FROM THE ATBARA TO WAD HAMED
Early on the morning of the 17th our old friend the _El Tahra_ came
in sight, and we hailed her and crossed again to the Atbara. Next
day, with the rest of the correspondents still remaining in the camp,
we embarked on board a native _ghyassa_ which was towed up the river
by the gunboat _Tamai_. We were thoroughly crowded and uncomfortable
on this miserable barge, and even when we stepped on to the lower
deck of the gunboat the dirt and confusion was indescribable. The
first night I attempted in the dark to get a little exercise in this
way, but I fell over a live goat into the middle of a dead sheep
newly slaughtered, and resolved to do without any further exercise
until I landed.
The Arab servants were quite happy amid these horrid surroundings,
and according to their wont would sit about in groups telling
stories till the small hours of the morning. One of their tales,
I learnt, concerned a mummy which arose and talked to the Bedawin
who unearthed it. In view of certain evidence which has lately been
forthcoming, it is just possible that some substratum of truth may
have underlaid this weird story. The evidence to which I allude is
contained in the following account, which is alleged to be authentic.
A short time ago an Englishman who was travelling in Mexico happened
to discover a mummied body of which the extremities were missing. He
carried off his find to the home of a Mexican friend whose guest he
was, and after dinner showed the mummy to the master and mistress
of the house. The case with its contents was placed on the billiard
table, and the trio sat on a couch some distance off, when suddenly
a voice seemed to issue from the box. The Englishman turned to his
host to compliment him on his supposed ventriloquism, when he saw
that both the Mexican and his wife were deadly pale, and the lady in
a fainting condition. He rushed to the case on the table and declares
that as he stooped over it he heard articulate speech issue from
the mummied form inside! The voice, however, was only momentary, and
after a time his host informed him that already before he entered the
room the sound had been heard by his wife and himself proceeding from
the box.
This mummy is now, I hear, in England, and one authority who has
been consulted suggests that the employment of the Röntgen rays
might perhaps reveal in the mummy's interior some mechanical device
employed by the ancients to produce the semblance of the human voice.
That some contrivance of this kind was known in antiquity seems
almost certain. Priestcraft sometimes caused the statues of gods to
talk, as, for example, the famous statue of Memnon amongst the ruins
of Thebes. In the case before us some vibration may have started
this venerable clockwork into renewed activity, just as nowadays the
pressure of infantile fingers causes the mechanical doll to squeak
and gibber, or cry "Papa," "Mamma."
At length Colonel Wingate took pity on our abject position in the
_ghyassa_, and we were permitted to leave the society of "Gyppy"
officers and native servants, and have our meals on the upper deck.
The gunboat conveyed the Staff of the Intelligence Department,
including Slatin Pasha. The long years of hardship endured at
Omdurman have left few traces on Slatin; he is always in excellent
spirits, and a most kind and unselfish travelling companion. He
told me that he was utterly weary of the Sudan, and would, like
many others, be heartily glad to see the last of campaigning in
these torrid regions. He told me, too, many interesting things about
Omdurman and the prisoners still in the Dervishes' power; and how the
Austrian mission-sister had been compelled to marry a Greek by the
Khalifa on the quaint ground that it was indecorous for an unmarried
lady to reside at Omdurman without adequate protection.
The Nile becomes much more interesting above the Atbara, and the
banks in places are clothed with dense vegetation. We stopped
several times to take in wood for the engine, and at one of our
halting-places, Zeibad, during a ramble on shore, I found the
bushes full of little doves (_turtur Senegalensis_), and a flock
of wild geese got up, offering a fine shot had one carried a gun.
A few hundred yards away I noticed a line of huge Marabout storks.
The plumage of these birds is very striking, and I have heard it
suggested that when on one occasion during the Atbara campaign a
correspondent rode back to camp in hot haste with the report that he
had been chased by Dervishes, he had really fallen in with a line
of Marabout storks, and mistaken their mottled plumage for Arab
"gibbehs." Farther along the bank we skirted a huge marsh--a perfect
paradise for a sportsman: teal, duck, and snipe rose in vast coveys;
on a tall bush a large fishing eagle was perched, which paid scant
attention to the steamer; while at the foot two small crocodiles or
very large water-lizards lay basking in the sunshine. On every side
a multitude of cranes, secretary birds, and the sacred ibis stalked
solemnly about in dignified silence. The whole formed a charming
picture of animal life undisturbed by the presence of man--every
creature working out its own perfection in "delight and liberty."
The voyage was full of interest. By day we wrote up our diaries, took
photographs of interesting bits of river scenery, or occasionally
got a shot at a wild duck or goose, which formed a welcome addition
to our larder. About half-way to Shabluka we sighted the curious
pyramids of Meroe, thirteen or fourteen in number. These seem to
be often irregular in shape, and are not nearly so large as the
pyramids of Ghizeh or Sakhara. They stand all solitary in a waste
of sand and rock, strange enigmatic relics of a vanished race. The
region of Meroe once formed a kingdom in itself, which succeeded the
Ethiopian kingdom of Napata, lower down the river. The dynasties of
the Meroitic kings attained considerable power, and were able to
retain their independence when the rest of Egypt became subject to
foreign control. Meroe was formerly a flourishing centre for caravan
and river-borne trade, but this seems to have disappeared by the
Christian era, for in Nero's time it is described as a desolate
wilderness, and this fact seems to render untenable the belief that
the Queen Candace mentioned in the Acts was the sovereign of Meroe.
