippers
followed my jaguar-skin’s example, and at length, worst of all, the
little case-bottle, which I had always carried to meet any emergency
that might arise, jumped like a living thing from my breast pocket, and
fell shattered into the stones. The water in the skin hanging to one
side of the camel, and the cabin biscuits in the skin on the other side,
made much rattling noise in their respective receptacles, and, for aught
I know to the contrary, tended materially to increase the terror of the
already maddened beast. As luck would have it, my camel was running
square on to the dense mass of thorn-trees and scrubs that fringed the
banks of the Wady el Kho. They would not have stopped him, and had he
gone in amongst them, the very flesh would to a certainty have been torn
from my bones. With my left hand I clutched the upright wooden pommel of
the saddle, and with my right pulled with the strength of fear the rope
that served as bridle, in order to turn him towards a low sand-hill half
a mile off on the right. In this I was fortunately successful; he came
to a stop a little way up the slope of the hill, turned suddenly round,
and started off in another direction as madly, or more madly, than
before. The second bolt was a long one. He must have galloped over the
flat, sandy, and stony desert for at least two miles. Finally, when he
was exhausted, he came to a walk, snorting. I watched my opportunity,
lifted my right leg over the high pommel, and jumped, truly thankful, on
to the ground.
The whole of the skin from the palm of my left hand had gone, owing to
the friction of the rough wooden top of the pommel which I had clutched.
Other than this I had sustained no bodily injury, but the implicit
confidence which I had placed in my camel was irretrievably lost.
This fact of the loss of part of my palm leads me to tell how easy it is
in the dry air of the desert for the skin to be torn off, and how
quickly it again comes. The hands coming in contact with anything in the
least rough will at once cause an abrasure, and, happily, but very
little pain. My dear friend and colleague, with whom I had travelled to
El Fasher, had always kindly volunteered to look after the stores, and
every evening on our arrival in camp his good-nature necessitated his
using a hammer and chisel to open the cases, and nails to shut them up
again. His hands from the use of these tools became in many places
destitute of their usual covering, which, however, as quickly appeared
again. The Arabs do not suffer in the same way, for the two reasons that
they never do any manual labour, and that their skin, although they
drink but little water, is always moist; but throughout the European
members of our staff the circumstance was universally noticed.
Mohommed rode up in a few minutes with my personal furniture, my thirty-
shilling Thresher and Glenny helmet, my two slippers, my rug and jaguar-
skin, the stopper of my case-bottle, and the elegant little tin drinking
cup which had so conveniently fitted on to its end, and from which, on
many happy occasions, I had taken a grateful draught of Martell’s three-
star brandy, properly diluted, to the health of my friends at home in
England.
“O Mohommed, why did you pray? You see the effect of your prayer. You
have for ever spoiled the temper of my camel,—and look at the palm of my
hand!”
“O Effendim! why did you not pray? Had you got down from the camel and
prayed to your God as I did to mine, it would not have happened; the
camel would have rested, and your hand would still have been as God has
made it.”
Mohommed had very much the best of the argument. I was soon ready to go
on, but took the wise precaution to change camels with Mohommed, in the
natural fear lest my animal should take it into his head to stampede
again.
The ground through which we now travelled was in many parts susceptible
of being cultivated, but no signs of any past or present cultivation
existed.
There were numerous porcupine-burrows, with many quills scattered about
their entrances. Now and then we came upon a large tortoise, about a
foot high and the same breadth and length, pursuing its slow and
melancholy way with, perhaps, a destination in the wady below which, at
its present pace, it might reach in the course of about six months.
Gazelles, ariels (Oryx), and antelopes, resembling the koodoo of Natal,
sometimes trotted playfully out of the trees in the valley, saw us, and
trotted hastily back. We saw the marks of giraffes and of ostriches, and
of many beetles, and occasionally the smooth track of a snake in the
sand, but none of the animals, insects, or reptiles themselves.
When at twelve o’clock our shadows had hidden themselves under the
camels, we turned into the valley, and sat down in desirable shade to
lunch on cabin biscuits and lukewarm water. After lunch we wandered
about on foot, and struck into one of the many tributary “khors.” Here I
found the footmarks of some wild animal, which Mohommed told me were
those of a lion. My curiosity was aroused. I had never seen a lion in a
wild state, and with Mohommed’s help I tracked them up the “khor” for
about an hour.
Mohommed suddenly came to a stop in our search and said: “Suppose we
find the lion?”
This was a contingency which had not yet occurred to my mind. I was
anxiously looking for something which I had no desire whatever to find.
We were neither of us armed, and to have suddenly come upon an angry,
hungry lion guarding his cubs in his lair, might have had results the
reverse of conducive to the success of our expedition to Darfoor.
I said: “It is time to proceed on our journey. We will go back to the
camels.”
On our further journey we crossed the valley and rode on the north-
eastern side. When the night came the bushes were pretty thick all over
the land, and we completely lost sight of the dark-green line by which
we had hitherto been guided.
I judged, from the time we had travelled, that we were not far from
Kobbe, and turned due west. After an hour the country became again quite
open and free from trees. A long distance ahead stretched a bright white
line, to the right and to the left, as far as we could see. It seemed on
the dark expanse of the desert as seems the Milky Way on the dark
expanse of the sky. To me it was a mystery, but to Mohommed it imparted
certain and welcome information.
