good supper and breakfast. This is a much better beast than the old,
worn-out cow we killed before, and we have utilized every scrap, having
had a sharp lesson as to the value of anything we can masticate. . . .
“25th. All the camel-meat has been successfully jerked, and we have
lived since the 20th on bone-broth and gristle. The birds were getting
shy, so when we killed the camel we gave them a rest; to-day we go at
them again. I hope the water-searchers will return this evening; our
prospects are not very bright under any circumstances, but if we get
water anywhere between south and west we shall have a prospect of
overcoming the difficulties and dangers that threaten us. . . .
“29th. A short rain squall passed over us last evening; it has cooled
the ground a little. Economy is, of course, the order of the day in
provisions. My son and I have managed to hoard up about one pound of
flour and a pinch of tea; all our sugar is gone. Now and then we afford
ourselves a couple of spoonfuls of flour, made into paste. When we
indulge in tea the leaves are boiled twice over. I eat my sun-dried
camel-meat uncooked, as far as I can bite it; what I cannot bite goes
into the quart pot, and is boiled down to a sort of poor-house broth.
When we get a bird we dare not clean it, lest we should lose anything.
“More disasters this morning. One of our largest camels very ill; the
only thing we could do for it was to pound four boxes of Holloway’s
pills, and drench the animal. . . . One of the Afghans apparently wrong
in his head. . . . In the evening the camel was still very sick.”
The animal, however, was better on the following day, and the expedition
again toiled onward across the sands. Very troublesome were the ants,
which seemed to have undertaken a deliberate campaign against the
much-suffering travellers. They were small black ants, and in such
numbers that a stamp of the foot on the ground started them in thousands.
When the wearied men flung themselves down in the shade of a bush to
obtain the solace of half an hour’s sleep, these pestilent persecutors
attacked them, making their way through their scanty clothing, and
dealing sharp painful nips with their strong mandibles.
On the evening of the 1st of November, they began their “rush” or forced
march for the Oakover river, and across the wearisome sand-hills actually
accomplished five and twenty miles. Colonel Warburton then felt unable
to continue the journey, thirst, famine, and fatigue having reduced him
to a skeleton, while such was his weakness that he could scarcely rise
from the ground, or when up, stagger half a dozen steps forward.
“Charley” had been absent all day, and when he did not return at sunset,
much alarm was felt about him. The Colonel knew not what to do. Delay
meant ruin to them all, considering their want of food and water; yet to
leave the camp without the Colonel seemed inhuman, as it was dooming him
to certain death. Until nine o’clock in the evening they waited. Then a
start was made, but before they had gone eight miles, the poor lad joined
them. Notwithstanding the fatigue of the previous night’s travelling,
the lad had actually walked about twenty miles; he had fallen in with a
large party of natives, and accompanied them to their water. “It may, I
think, be admitted,” says Colonel Warburton, “that the hand of Providence
was distinctly visible in this instance.”—Is it not in _every_
instance?—“I had deferred starting until nine p.m., to give the absent
boy the chance of regaining the camp. It turned out afterwards that if
we had expedited our departure by ten minutes, or postponed it for the
same length of time, Charley would have crossed us; and had this
happened, there is little doubt that not only myself, but probably other
members of the expedition, would have perished from thirst. The route
pursued by us was at right angles with the course pursued by the boy, and
the chances of our stumbling up against each other in the dark were
infinitesimally small. Providence mercifully ordered it otherwise, and
our departure was so timed that, after travelling from two to two hours
and a half, when all hope of the recovery of the wanderer was almost
abandoned, I was gladdened by the ‘cooee’ of the brave lad, whose keen
ears had caught the sound of the bells attached to the camels’ necks. To
the energy and courage of this untutored native may, under the guidance
of the Almighty, be attributed the salvation of the party. It was by no
accident that he encountered the friendly well. For fourteen miles he
followed up the tracks of some blacks, though fatigued by a day of severe
work, and, receiving a kindly welcome from the natives, he had hurried
back, unmindful of his own exhausted condition, to apprise his companions
of the important discovery he had made.”