From the time of Justinian to the 14th century Meroe was absorbed in
the kingdom of Dongola, whose inhabitants professed the Jacobite form
of Christianity. Quite recently I heard that an altar had been found
somewhere in the Meroe region with an inscription to Isa (Jesus), who
still lives in the tradition of the country as a great Sheikh. Now
that the Sudan has been opened up, and travellers need not fear a
compulsory experience of the Khalifa's hospitality at Omdurman, one
of the first steps which English archæologists ought to undertake is
the investigation of the countless ruins, tombs, inscriptions, and so
forth, which exist south of Wady Halfa. No one, for instance, has yet
deciphered the script which is met with amongst the ruins in the Wady
Ben Naga. Lepsius explored these ruins in 1844, and published some of
the curious inscriptions in his _Denkmäler_; but until a bilingual
inscription is discovered which will, like the Rosetta Stone, furnish
a clue to this mysterious writing, Egyptologists will continue to
sigh over its inscrutable characters. Professor Sayce had asked me
to bring back some "squeezes" and photographs from the Meroitic
inscriptions; but, alas, on the return journey the squeeze paper and
photographic apparatus were lost by the capsizing of some _ghyassas_,
and so I could do nothing in the cause of palæography.
A short distance past the pyramids we caught up a curious procession
wending its way along the bank. A famous Gaalin sheikh, Hamara Wad
Abu Sin, was journeying southwards to join the Anglo-Egyptian forces.
This important ally led the way on foot, followed by a retainer armed
with a Remington. Then came a baggage camel carrying the personal
luggage of the chieftain, and the rear was brought up by two men and
two boys. When the gunboat got opposite the old sheikh, he at once
jumped into the river and swam to us, followed by one of the small
boys, who kept his master's bundle of clothes out of the water. Wad
Abu Sin is head of the Shukryeh tribe, and is noted throughout the
Sudan for his personal bravery. His father was _mudir_ of Khartum
under Gordon, and he himself was a prisoner in that town until he
managed to escape through Abyssinia. It was touching to see the old
man's joy at meeting Slatin, his fellow-sufferer under the cruel
tyranny of the Khalifa.
At Magyrich, on the western bank, we found the Lancers encamped in a
beautiful palm grove, and Cross and I were especially glad to see our
camel with the two servants, who had evidently managed to pick up the
column. Some distance lower down than Magyrich we had already passed
two little groups of Lancers. One batch of twelve stood on the bank,
and asked us to take them on board, as their horses had broken down;
the other party consisted of only two men, whose comrade had just
died of sunstroke, and been buried by the survivors under a mimosa
bush.
At 5 a.m. a man swam to the boat from the shore, who turned out to
be a deserter from Omdurman. He stated that when he left two of the
Dervish boats were on the point of starting to the South, in order,
perhaps, to fetch grain, and that the Khalifa was at present with his
army, at the outermost of the Omdurman lines of defence, about three
miles to the north of the town. This seemed to confirm the general
belief, which was afterwards verified, that the decisive battle would
not be fought in front of the Kerreri ridge, some ten miles north of
the capital, but in front of Omdurman itself.
The sight of Metemmeh was full of interest. On the opposite bank lay
the ingeniously constructed forts of Shendy, with solid mud walls,
thirty-five feet thick. Miles back beyond Metemmeh, in the desert,
lay Abu Klea, and between the two the hamlets of Abu Kru and Gubat.
The fighting which we were destined to experience before Omdurman was
as nothing compared with the desperate struggles in 1885, when the
gallant column of British troops fought its way through overwhelming
numbers from Abu Klea to the Nile. Englishmen may well be proud of
this splendid feat of arms, unexampled as it is in the history of the
Sudan campaigns. Major Stuart-Wortley, who was present at the series
of fights from Abu Klea to the Nile, pointed out to me the mud-hut
to which Sir Herbert Stewart had been carried. How pitiful to think
that the lives of this gallant leader and many another brave man were
sacrificed in vain! Instead of helping to save the beleaguered city
and rescue Gordon, the dearly-won victory of Abu Klea only seemed
to hasten the destruction of Khartum. The Mahdist forces were so
incensed by the sight of their wounded comrades brought back after
the battle, that they demanded to be led at once to the assault, and
captured the town almost without resistance.
We heard, by the way, at Nasri that all the graves of the gallant
men who fell in the fighting from Abu Klea to Metemmeh had been
desecrated by the Dervishes, and that the white bones lay scattered
over the desert. One exception, however, had been made. The
resting-place of Sir Herbert Stewart had not been molested.
The above news was, I believe, embodied in several telegrams, but was
struck out by the Press Censor, as it was thought likely to cause
pain to many in England whose relatives had fallen in the Abu Klea
campaign. Afterwards, too, some doubts were thrown upon the truth
of the report; but even if the story was well founded, it matters
little. Of our valiant dead we may surely say, in the immortal words
of the Athenian statesman, "They received each one for himself the
noblest of all sepulchres. I speak not of that in which their
remains are laid, but of that in which their glory survives.... For
the whole earth is a sepulchre of famous men: not only are they
commemorated by columns and inscriptions, but there dwells also an
unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone, but in the hearts of
men."
The evening before we reached Nasri Island we were suddenly overtaken
by a terrific sandstorm. Two vast columns of sand rose straight up
from the desert and swept rapidly towards us. The sky was black with
clouds, birds ceased to sing, and the grasshoppers chirruped no
more, as all living creatures, from ourselves downward, prepared for
the coming terror. The _Tamai_ at once tied up to the bank, and we
waited for the hurricane. Suddenly it came rushing upon us. Everyone
clutched books, camp-chairs, cameras, plates, bottles--whatever lay
within reach--and sat tight, while the gunboat heeled over beneath
the shock. The storm was shortlived; streams of sunshine broke
afresh through the clouds, and birds and insects came forth from
their hiding-places, and rejoiced that the tyranny was overpast. We
speedily collected our scattered properties and went on our way. Yet
all night long the lightning flashed incessantly, showing up every
bush and rock on the river bank as clearly as at noonday.
