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[Illustration: _EMIN PASHA_]
_Life Stories for Young People_
EMIN PASHA
_Translated from the German of
M. C. Plehn_
BY
GEORGE P. UPTON
_Translator of "Memories," "Immensee," etc._
WITH FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration: A. C. McCLURG & CO.]
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1912
Copyright
A. C. McClurg & Co.
1912
Published September, 1912
THE · PLIMPTON · PRESS
[W · D · O]
NORWOOD · MASS · U · S · A
Translator's Preface
Emin Pasha, sometimes called "the father of the Equatorial Provinces,"
is a notable figure in the records of African exploration. He was
preëminently a scientist and was devotedly fond of zoology and botany.
Amid all his cares of office, his sufferings from the hardships of
African exploration, his neglect and ill-treatment at the hands of the
Khedive and his ill-health and growing blindness, he pursued his
scientific investigations with passionate ardor.
No African explorer ever had the welfare of the Soudanese more at heart
than he, and yet he met a cruel fate at the hands of treacherous Arabs
and was murdered while studying his favorite plants and birds. In all
his long career he never injured anyone, but constantly strove for the
welfare of the natives and retained his confidence in them after it was
apparent to almost everyone else that they were treacherously conspiring
against him.
The German author now and then hints at friction between Emin Pasha and
Stanley, and is inclined to blame Stanley for indifference as to Emin's
fate after he had been sent to bring him relief. The friction, if it
existed, was probably due to the different temperaments of the two men.
Emin Pasha was conservative, blindly attached to the Soudanese, certain
he could govern them by mild measures, a quiet, reserved scholar
passionately devoted to scientific pursuits and at home in Africa,
rather than an explorer. Stanley was a man of action, bold, and dashing,
who, in the phrase of the day, might be called "a hustler." It is
undoubtedly true that at times he had little patience with Emin's
slowness and cautiousness and his scientific absorption which sometimes
rendered him oblivious to dangers besetting him.
G. P. U.
Chicago, _July, 1912_
Contents
Chapter Page
I The Father of His People 11
II The Slave Question 21
III The Carpenter of Dongola and the Mahdists 26
IV Calm Before the Storm 33
V The Enemy Approaches 39
VI Casati's Adventure 45
VII In Need of Help 57
VIII Stanley Comes to the Relief of Emin 61
IX The Meeting at the Lake 70
X The Mutiny 75
XI The Tragedy at Jambuja 80
XII Again in the Dark Forest 85
XIII Fresh Troubles 88
XIV The March to Zanzibar 92
XV Emin's Misfortune 96
XVI New Plans 99
XVII Ferida's Departure 101
XVIII Again in the Heart of Africa 104
XIX Again with the Soudanese 109
XX To the West 113
XXI Emin's Death 118
Appendix 125
Illustrations
Emin Pasha _Frontispiece_
A Serious Accident to Emin 41
First Meeting of Stanley with Emin Pasha 71
The Snow Mountain 94
Major Wissmann 105
Emin Pasha
Chapter I
The Father of his People
As the famous traveller, Dr. Junker,[1] came in sight of the town of
Lado[2] on the Nile, on the twenty-first of January, 1884, after a
year's stay in the Soudan, he felt that all his privations and dangers
were at an end, though many hundreds of miles still separated him from
his home. After having been deprived so long of nearly everything that
we consider the ordinary necessities of life, after wandering alone in
the wilderness, in primeval forests and over sunburned plains, among
cannibals and cruel man-trafficking Arabs, he knew that he would find a
white man in Lado who could speak his native tongue,--a zealous scholar
and finely cultured man, who would acquaint him with everything from
which he had been excluded so long--a friend who would welcome him with
a cordial grasp of the hand; in a word, Emin Pasha, that heroic governor
of the Equatorial Provinces, whose strange fate and cruel murder filled
the whole civilized world with astonishment and sympathy.
After a short day's march through the country of the Bari,[3] the
traveller was certain that the end of his journey was not far distant.
How different were the well-cultivated farmlands from the wilderness,
interspersed here and there with Arab settlements. The negroes had their
property well protected, their herds were grazing in all directions, and
the people of the numerous villages did not flee, but kept calmly about
their work. Dr. Junker's servants were astonished when they saw that in
this country the stronger did not appropriate the property of the weaker
and that the Turkish government had not disturbed them.
As the expedition neared the station, shots were fired as a welcome. The
advancing boys and carriers made way and Junker perceived a body of men
in faultlessly white garments coming to meet him. At their head he at
once recognized his friend, Dr. Emin Pasha, a slim, almost haggard man
of little more than medium height, with a small face, dark full beard,
and deep-set eyes, whose sight was rendered keener by spectacles. His
demeanor and movements impressed one with his composure and
self-control. His external appearance betrayed an almost painful
neatness. He and his attendants rode mules and six black soldiers in
white uniforms followed him. To Dr. Junker it appeared a festal
procession and tears came to his eyes. He sprang from his horse and
greeted his friend first, then the others. The rest of the distance to
the station was made on foot, the two eagerly conversing.