At the native camp, Colonel Warburton’s party obtained some kangaroo
meat, and a good supply of fresh water. They rested for twenty-four
hours, and the repose and the food together temporarily reinvigorated
them. At this time their position was lat. 20° 41′, and long. 122° 30′;
so that they were only three days’ journey from the Oakover. Forward
they went, the country still presenting the two main features of sand and
spinifex; forward they went, over the cheerless, monotonous plains,
broken by sand ridges; growing weaker every day, but losing not one jot
of hope or resolution. The annals of travel present few examples of more
heroic tenacity and persistent purpose; few records of suffering more
patiently borne, or of obstacles more steadfastly overcome. The highest
energy, perseverance, and fortitude were necessary to the leader of an
exploring expedition through so forlorn a wilderness, and these were
never wanting on the part of Colonel Warburton, whose name, amongst the
pioneers of civilization in Australia, must always be held in honour.
On the 11th of November, the seven members of the expedition were living
wholly on sun-dried strips of meat, as devoid of nutriment as they were
of taste; and as these were almost exhausted, they had to consider the
probability of having to sacrifice another camel. They had no salt—a
terrible deprivation; no flour, tea, or sugar. Next day, they were
surrounded by sand-hills, and no water was visible anywhere. It was
certain that, unless some providentially opportune help arrived, they
could not live more than twenty-four hours; for the burning heat and the
terrible country could not be endured without water. Not a snake, kite,
or crow could they discover; one little bird, the size of a sparrow, was
all that their guns could procure. Writing in his journal, the Colonel
calmly says:—“We have tried to do our duty, and have been disappointed in
all our expectations. I have been in excellent health during the whole
journey, and am so still, being merely worn out from want of food and
water. Let no self-reproaches afflict any one respecting me. I
undertook the journey for the benefit of my family, and was quite equal
to it under all the circumstances that could reasonably be anticipated,
but difficulties and losses have come upon us so thickly for the last few
months that we have not been able to move; thus our provisions are gone,
but this would not have stopped us could we have found water without such
laborious search. The country is terrible. I do not believe men ever
traversed so vast an extent of continuous desert.”
Early on the 14th Charley sighted in the distance a native camp, and
while the remainder of the party, with the camels, kept out of sight, he
advanced alone towards it. The blacks received him kindly and gave him
water, but when he “cooed” for the party to come up, they seem to have
thought he had entrapped them, and instantly speared him in the back and
arm, cut his skull with a tomahawk, and nearly broke his jaw. After
perpetrating this cruelty, they fled ignominiously. Colonel Warburton
took possession of the fire they had kindled, and rejoiced at obtaining
water. Charley’s wounds were serious, but they were bound up as
carefully as circumstances permitted, and it is satisfactory to state
that he recovered from them. Another camel was killed, and Charley was
nursed upon soup. This supply of meat enabled the expedition to continue
its march towards the Oakover, which receded apparently as they advanced;
and they toiled onward painfully, with the hot sun and hot wind
exhausting their small resource of energy, the ants tormenting them at
night, the sand and spinifex oppressing them by their monotony. On the
25th, to save themselves from starvation, they killed another camel, and
all hands were employed in cutting up and jerking the meat. At last, on
the 4th of December, they camped on a rocky creek, tributary to the
Oakover, and were able to take leave of the dreadful desert which had so
long hemmed them in on every side. Their spirits revived, for there was
no longer a scarcity of water and they hoped that the river would supply
them with the means of subsistence.