Nasri Island had been converted into a vast depôt for stores. All
the people who were obliged to remain at this station throughout the
campaign seemed very depressed. There was nothing whatever to do out
of work hours except to prowl along the river bank, on the chance
of slaying a goose or catching a fish. One of the officers came on
board, and, in answer to our query as to his welfare, said he felt
"a bit cheap," as in addition to being soaked to the skin as he lay
in bed, he had been stung by two scorpions during the night. As the
_Tamai's_ condensers had gone wrong, and the engineer seemed to have
lost his head altogether, we tied up to the bank until 2 a.m., and
four more hours brought us to Wad Hamed, where the Sirdar's forces
were to be finally concentrated before the march upon Omdurman.
We thoroughly enjoyed the week's sojourn at Wad Hamed, as the camp
seemed healthy, and along the Nile there were many charming bits of
scenery. In fact, in some places where the enormous breadth of the
river was broken up into narrower channels, one might almost imagine
oneself on the Thames. The banks were clothed with the bright green
foliage of the nebek and mimosa bushes, which afforded shelter to
innumerable birds. The thorns of the nebek are worse even than those
of the mimosa; they curl inwards, and are very strong. Nevertheless,
the camel rejoices exceedingly when it can seize a mouthful of this
prickly tree, and the yellow berries are not to be despised by human
beings when they are really hungry. There is, however, one feature
which is sadly lacking even in the nicest bits of Nile scenery; there
are no flowers.
After we had pitched our tents amongst some mimosa scrub, during
which process our barefooted servants leapt about like cats on
hot bricks, we were informed that the Sirdar would receive the
correspondents in his tent. Bennett-Burleigh had arrived in the
meantime, having stolen away from the Lancers' camp and the other
correspondents, and ridden forty miles that day--a fine performance,
if not strictly in accord with military discipline. We thereupon
collected our little cohort of fifteen, and went off to meet the
General. I did not enjoy the interview, which was as barren of
results as it was humiliating. The only parallel to it which I can
think of is that of a row of curates before a brusque and autocratic
bishop. During the brief commonplaces which passed between us, the
general impression conveyed to me was the immeasurable condescension
of our chief in even deigning to address the representatives of
a Press which has never failed to extol even to the verge of
exaggeration the achievements of the Anglo-Egyptian Army and its
leader! How deep the gulf which appeared to separate the Egyptian
commander-in-chief from the civilian correspondent! In short, I
should advise anybody who cannot put his pride in his pocket to avoid
the rôle of amateur war correspondent in Egypt. The professionals
are, I suppose, to some extent inoculated by this time, and cling to
the delusion that correspondents during a campaign are treated like
officers.
At the same time, I am bound to confess that if I were a
commanding officer I should not be favourably impressed with the
_genus_ "correspondent" as a whole. There is sometimes a blatant
self-conceit and vulgar swagger about a war correspondent which is
very irritating, while in other cases intolerance of discipline
and incessant attempts to override military regulations for mere
private ends have gone far to justify Lord Wolseley's _dictum_ that
correspondents are "the curse of modern warfare." Of course there
are delightful exceptions to this sort of thing to be met with in
a war correspondent's camp. Some of the men who engage in this
most delightful occupation are good fellows in every sense of the
phrase,--brave, generous, and clever,--and it is a privilege to enjoy
the companionship of men like Steevens, Scudamore, Villiers, and
others whom I could name.
Altogether, the little _kosmos_ of our camp was full of interest,
as the types of war correspondent one meets with vary considerably.
There is the rough man who glories in his roughness, scorns luxury,
and doesn't wash. An excellent fellow in his way, he yet renders
himself more unhappy than he need be by his unstinted devotion to
discomfort. To imitate an ancient Eremite by never changing one's
shirt when you can purchase one for 2s. 11¾d., and to sleep on the
ground when you have got plenty of money to buy a valise bed, may
have certain charms when the weather is fair and you haven't got
fever; but when rain is falling upon you, as it knows how to fall in
the tropics, or you would give half your income for a little shade
from the midday sun, which has got you by the back of the neck and
made you limp and listless--it is then that the swashbuckler and old
campaigner theory breaks down.
In signal contrast with the above type, one finds the war
correspondent who makes himself as comfortable as possible. His
editor does not grudge the supply, nor he the expenditure, of large
sums of money. He puts on a clean shirt every day, and has his boots
polished in the heart of the desert. He wears beautiful cummerbunds,
and is all glorious within; his underclothing is of wrought silk.
When less fortunate mortals drink muddy water this Sybarite calls for
a whisky and Rosbach, and finishes off a dinner of five courses with
a glass of excellent liqueur. But, after all, why shouldn't a man
make his camp life as pleasant as possible as long as his comforts
don't interfere with other people's? Indeed, so far from this being
the case, the "comfortable" correspondent--as far as my experience
goes--is often a really kind and generous fellow, who never grudges a
friend a share in his good things; and as to his picturesque costume
and careful toilette, a man preserves his self-respect all the better
when he is clean and nicely dressed. The hospitality, too, which,
when camels and servants abound, can be generously dispensed to
agreeable and communicative officers, is a most valuable factor in
the success of a war correspondent's career; its quality is like that
of mercy--it blesses him that gives as well as him that takes.
Another type meets us in the veterans, the self-constituted _doyens_
of the pressmen, who claim to regulate the camp and lay down the law
generally. Some old persons of this sort, on the strength of their
own antiquity and their experience of half a dozen campaigns, are
loud in their denunciation of all "interlopers," as they are pleased
to call all gentlemen who pay their own expenses and do literary work
in connection with the campaign.