We reached it soon; it was the camel-track from Kobbe northward to
Sioot, on the Nile, two hundred and fifty miles above Cairo. We had
passed Kobbe by a long distance, and we retraced our steps southwards.
The remote reaching track to the north was like the white wake of a ship
speeding in the night and moon over the face of the ocean: it was the
wake of the “ship of the desert.” The powdered and bleached bones of
myriads of camels, that for the last many thousand years had dropped
under their weights to slowly die, had been trodden into the earth and
mixed with the sand: it was Death itself acting as our guide, and
charitably showing us the road to our destination. We followed
gratefully the spectre on his pale gray horse, and at length reached
Kobbe at about midnight. The town was fast asleep. I got off my camel,
hobbled one of his legs, and sent him to graze on the scanty tufts of
yellow grass in the land of Death, and lay down on my rug and went fast
asleep in the bone-dust. Mohommed went into the town to try and find us
a more lively lodging.
He was not long absent, but returned in about an hour accompanied by two
Greeks, merchants, whom he had found awake in their store, at supper. In
ten more minutes I was a welcome guest, eating hot mutton, black olives,
Dutch cheese, truffles, and duchn cake, and drinking pale ale and red
wine, strongly imbued with the flavour of the leather skin in which it
had been brought down from the mountains in the “Isles of Greece.”
Supper ended, a back-gammon board, about the size of a whist-table was
introduced, and the two Greeks sat down to play, with men as large as
Bath buns, and dice as big as the grains of the cubic powder used in
charging the eighty-ton gun at Shoeburyness. I retired to rest in an
adjoining apartment, but the rattle of the huge dice and the banging
about of the Bath buns, rendered sleep impossible. I rose and took a
seat by the side of one of the players. The men were playing high—five
pounds a game and twenty pounds for the gammon.
Backgammon is an ingenious game, much played by the clergy in England,
but I doubt whether the most experienced English parson would stand any
chance with a really skilled Greek. The players throw the dice with the
hand, and not from a cup as we do. To play properly is quite a science.
Should the thrower want an ace, or any other number, he drops one of the
dice on to the board; if it turns up an ace, or the other required
number, the second die immediately follows, and the throw remains; if,
on the other hand, the wished-for number should not come up, the die is
picked up as though accidentally dropped, and the player throws again. A
very skilful player will, in the critical parts of the game, perhaps
repeat this once or twice, generally with ultimate success. The two
players in question were both scientific in the highest degree, but it
was Greek meeting Greek, and in every case their efforts were at once
detected, and no harm was done. To their request that I should play I
gave a polite negative.
To tell about Kobbe, in which town I spent some hours next day, would be
only again to tell what I have told about El Fasher. There was the same
dust and age, and the same tumble-down grimy tuckles and sheds. The
people, however, are perhaps a shade less sleepy and slothful. The town
stands on the high camel-track from Sioot southwards, through the oasis
of Khargeh, the alum mines of Sheb, the salt district of Selimah, and
the natron lakes at Zeghawa, whence on through Kobbe to lake Tchad, in
the very heart of Africa. It is, however, only a resting-place; itself
has little or no trade. When a caravan goes through the town the
inhabitants wake up, and when it has passed they go to sleep again.
Beyond this they have no life. In the town there was but the one
merchant firm, the two Greeks I have mentioned, and their business was
the collection of feathers and tusks.
On Saturday afternoon, at about three o’clock, when the sun’s heat began
to grow less, Mohommed and myself started back on an estimated bee-line.
The two kind Greeks pressed upon us a bottle of black Spanish olives and
a tin of French truffles, to eat on the way. In about fourteen hours we
struck El Fasher exactly, arriving just in time for breakfast.
On the afternoon of this day, the 2nd of April, the messenger whom we
had despatched with letters from Om Badr to the Khartoom party, rode
gaily into the enclosure of the palace, returned from his long ride of
more than one thousand one hundred miles. When he had delivered his
letters, happily reporting all well, he looked carefully at each of us,
as though in search of some one whom he could only find from a
description he had received. His eyes at length rested on me, and after
gazing for some seconds, he beckoned me to follow him outside.
In a secluded corner,
“Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,”
he unrolled from his loins the old Dongola cloth, his entire wardrobe,
and, after untying a knot in one of its remote corners, handed to me a
piece of coarse paper, in shape and size resembling a walnut; opened out
as large as the palm of my hand. Signature, or seal, the usual method of
signing in Egypt, there was none, and the bad and blotted writing was
quite illegible to me. Whence did it come? An old woman at Sotaire had
given it to him. What was it about? He did not know. On what subject
could an old woman at Sotaire or anywhere else write to me? old women
are not my usual correspondents. I had paid all my debts for sheep and
oxen and milk. There was a mystery in this little note. A surmise came
from my heart into my mind. Might it be from the good and beautiful
Rebecca who had drawn the water from the well for me to drink, and who,
in the solitude of the starlit night, had told me all about the strife
and sorrow of her people. She could not write, that was impossible, but
she might have employed the old woman to do so for her; old women will
do these things. In my vanity I thought so, and, let me be forgiven, I
think so now, and have ever since treasured the torn and crumpled piece
of paper with its illegible writing. On our return to Sotaire the tribe
was no longer there. The secret remains divided between the paper in my
desk and the hearts of the writer and of the sender, wandering over the
desert thousands of miles away. I have looked at the paper many times
since, I am looking at it now; some of the letters seem clearer, and one
word, one word only, has grown from month to month into life—“Fantasia.”
[Decoration]