But they had soon reason to feel that their difficulties were not all at
an end. It was pleasant to look on the beautiful trees and profuse
vegetation of the creek, but the charms of nature will not satisfy
stomachs that have had no food for two days. So, on the evening of the
6th, a third camel was killed. Next day a few small fish were caught;
they were greatly relished, and proved of real benefit. The 8th was
happily marked by another banquet of fish; but as they had no net or
fishing apparatus, it was by no means easy work to catch them. Still,
the travellers did not grow stronger; want of rest and of wholesome food,
and the strain of continuous exertion and anxiety for so long a period,
had undermined the whole system, and they could not rally.
On the 11th they struck the Oakover in lat. 21° 11′ 23″. This must be a
noble river, writes the Colonel, when the floods come down. The bed is
wide and gravelly, fringed with magnificent cajeput or paper-bark trees.
How grateful was its lovely and shady refuge from the hot fierce sun
after the terrible sand-hills among which the travellers had wandered so
long!
On the 13th Lewis and an Afghan driver, on the only two camels that could
travel, were sent forward to search for the station of Messrs. Harper and
Co., and procure some help both in food and carriage. During his absence
the Colonel and his companions lived, to use an expressive phrase, from
hand to mouth. They could not get the fish to bite; but one day Richard
Warburton shot a teal, and they rescued from the talons of a hawk a fine
black duck, which supplied them with a splendid dinner. They were
compelled, however, to fall back upon their last camel, though he was so
lean and worn-out that he did not cut up well. On the 23rd they rejoiced
in the capture of a couple of wood-ducks, and they also secured a little
honey—a delightful novelty for persons who for many weeks had been
deprived of the strengthening and useful properties of sugar. Still,
these occasional “tidbits” could not supply the want of regular and
nutritious food; and all the travellers could hope for was to stave off
actual famine. Day after day passed by, and Lewis did not return.
Colonel Warburton had calculated that he would be absent about fourteen
days; but the seventeenth came, and yet there was no sign of Lewis.
Writing in his journal, Colonel Warburton, on December 20th, sums up his
position in a few pithy and pregnant sentences:—“We have abundance of
water, a little tobacco, and a few bits of dried camel. Occasionally an
iguana or a cockatoo enlivens our fare; and, lastly, I hope the late rain
will bring up some thistles or some pig-weed that we can eat. Our
difficulties are, to make our meat last, though, so far from doing us
good, we are all afflicted with scurvy, diarrhoea, and affection of the
kidneys from the use of it. We cannot catch the fish; we cannot find
opossums or snakes; the birds won’t sit down by us, and we can’t get up
to go to them. We thought we should have no difficulty in feeding
ourselves on the river, but it turns out that, from one cause or another,
we can get very little, and we are daily dropping down a peg or two
lower.” But a few hours after making this entry, the Colonel’s long
period of suffering and anxiety was at an end. He and his son were lying
down near the little hut of boughs which they had constructed as a
shelter, and listlessly eyeing the boy Charley, who had climbed a tree to
look for honey, when they were startled by his cry—whether a yell of pain
or shout of joy, it was impossible to determine. But in a moment the
cause of his emotion was satisfactorily explained; out from the thick
brushwood trotted a string of six horses, driven by the gallant Mr.
Lewis, accompanied by another white man from a station on the De Grey
river. They brought an ample supply of nutritious food, and on the
following day some additional stores came up on camels. Mr. Lewis’s
apparent delay was soon explained; the station, which belonged to Messrs.
Grant, Harper, and Anderson, was one hundred and seventy miles distant.
On the 3rd of January Colonel Warburton started down the river. For the
first few days he had to be lifted on his horse’s back, but with good
food and moderate exercise he regained something of his old strength, and
the journey to the station was accomplished in a week and a day. Ten
days were then given to rest under the hospitable roof of Messrs. Grant,
and on the 21st he started for Roebourne, one hundred and seventy miles
further, arriving there on the 26th. His after stages were Lepack,
Fremantle, Perth, Albany. At Glenelg, in South Australia, the Colonel
and his companions arrived on Easter Sunday, having travelled by land
four thousand miles, and by sea two thousand miles.