Again, all campaigners must know the type of correspondent,
who, ignorant of any language except his own, and speaking that
imperfectly, ill-treats his servants when they fail to understand his
orders. Such persons as this are either too stupid or too lazy to
master even a few common words of the vernacular, yet they imagine
that for £2, 10s. a month they can secure an accomplished linguist
as a servant! "Untwist that knot; not that knot, that other knot!
Great Scot! You," etc. etc. The poor Arab boy stands perplexed and
fearful--he cannot understand this bewildering utterance, and becomes
helpless or makes a bad shot and begins to open a tin of marmalade
or lay the table. Then "thud, thud," as a heavy stick falls on the
servant's bare flesh, or the wretched boy emerges from the tent, his
face streaming with blood from a cowardly blow by his master's fist.
I have known an Arab servant to be followed for yards and beaten most
cruelly with a heavy stick, because, owing to a breakdown of the
telegraph, he was unable to forward a message sent by his master.
The boy was absolutely blameless in the matter, but his master would
not listen to a word of explanation, and the sound of the brutal
strokes he showered upon the servant were audible far away. The
foul abuse bellowed at servants frequently made our camp a disgrace
to the zeriba. Everybody in the East swears at his servants, but
still--whether the proposition be ethically sound or not--there is a
gentlemanly way of swearing--brief and incisive, and not intended to
reach the ears of others than the delinquent.
Moreover, if one treats one's Arab servants with kindness and
firmness withal, they generally do their best, and often become quite
devoted to their master. When after the battle Mr. Villiers was lost
for some time, and fears were entertained about him, his servant was
full of genuine distress and anxiety. If, on the other hand, no tie
exists between master and servant except fear of the _kurbash_ and
the loss of the paltry wages, what can one expect in the way of zeal
and devotion?
The yells and screams of fury which commenced at daybreak, and often
made night hideous in the correspondents' camp, were never heard
amongst the officers, who surely had infinitely more to put up
with in the way of discomfort than we had. In short, disgust was
often the prevailing sentiment with which one could contemplate our
own camp, and it was a delightful relief to get away for a quiet,
pleasant chat with one's officer friends.
There are other types also. The "new hand," some peaceful-looking
journalist who has never fired a shot in his life, even at a bunny,
stands before the door of his tent clad in all the trappings with
which Messrs. Silver adorn the noumenal war correspondent of their
imagination. Every strap in the brand new kit is in its place, and
the poor man is so festooned with cameras and field-glasses and
revolvers and haversacks that respiration must be difficult, as he
bumps along on his gee-gee in an enormous helmet. He cannot ride, to
walk he is ashamed. Yet, if the "new hand's" enthusiasm for a war
correspondent's career is not disillusioned by the stern realities
of a Sudan campaign, he will appear in our next "little war" as an
old hand, and will be all the happier for having left behind him the
outfit dear to the war correspondent of comic opera, and donned a
less intricate but more effective costume.
Once more, there is the non-journalistic amateur, who, in order to go
through the campaign, has secured a permit to act as a correspondent
for some newspaper. As I was myself a humble member of this class, I
will refrain from criticising its merits and defects, though later on
a brief tribute may well be paid to the memory of two of its members,
who, alas, did not return--Cross and Howard.
Now, concerning war correspondents enough has been said. Let no one
be offended by fair criticism and good-natured banter--
Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas,
Gaudia, discursus, nostri est farrago libelli.
At the same time it seems likely that the day of the highly paid war
correspondent, with _carte blanche_ to spend as much as he likes, is
almost over. Scores of capable men with a 'Varsity education would
be delighted to do war correspondent's work for a tithe of what is
paid to some of these gentlemen; and as agencies like Reuter supply
excellent telegrams, there is no crying need for additional "wires."
At least one of our leading newspapers was quite uncertain for a long
time as to whether it would send a special correspondent to the
Sudan or not, and an editor remarked to me that the copy sent was
often scarcely worth the outlay. "We don't want to read," said he,
"how our correspondent was bitten by mosquitoes, or left his pyjamas
behind him."
As my friend Professor Poulton of Oxford had kindly bestowed upon
me a small net and a "killing bottle," I resolved to collect some
butterflies and insects for the University Museum, and made frequent
excursions outside Wad Hamed camp for the purpose. But ill-luck
pursued my untrained efforts at practical entomology. The only thing
the bottle came within measurable distance of killing was myself,
for it got broken almost at the start, and my cook, thinking the
strong-smelling concoction at the bottom was some form of curry
powder or seasoning, had carefully annexed the _débris_ of the
bottle, and was proceeding to use it for culinary purposes, when I
seized the stuff and hurled it into the river.
The butterfly net also fell upon evil days, for the donkey which
carried it began to roll one evening before its load was removed,
and the apparatus was utterly smashed. The stick and brasswork I
reluctantly left on the field, but the green gauze served to protect
one's eyes and complexion when sandstorms swept through the air.
In consequence of these disasters my entomology had to be carried out
with ruder implements--to wit, a bath towel and a thick stick. If
a butterfly settled on the ground I stalked it carefully, and then
fell upon it with the towel; but I often rose from the earth with
no butterfly, and nothing in my hands except half a dozen mimosa
thorns. Incensed at failure, one struck at the gaudy insects as
they fluttered past, and sometimes succeeded in braining a few; but
as I gathered up the scattered remains I trembled to think of the
Professor's sarcasms upon the condition of my Sudanese specimens.
