The intense interest with which all eyes have been turned upon the
Soudan—that is, Country of the Blacks, or Negroland—gives a special
value now to any information about that region, particularly if it
refer to such towns as Khartoum, or that named at the head of this
paper. The former place has been pretty fully described of late in the
newspapers, while little has been told us of the latter beyond actual
war-news. This is the greater pity, as Suakim possesses a good deal of
historical interest, and Khartoum does not.
Suakim—the word is spelt in a variety of ways—is not only one of the
most important towns of Nubia, but the chief port of the Soudan and of
the whole western coast of the Red Sea. It came into the possession of
Egypt in 1865 by cession or purchase from Turkey—along with Massowah
and one or two other towns and the districts around them—and now
appears to be regarded by the British government and every one else
as an integral part of the Egyptian dominions. Similar subjection of
Suakim to Egypt, as we shall presently see, existed in very remote
times. The town proper lies on a small island about eight miles and
three-quarters in diameter—almost as long as the little bay in which it
is placed, a mere tongue of water separating it from the mainland.
Crossing the inlet southwards to the mainland, we step into the large
suburb called El Gêf, with a much larger population than the insular
town, very irregular streets, and the houses mere native (Bishareen)
huts. There is also a very lively bazaar, and, in the north-west of the
place, the barracks, one section of which, a few years ago, was armed
with three pieces of cannon. In the outskirts are the wells—surrounded
by gardens and date plantations—which supply the people with
drinking-water, although, from the nearness of the wells to the sea,
this is brackish, and would scarcely be considered palatable by foreign
troops. El Gêf is really an oasis; all round it, save seawards, extend
many miles of salt and arid wilderness. Indeed, the whole distance from
Suakim to Berber—two hundred and eighty miles inland—is for the most
part desert, the route garnished here and there with wells of water
and encampments of the wandering Bishareen, who, with the Haddendowa,
a similar set of people, possess the whole wilderness from east of
the first cataract of the Nile up to Kassala and the boundaries of
Abyssinia. These tribes, though sometimes called Bedouin, whom in many
respects they resemble, are really a very different people. Bedouin
proper are Arabs of the Semitic, while the Bishareen are of the Hamitic
family.
The chief articles of export are cotton, gum-arabic, cattle, hides,
butter, tamarinds, senna leaves, and ivory. The imports consist of
cotton goods, iron, wood, carpets, weapons, steel, and fancy wares.
Berber in the east, and Kassala in the south, are the great centres
for all the caravan traffic of Suakim, which is also the port on the
one side for the whole Soudan—an inland country as large as India—and
on the other side, for Arabia. Hence it is much visited by Mohammedan
pilgrims to Mecca, their port of Jeddah occupying a corresponding
position on the Arabian to that which Suakim does on the African coast.
Twenty years ago, from three to four thousand slaves per annum were
shipped from here to Jeddah, and though this monstrous traffic has been
much crippled of late years by the Egyptian government, out of regard
for English feeling, it is to be feared that it is not yet extinct.
Oddly enough, Hassan Mousa Akad, one of the ringleaders in Arabi’s
recent rebellion, and the greatest slave-merchant in Egypt, was exiled
to this very slave-port of Suakim, hence his complicity in the Soudan
disturbances is not unnaturally suspected. The total population of
the town and suburb is estimated by Schweinfurth—one of our greatest
authorities—at from eleven to thirteen thousand. The port is now in
regular communication with Suez by steamer—four days’ journey—and with
Europe by telegraph. The Egyptian governor (Mudeer) and vice-governor
(Wakeel) live at Suakim, and the budget for the district in 1882
was—income, £25,945; expenditure, £20,492—thus being one of the few
districts of the Soudan which yielded a surplus.
In ancient times, the whole of what we may call the Suakim
seaboard—extending northwards along the coast as far as a line
drawn from the first cataract, and southwards as far even as
Bab-el-Mandeb—was known as the Troglodyte country. The Troglodytes,
as the name implies, dwelt in caves, were by occupation herdsmen,
and often uncivilised and wretched in the extreme. A graphic picture
of the hard life of another Troglodyte people, dwelling in the rocky
fastnesses east of Jordan, is preserved for us in the thirtieth chapter
of the book of Job. ‘For want and famine,’ it says, ‘they are solitary;
fleeing into the wilderness in former time desolate and waste. Who cut
up mallows by the bushes, and juniper roots for their meat. They were
driven forth of men (who cried after them as after a thief), to dwell
in the cliffs of the valleys, in caves of the earth, and in the rocks.’
Perhaps the Troglodytes of the Nubian shore were a superior stock of
their kind; at anyrate, they appear to have been impressed into the
army of the ancient Pharaohs, and to have shared in the first invasion
of the kingdom of Judah, and the first spoliation of Solomon’s Temple.
The name of the Pharaoh of that time was Shishak, and two accounts of
his expedition have come down to us: one is in the historical books
of Scripture (2 Chronicles, xii., also 1 Kings, xiv.); and the other,
remarkably enough, is by Shishak himself. That of the Egyptian king
is contained in the famous hieroglyphic inscription on the walls of
the temple of Karnak at Thebes, in Upper Egypt, a great part of which
is still legible, after the lapse of nearly three thousand years! The
book of Chronicles tells us with what an immense army of charioteers,
cavalry, and infantry, Shishak overran Judea. He marched against it
‘with twelve hundred chariots, and threescore thousand horsemen: and
the people were without number that came with him out of Egypt; the
Lubims, the Sukkiims, and the Ethiopians.’ Of these three allies, the
first are probably the Libyans (as in Daniel, xi. 43), and the last
the same as the modern Abyssinians. For the middle name of ‘Sukkiims,’
the old Greek translation of the Bible—made by Jews a century or two
before the birth of Christ—substitutes the word _Troglodytes_, the
very people of the Nubian coast whom we have been considering, and
who are now known as Bishareen. But yet more, Pliny the elder, an old
Latin writer, who died A.D. 79, mentions, in his enumeration of places
on this Troglodyte coast, a town called Suche, which, according to
the general opinion of scholars, is identical with the modern port of
Suakim, at present (while we write) governed by an English admiral, and
its fortifications manned by British sailors and marines.