The casualties are quickly recorded: the Colonel lost the sight of one
eye, and his son’s health was seriously shaken. Out of seventeen camels,
only two arrived safely at the station on the De Grey river.
It is almost needless to say that everywhere in West Australia Colonel
Warburton was received with the public honours due to a man who has
courageously and successfully accomplished a work of equal difficulty and
danger. He was entertained in the most generous and cordial manner, and
the high utility of his labours was liberally acknowledged. On his
return to South Australia he met, of course, with an enthusiastic
welcome. A great banquet was given to the explorers, and the Legislative
Assembly voted the sum of £1000 to the leader, and £500 to be divided
among the subordinates. In 1874 the Royal Geographical Society of London
conferred upon him its gold medal, and a few months later the Queen
appointed him a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George.
Here closes a simple but stirring narrative, of which it is not, perhaps,
too much to say, as has been said, that scarcely has a record of terrible
suffering more nobly borne been given to the world. Hunger and thirst,
intense physical exhaustion, the burning heat of a tropic sun, the
glowing sands of an arid desert—not a single circumstance was wanting
that could test the heroic endurance and patient heroism of the
explorers. The country through which they toiled day after day was
barren, inhospitable, desolate; a wilderness of coarse yellow herbage, a
sombre waste of sand-hills. Their hearts were never cheered by bright
glimpses of gorgeous scenery, of forests clothed with magnificent
vegetation, of rivers pouring their ample waters through sylvan valleys;
everywhere the landscape was melancholy and unprofitable. He who, with
his life in his hand, penetrates the frozen recesses of the Polar World,
and dares its storms of snow and its icy winds, has at least the
inspiration to support him that springs from the grandeur of huge cliffs
of ice and vast glaciers and white-gleaming peaks outlined against a deep
blue sky. But in the wide Australian interior the landscape is always
marked by the same monotony of dreariness, the same uniformity of gloom;
and it tests and taxes the traveller’s energies to rise superior to its
depressing influences.
The reader, therefore, will feel that “the Municipal Council and
inhabitants of Fremantle” used no language of undeserved eulogy when, in
their address of welcome to Colonel Egerton Warburton, they said—
“The difficulties to be overcome in the work of Australian exploration
are acknowledged to be as formidable as are to be found in any part of
our globe, and to meet these difficulties requires a combination of
intelligence, energy, perseverance, and fortitude that few men possess;
and the fact that you have surmounted all obstacles, and borne up under
so many privations, has awakened in all our minds the deepest feelings of
gratitude and admiration.” {324}
MAJOR BURNABY,
AND A RIDE TO KHIVA.
I.
THAT vast and various region of sandy deserts and fertile valleys, of
broad open plains and lofty highlands, which extends eastward from the
Caspian Sea to the borders of Afghanistan, and from Persia northward to
the confines of Siberia, is known to geographers by the name of
Turkistan, or “the country of the Turks.” Across it, from north to
south, strikes the massive chain of the Bolor-tagh, dividing it into two
unequal portions. The western division is popularly known as Independent
Tartary, or Great Bokhara; it covers an area of nearly 900,000 square
miles—that is, it is ten times as large as Great Britain—and it consists
of the arid sandy plain of the Caspian and Aral Seas, and of the hilly
districts which skirt the ranges of the Bolor-Tagh, the Thian-Shan, and
the Hindu Kush. The eastern division, or Upper Tartary, probably
contains 700,000 square miles, and extends from Asiatic Russia on the
north to Thibet and Kashmir on the south, from Mongolia on the east to
the Bolor-Tagh on the west. The Thian-Shan separates its two provinces,
which the Chinese call Thian-Shan-Pe-lû and Thian-Shan-Nan-lû. The
reader’s attention, however, will be here directed only to Western
Turkistan, which is divided into the Khanates of Khokan (north-east),
Badakshan (south-east), Bokhara (east), and Khiva (west). To the north
stretch the steppes of the nomadic Kirghiz; to the south the hills and
dales are occupied by the hordes of the Turkomans. Its two great rivers
are the Amu-Daria and the Syr-Daria, the ancient _Oxus_ and
_Jaxartes_,—the former traversing the centre, and the latter the south of
the district, on their way to the great Arabian Sea; and the valleys
through which they flow, as well as those of their tributary streams, are
mostly fertile and pleasant. As might be inferred from the character of
the country, the chief resources of the population are the breeding of
domestic animals, and the cultivation of the soil; but in the towns of
Khokand, Bokhara, Urgondji, and Karshi, a brisk manufacturing industry
flourishes, which disposes of its surplus produce, after the local demand
is satisfied, to the merchants of Russia, Persia, India, and China.