The natives used to gaze upon my pursuit of butterflies with looks
of amusement and surprise. What could the Englishman want with these
worthless insects? Were they his totems or fetiches? did he collect
them for gastronomic purposes, or as material for magical rites? I
sometimes offered some trifling _bakshish_ for butterflies, but the
Arabs could never be brought to realise that I wanted variety and
quality as well as quantity. On one occasion a struggling mass of
fifteen or twenty common white butterflies in a matchbox--all exactly
the same--was triumphantly brought me by a small boy. I liberated the
unhappy prisoners, and rewarded the boy with one penny and a severe
lecture.[1]
As to the other insects in my collection, many of these were so
appallingly ugly and malignant in appearance that one had to pull
oneself together to attempt their capture. A soda-water bottle had
been filled with whisky amid the protests of Cross, who thought this
a waste of good liquor, and when some grisly insect with a striped
body, projecting eyes, and aggressive antennæ appeared inside the
tent, something like this conversation used to take place:--
E. N. B.--"Do you mind catching that harmless lepidopt, Cross, while
I hold the bottle?"
H. C.--"I think, somehow, that you're better at catching those
beasts than I am; give me the bottle."
As I had decreed death as the penalty for any creeping thing which
invaded our tent, the noisome creature was, as a rule, gingerly
secured and forced into the spirit, where it speedily died of
_delirium tremens_. Nothing is more unpleasant in tropical countries
than to have a winged insect of great size and energy enter one's
tent in the dark. _Omne ignotum pro terribili_: suddenly the Unknown
makes its presence felt by rising up from the ground with a loud
buzz; it necessarily strikes against the tent pole or the canvas, and
immediately collapses with a thud on the bedclothes or one's face;
and then, after a brief interval for recovery, it recommences its
clumsy gambols and aërial flights.
Our stock of literature in the Wad Hamed camp was of amazing variety.
We established by usage a sort of Desert Circulating Library, and
novels, old magazines, and even newspapers of venerable antiquity
were eagerly sought for and exchanged. My own parcel of books on
board the _Tamai_ consisted of Whyte Melville's _Holmby House_,
_The Juggler and the Soul_, by Helen Mathers, and a penny edition
of _Quentin Durward_. I was surprised on one occasion to find a
Scotchman engaged in reading Horace's _Satires_ in a new translation
by Mr. Coutts. He knew nothing of the original Latin, but had
purchased the volume, and was wading through the archaic material
with apparent relish. Possibly the jokes of antiquity may have
succeeded in striking that chord in a Scottish temperament which is
so often unresponsive to contemporary humour! Whenever one got a
periodical of any sort, such as _The Wide World_, one did not toy
with it in a dilettante fashion. Every line of it was read from cover
to cover, and even the advertisements of life assurance offices were
perused with some degree of interest amid this comparative dearth of
intellectual pabulum.
One evening, in an interval of leisure before dinner, I strolled
along the Nile to see if I could add a little fresh fish to our
_ménu_. I had with me one of the excellent rods made for a few
shillings by Slater of Newark-on-Trent, which pack up into very
small compass, and can easily be carried in a hold-all or Gladstone
bag. The river was much too muddy for fly fishing, and one of my
officer friends remarked that the fish would have to jump a foot out
of the water before they saw the fly. Nevertheless I tried a few
casts with a Zulu and a nondescript chub-fly, and after a couple
of rises managed to land a curious fish of the carp (?) tribe with
long barbules, which is called by the Arabs "Abu Shenab" (Father of
Moustaches). There is another very common fish in the Nile of the
bream species. It is shaped like a pair of bellows, and has about the
same flavour when cooked.
It is always worth while to try a cast or two on unknown waters in
the course of one's travels. This spring I was fortunate enough to
get some excellent sport from a few hours' fly fishing in the Waters
of Merom and the Jordan. The latter river simply teems with fish of
seventeen different species, some of which, including the "Father
of Moustaches," are found elsewhere only in the Nile--a fact which
seems to indicate a connection between the two streams at some remote
period.
Sir Francis Grenfell told me that a friend of his had landed some
huge fish at the junction of the Nile and Atbara, and during our
stay there a native caught a fish weighing nearly a hundred pounds,
which was served up, I believe, at the Guards' mess. When the Nile
gets lower, some splendid sport might be enjoyed with these monstrous
fish. In fact, when one fishes in a stream like the Atbara, there is
a delightful uncertainty about the nature of the prospective catch.
One never knows what is coming up. That keen sportsman, the late
Sir Samuel Baker, fished in this stream with a live bait 2 lbs. in
weight, and landed fish up to 180 lbs.! On one occasion he tells how
something seized the bait, and would not budge an inch. The dead
weight on the line was tremendous, and Sir Samuel says it felt "as if
the devil himself had got hold of the hook." At last, after placing
his feet against a rock and pulling, something moved upwards in the
water which looked for all the world like a cart wheel. Finally, up
came a huge water-tortoise, which gave one plunge, and broke away
with the hook and several yards of line.
By day the vast area occupied by the two British brigades, and
various battalions of Sudanese and Egyptians, was full of ceaseless
work, accompanied by a perfect babel of sounds, as fatigue parties
hurried in various directions, and long strings of native labourers
carried loads or hauled at ropes, with their monotonous sing-song
recitation of Koran fragments. The Gregorian chant, which secures the
exclusive devotion of some Churchmen, is doubtless an approximation
to the music of the primitive Church, but solely because that Church
happened to find its earliest home in the East, where no other type
of music has ever been known or appreciated. But there is no more
reason why an Englishman should feel bound to sing ugly Gregorians
than that he should chant the psalms in loose cotton garments without
his boots. In either case the "local colour" is quite un-Western.
In this, as in all other Sudan campaigns, some difficulty was
experienced by the officers in keeping the soldiers from becoming
almost amphibious creatures. If he had his own way, Tommy Atkins
would have spent the greater part of his time in floundering about
the muddy river. The spirit of sport, so deeply ingrained in the
Englishman, found few outlets during the campaign; but now and then,
in order to witness a good swimming race, Mr. Atkins would gladly
cast a large lump of his rations--bread or biscuit upon the waters.
Arab urchins swim admirably, with that quick hand-over-hand stroke
which primitive tribes always employ; and they judge their distances
so accurately that they rarely miss a crust, even where the stream is
running at the rate of many miles an hour.
But the troops were, as a matter of fact, always far too busy to get
much time for relaxation, in or out of the water. It is astonishing
that the authorities should have found it necessary to assign such
an enormous amount of work to the officers and men during the
concentration at Wad Hamed. On some days the British troops had no
less than twelve hours' fatigue work! Take, for example, the casual
record of one day's round of work, got through by a certain battalion
in the heat of a Sudan August. The troops were on parade from 4.30
to 8. They then returned to the camp, and, without being allowed any
breakfast, were set to cut grass. Ten minutes were then allotted for
the morning meal. The next item was wood-cutting, and the digging
of trenches for camp purposes. This fatigue continued till the
midday dinner, and from two o'clock to dark the men were practised
in loading camels. Next morning reveille sounded at four, and then,
although the battalion was on the point of leaving the camp, they
were actually ordered, before their departure, to cut a number of
tree-stumps out of the ground! I do not mention these facts with any
intent to dispute their utility or expediency. The British soldier
does, under normal conditions during peace, infinitely less work
than falls to the lot of his continental brethren. When the Russian
soldier has finished his parades he is set to build walls and make
roads, while Atkins is disporting himself in the cricket or football
field. So it is perhaps not undesirable that our men should learn the
meaning of really hard work occasionally. But it was pleasant to see
how cheerfully the Tommies bore it, at anyrate outwardly; for I never
heard a word of grumbling or "grousing," as they phrase it. Moreover,
from a hygienic point of view, their round of heavy fatigues most
certainly agreed with them. Wonderfully little sickness prevailed in
the ranks, in spite of the fierce heat and the indifferent water,
though the wear and tear removed every ounce of superfluous flesh,
and reduced our men to the condition of those "lean and wiry dogs"
which Plato regarded as a model in the selection of his Republican
warriors.
The Sudanese, on the other hand, grumbled a good deal. Their
conception of military discipline and obedience are somewhat
rudimentary, and manual labour is distasteful to them. The discontent
which was caused in their ranks by what they deemed excessive fatigue
work culminated finally in a number of desertions. In Wad Hamed
alone there were, I believe, no less than twenty cases of desertion,
and three at least of the scoundrels were recaptured and shot. The
deserters were doubtless making off southwards to join the Khalifa,
for the life of a Baggara Dervish in prosperous times--a mere round
of eating, sleeping, and fighting--would form an ideal existence in
the eyes of an animal like the average Sudanese soldier.
On the other hand, a constant stream of fugitives began to reach the
camp from the south; in Wad Hamed there were some thirteen hundred
deserters from the Khalifa's dominions. Many of them came down the
river, a motley herd of women and children, with a sprinkling of men
all packed together in native barges. What these poor creatures lived
on I do not know, but I strolled amongst some hundreds of them one
evening, and they all seemed in excellent spirits and quite convinced
that this time, at anyrate, they had put their money on the right
horse. The presence of these uninvited guests caused considerable
embarrassment to the Army Service Corps, but the authorities did
the best they could for them, and in a big camp there are always
a good many pickings which the refugees and vultures might share
between them, though our feathered visitors had rather a pull over
the other bipeds, as they rose betimes, and, according to the ancient
adage, the early bird got the "bully" beef. This beef, by the way,
was always to be picked up. It was issued to the men, for greater
convenience of transport, in 3-lb. tins, which were trisected with a
hammer and chisel for three rations. But, as the men soon got tired
of the meat, and it speedily, after being opened, became uneatable
from the heat, vast quantities of it were thrown away; and I noticed
that the line of railway was often marked for hundreds of yards with
tins of "bully" beef more or less full, which were speedily pounced
upon by Arabs; if any village chanced to be close at hand.
Occasionally the soldiers got rations of fresh meat, and, what was
almost more welcome, fresh bread, with now and then the additional
luxury--oh, blissful moment!--of a little marmalade. Once a week,
too, a tot of rum was served out, and happy was the orderly whose
task it was to convey the rum rations to his superiors; for the
officers rarely drank the fiery spirit, and when it was given back
it was not wasted. This small weekly allowance was the only strong
drink which Tommy Atkins imbibed throughout the campaign. The deadly
effects of alcoholic excess in a climate like that of the Sudan
are, of course, well known, and in a previous campaign the danger
of allowing the men the use of intoxicants had been so unpleasantly
demonstrated in the case of a certain British battalion, that the
Sirdar very wisely established a system of "total prohibition"
amongst the rank and file. Some rascally Greeks brought casks of
whisky and beer to the Atbara, but the authorities soon discovered
their little game. Most of the alcohol was sent back to Cairo, and
of the remainder, some was put under the military seal and the rest
simply emptied into the sand!
At Wad Hamed officers and correspondents alike enjoyed a life of
comparative comfort and refinement, which was necessarily impossible
in our subsequent camps during the final week of the campaign. On
ordinary days we woke about five o'clock, when Ali brought us a mug
of cocoa and a biscuit. The biscuit supplied to the Egyptian troops
was of a dark brown colour, and hard as a brick. On leaving Wad
Hamed, Ali went by mistake to the wrong canteen, and brought us a bag
of "Gyppy" biscuit, on which Cross and I subsisted for several days,
and were thankful at the end that we had only lost one tooth each in
that period. The British biscuit was much nicer, comparatively white,
and quite free from "weevils"; for I used to shake my biscuits to
see if I could extract one of these insects, which I much wished to
see. No weevil ever emerged, and I am under the impression that this
insect, which figures so prominently in tales about pirates and "sea
dogs," must be a semi-fabulous creature, to be placed under the same
category as the basilisk and the Barometz lamb.