Since 1864, the supremacy of Russia has been steadily advancing in
Western Turkistan. In ordinary circumstances, the extension of the power
of a civilized nation over a number of semi-barbarous states, constantly
engaged in internecine warfare, is regarded as a just and legitimate
movement, or, at all events, as one that is inevitable and calls for no
expression of regret; but the eastward progress of Russia has long been
considered, by a large party in England, as a menace to the safety of our
Indian empire. Every fresh step of the Russian armies has therefore
excited alarm or created suspicion among those who are known as
Russophobists. How far their fear or their mistrust is justifiable or
dignified it is not our business in these pages to inquire; but it has
been necessary to allude to it because it was this Russophobism which
impelled Major (then Captain) Burnaby to undertake the difficult, if not
dangerous, task of visiting Western Turkistan, that he might see with his
own eyes what the Russians were doing there. The Russians had recently
conquered Khokand and Khiva; it was thought they were preparing for
further annexations; and Major Burnaby determined on an effort to reach
Khiva, which during the Russian campaign had been visited, as we have
seen, by Mr. MacGahan, the war correspondent of the _New York Herald_.
Having obtained leave of absence from his regiment, the Royal Horse
Guards, Major Burnaby rapidly equipped himself for his adventurous
journey. He was well aware that the Russian authorities did not welcome
the inquisitive eyes of English travellers, and that from them he could
expect no assistance. His confidence in his resources, however, was
great; he felt _totus in se ipso_; and he did not intend to be baffled in
his object by anything but sheer force. The climate was another
difficulty. The cold of the Kirghiz desert is a thing unknown in any
other part of the world, even in the Arctic wastes and wildernesses; and
he would have to traverse on horseback an enormous expanse of flat
country, extending for hundreds of miles, and devoid of everything save
snow and salt-lakes, and here and there the species of bramble-tree
called saxaul. The inhabitants of Western Europe can form no conception
of the force of the winds in Turkistan. They grumble at the pungent,
irritating east; but they little imagine what it is like in countries
exposed to the awful vehemence of its first onset, before its rigour has
been mitigated by the kindly ocean, and where its wild career is
unimpeded by trees or rising land, by hills or mountains.
Uninterruptedly it blows over dreary leagues of snow and salt, absorbing
the saline matter, and blighting or almost gashing the faces of those
unfortunates who are exposed to its fury. But no fear of the east wind
prevailed over Major Burnaby’s patriotic curiosity. He provided against
it as best he could: warm were the garments specially made for him; his
boots were lined with fur; his hose were the thickest Scottish fishing
stockings; his jerseys and flannel shirts of the thickest possible
texture; and he ordered for himself a waterproof and airproof
sleeping-bag, seven feet and a half long, and two feet round. A large
aperture was left on one side, so that the traveller might take up his
quarters in the interior, and sleep well protected from the wintry
blasts. For defensive purposes he took with him his rifle, a revolver,
cartridges, and ball. His cooking apparatus consisted of a couple of
soldier’s mess-tins. A trooper’s hold-all, with its accompanying knife,
fork, and spoon, completed his kit; and, by way of instruments, he
carried a thermometer, a barometer, and a pocket sextant.