After dressing we generally strolled about the camp on the banks
of the river for an hour or so, and then we were quite ready for
breakfast, which ordinarily meant porridge, sardines, bread or
biscuit, marmalade, and tea. As at this time of the day one could
generally secure a little hot water or the remaining contents of the
teapot, I used to devote some time to shaving. This operation was
quite an ordeal in the Sudan. Lather manufactured from muddy Nile
water spread a layer of fine sand over one's face, which speedily
blunted the best steel, and towards the end of the campaign I might
as well have used a piece of hoop iron as try to make my razors work
with cold water. With warm water the torture was somewhat less acute.
Perhaps it is worth while mentioning in connection with our biscuit
supply that any traveller or explorer who cannot secure flour as he
proceeds, can easily make certain of having a continual supply of
decent bread by the following means. Let him order a quantity of
thick, flat cakes to be made of ordinary bread dough. When these are
thoroughly baked they must be gradually dried either by artificial
heat or by the sun, if its rays are strong enough, until every
particle of moisture is dried up. Bread thus desiccated will last
for months, and when it is wanted a lump is sprinkled with a little
water, and one finds nice spongy bread for breakfast instead of the
hard and monotonous biscuit. Mrs. Theodore Bent first taught me this
bread-lore, and when I explored Sokotra in company with herself and
her husband, we took several sacks of these flat cakes, and were in
consequence never without nice fresh bread.
In the interval between breakfast and midday we got through a good
deal of work in the way of letter-writing or telegraphing. If one
had nothing to do oneself there was always a certain psychological
interest attaching to the study of one's fellow-correspondents and
their mysterious movements. One of them, after a successful prowl
for news, would appear walking towards his tent with an air of
_nonchalance_ intended to conceal his eagerness to find telegraph
forms. He would dive within the canvas, and then dispatch a servant
with a telegram, which five hours afterwards would be received in
London, and next morning would be read by thousands of eager eyes;
for surely no Sudan campaign has ever possessed a quarter of the
interest which, for some reason or other, the present one has aroused
in the British public. Of course all telegrams had to be brought
to Colonel Wingate and receive his official _visé_ and approval
before being put upon the wires. The utmost precautions were taken
throughout the campaign against any bad faith on the part of the
operatives. All the clerks employed in this service were bound over
in sureties of £240 not to divulge the contents of any telegram. This
was found necessary, inasmuch as during the last campaign several
important telegrams--so I was informed--between the Sirdar and Sir
Francis Grenfell were revealed to others than the lawful recipients.
After a light lunch about 12.30, everybody, soldier and civilian
alike, lolled about in shirt-sleeves or went to sleep well under
cover of his canvas. Outside the sun blazed down in fury on the
desert, till the rocks became too hot to be touched, and the
rarefied air quivered over the yellow sand. To walk twenty yards in
the open without a helmet might mean death, and even inside one's
tent the heat which penetrated a double roof of thick green canvas
was so intense that a wet towel was very welcome as a protection
for the head. Whenever the surrounding temperature exceeds that of
the surface of one's body there is always a risk of sunstroke, and
it is amazing that during the heat which has prevailed in England
during August and September few people took the trouble to protect
their heads by any additional covering beyond a straw hat. In fact,
Surgeon-Major Parkes states that he had come across many more cases
of sunstroke in England than in Africa, where he had spent many years
amid the vicissitudes of travel and exploration. Furthermore, a
"spinal pad" is almost of as much importance as a good helmet against
sunstroke, yet in the Sudan the use of the spinal pad supplied by
the Government was rather the exception than the rule, and men
walked about in the tropical sun with a helmet on their heads while
their back was protected only by a flannel shirt. Sunstroke acts in
different ways. I have seen the quartermaster of a P. and O. in the
Red Sea suddenly drop as if he had been shot; but, in most cases,
the initial stages--loss of appetite, nausea, and headache--give one
full warning, and if the patient can at once get under some shade
and secure medical assistance, the "touch of the sun," which has
upset him for the time being, passes away without leaving any effects
behind it except a general lassitude for some time.
About four o'clock the hottest part was over, but the danger of
sunstroke was, if anything, greater, because the oblique rays of
the sun fell upon one's neck, unless, indeed, as was the case with
the rank and file, a "curtain" was attached to the helmet. Nearly
everybody drank tea about this time. There is a kind of notion
abroad that this beverage serves to cool one, but the general effect
produced in the Sudan seemed quite the reverse. Any perspiration
left in one's sebaceous follicles after the genial warmth of the
Sudan had kept us in a sort of natural Turkish bath for six hours,
was elicited by the warm tea, and one realised how easy under such
conditions it would be to lose every particle of one's existing body
in even less than the seven years indicated by medical statistics,
and thus, on good Bishop Butler's showing, secure, together with
revaccination, a frequently recurring proof of one's immortality.
After tea we were amply compensated for the discomforts of the day
by the delights of a tropical evening. The air was deliciously cool,
and the soft tints of sunset coloured all the landscape. Everyone
recovered his temper, and such pleasures and duties of social life
as survived in the desert occupied our attention from this hour
till bedtime. Men dropped in to see each other all over the camp,
and there was a general atmosphere of "Have a drink, old chap." The
amount of fluid one can consume in these tropical regions is amazing.
Nobody, of course, who has any common sense thinks of drinking much
alcohol in the heat of the day. Lime juice and soda is often taken
at lunch, while some claret or sauterne, or a whisky and Rosbach,
are common beverages in the evening. It is often very difficult
indeed--especially when one is on the march--to keep such luxuries
cool, but the ingenious "sparklets," which were brought out to the
Sudan in thousands, will always, if fairly good water can be got,
provide one with a decent drink, as the sudden liberation of the
compressed gas cools the water as well as aërates it.
It is worth while being really thirsty and hungry to understand the
pleasures of drink and food. Our English meals follow each other
with such regularity and diversity that one seldom realises what it
means to crave for food and drink as a primary instinct. But oh! the
joy of a deep draught of cool water after long hours of abstention
in the desert, or, what is almost as bad, a long course of brackish
water--saline water, which quenches one's thirst for the moment only
to increase it by the after-taste. Once when I was travelling with
Mr. Bent, I remember how I was walking in a stony ravine after six
days of nothing but brackish water; suddenly, to my delighted vision,
a little brook of limpid water appeared running down to the sea. One
threw oneself flat upon the bank and drank, and drank, and drank!
Hunger is much more easily endured than thirst, and Æschylus did well
to class amongst the most joyful of human experiences the sight of
running water to a thirsty traveller--
ὁδοιπόρῳ διψῶντι πηγαῖον ῥέος.
At the same time, indiscriminate drinking is a tiresome habit,
which can be shaken off with a little practice and determination.
The inexperienced traveller in the East always carries a huge
water-bottle, from which he is continually drinking copious draughts;
but after a few months he learns to drink at meal times, and not to
encumber himself with his water-bottle on every occasion when he is
away from the tent. Education and self-control go largely hand in
hand. Officers stand hunger and thirst much better than the rank
and file, who, in the Sudan, exercised very little self-control in
the matter of drink. Whenever they could get it, the soldiers were
perpetually dipping their tin mugs in the large "zias" or "fantasias"
provided for their use.
Just before the evening shadows cooled the air too much and made
a chill possible, we spread our india-rubber baths on the ground
and enjoyed the refreshment of a good "tub." The Nile water was so
saturated with mud that when one stood in one's bath upon a thick
precipitate of sand the sensation recalled the seaside paddling of
one's childhood.
The tropical twilight was all too brief, and darkness fell suddenly
like a pall upon the landscape. Then out came candlesticks and
lanterns, and the one substantial meal of the day made its
appearance. The quality of our _cuisine_ varied considerably. At a
stationary camp like Wad Hamed we sometimes purchased fresh meat
from an enterprising Greek called Loisa, but this was always very
lean and tough, and these fleshpots of Egypt had few charms for us.
The Arabs devour any sort of meat, whatever be the condition of the
beast which supplies it. Two days after the battle of Omdurman, Ali
appeared before the tent with a wretched kid in the last stage of a
rapid decline. He knew I disapproved of loot, and declared that he
had purchased the animal, and intended to fry the liver for me for
to-morrow's breakfast. As the poor kid was far too ill and weak even
to stand on its legs, I declined the suggested dainty. There were
quite enough bacilli prowling around in Omdurman without incurring
the risk of trichinosis. In less than an hour I saw our quaternion
of servants with several guests enjoying a ghoulish banquet off the
remains of the invalid animal.
Sometimes we had splendid dinners of tinned curry, preserved
pine-apple, and other delicacies; and except on the evening of the
battle, nobody, as far as I know, ever went without his dinner if he
was well enough to eat it. Occasionally, if there was a downpour of
rain or other cause which rendered cooking difficult, we sank to this
sort of level--
Potage à la Khalifa.
(Ingredients--a morsel of emaciated goat with some onions; simmer as
long as possible. Sufficient for two. Seasonable, when one is very
hungry.)
Bully Beef au naturel.
Jam.
Biscuit à discrétion.
Whisky. Sparklets. Lime juice. Nile water.
On the 26th of August we were told to hold ourselves in readiness to
embark on the _Metemmeh_ next morning. The Gyppy troops and Sudanese
had already gone, and a general exodus of the British battalions
was taking place. On the evening before our departure I strolled
once more along the river. Scarcely a sound broke the silence;
the busy scene of the day's restless activity was still. The rows
and rows of tents and mountainous heaps of baggage had vanished
like magic; little remained to show that for more than a week some
twenty-two thousand men had lived and moved within this vast area.
Here and there various relics of the encampment lay scattered
about,--soda-water bottles, empty tins, old newspapers, the framework
of blanket tents, and so on,--but the only permanent structure which
marked, and perhaps still marks, the site of the abandoned camp was a
wattled hut which Howard's servant built for him, as his master had
arrived at Wad Hamed without a tent of any kind. An army of vultures
had spread over all the space within the zeriba, and seemed to be
having a good time amongst old sardine tins and fragments of offal
and similar dainties.
The glow of a tropical sunset was falling on the Nile; yet, beautiful
as it was, the scene lost something from the dead level of the
surrounding prospect. For an ideally beautiful effect of the kind one
needs mountains as well as water. Who, for example, that has ever
seen it, can forget the play of moonbeam and starlight on the lake--
When the blue waves roll nightly on deep Galilee?
It was strange to think that within a week the campaign would be
ended, Gordon avenged, and the Crescent flag flying over the ramparts
of Omdurman--the final goal of all this vast congeries of men and
stores, guns and ammunition. As the postal connection with the
outside world was now to cease until the capture of Omdurman, many
letters had been sent off on the previous day, and for several of
the writers the message which sped home was a final one. Later on,
when the battle had been fought, a man whom I knew showed me a letter
which he was sending off to his widowed mother to tell her that he
had come safe through the fight and was on the point of returning
home. This note reached its destination a day after the receipt
of a telegram announcing his death from fever! Surely it would be
difficult to meet with a sadder and more pathetic instance of the
vicissitudes and uncertainty of human life!
FOOTNOTE:
[1] A brief list of the entomological specimens brought back from the
campaign is given on p. 253.
[Illustration:
THE NILE
from the Atbara to Khartum.
Scale 1 : 1,500,000.
_R. V. Darbishire 1898._]