What a change there had been at Lado since Dr. Junker last saw its
miserable rush huts, six years before. At that time, Emin had just begun
his difficult administration. The changes which they saw all about them
testified eloquently to the governor's abilities.
The man holding this high position in the Soudan arose from humble
circumstances. His real name was Edward Schnitzer. He was born at Oppeln
in Silesia, in 1840, and shortly after his family removed to Neisse,
where many of his relatives are living to-day. We know little about his
youth, but we are told that the boy was an enthusiastic naturalist, fond
of making collections of flowers and insects, and even at that time
noted for his reserve and thoughtfulness. Both these characteristics are
observable in the man. The study of nature was his principal recreation
and compensated for his lack of human intercourse. But his conscientious
devotion to science and his aversion to publicity leave us little
knowledge of his accomplishments or his real sentiments. Even his most
intimate friends knew little of his inner nature, and while his letters
to European scholars reveal his varied activities, yet they are of no
value in throwing light upon his nature, which makes it difficult to
understand some of the actions of the man.
Edward Schnitzer studied medicine in Breslau and Berlin in 1863-64 and
took the doctor's degree. It was his love of nature that led him to go
abroad. He went to Trieste and Antivari, and from there, with a Turkish
companion, Hakki Pasha, to Trebizond. He soon succeeded in gaining
respect and influence. His facility in adapting himself to the habits of
the places where he was stopping, the remarkable ease with which he
learned languages (he spoke Turkish and Arabic as if they were his
native tongues), and the success which attended his medical practice,
quickly brought him fame and importance; and when, as was the custom in
those countries, he changed his German name to a foreign one (Emin, "the
Faithful"), he was hardly recognizable as a European. In the company of
Hakki he explored Arabia and then went to Janina and Constantinople.
When his protector died, the young physician returned home and devoted
himself entirely to scientific pursuits. But soon the monotony of
everyday life and its quiet regularity, the colorless northern
landscape, and frequent cloudy skies became unendurable, and he suddenly
decided to make a change. In 1876 he went south again, this time to
Egypt. He reached there at just the right time, for the enterprising
Khedive, Ismail Pasha, was attracting large numbers of Europeans to his
country because of his extension of the limits of the ancient kingdom of
Pharaoh far to the south and the west.
Emin placed himself at the disposition of Gordon Pasha as a physician,
Gordon at that time being governor of Hat-el-Estiva. He soon recognized
Emin's importance, and intrusted several diplomatic missions to negro
chiefs in the south to him. When Gordon resigned his position in 1878 to
enter upon a wider field of action, Emin became his successor and
governed a territory in the Equatorial Provinces which stretched from
Lado to the equator and was as large as France, Germany, and Austria
combined.
Emin owed his elevation to the post of governor to Dr. Junker's
recommendation. Consequently the latter was very anxious to know what he
had accomplished in the wilderness, so far away from civilization. As
Emin conducted his guest to his private divan, it seemed to him a
palace, though it would have been a very unassuming structure to us. It
stood upon a plaza, on the bank of the Nile, in the form of a spacious,
enclosed rectangle. On the east side, towards the river and also towards
the north, was the house, surrounded by rows of dark green lemon trees,
between the servants' and watchmen's cabins. On the west side of the
plaza were two larger cabins and a great sun awning which made a most
comfortable lodging for the traveller and his company. Emin's house had
doors and windows, but the entrances of the other dwellings were fitted
with curtains. The houses were built of brick and stood in regular order
upon broad streets which were intersected by narrower rectangular
thoroughfares.
The numerous huts of the natives were constructed of straw and palm
leaves. These light buildings lasted only about three years, for
termites[4] and borers were busied in their destruction day and night,
and they were frequently destroyed by fire in the dry season. Emin could
preserve his collections only by the most constant care. Thousands of
stuffed birds, his papers, diaries, and provisions had to be guarded
against indefatigable insects. The termites especially swarmed in the
inner passageways of the house, infested the beds and shelves and made
havoc with Emin's stores.
The arrangement of the divan was simple and recalled the comforts of
home. A long massive work table was covered with writing materials,
another with meteorological instruments and periodicals, and European
chairs stood at each. At the side was a small library on shelves and
upon several round iron tables were various useful articles, such as are
common with us. All the tables had neat covers. In two corners were
chests and cases and flowered curtains hung at the doors and windows.
The morning hours were spent by the two friends in conversation, but the
dinner with table napkins and changes of plate was so surprising to our
traveller, unaccustomed to such luxury, that it nearly took away his
appetite. One morning Emin invited his friend for a walk to his
storehouse and the government garden, of which he was very proud.
Countless lemon and banana trees, full of fruit, shaded the passageway.
Bitter oranges, sweet lemons, oranges and pawpaws, which are somewhat
like our melons, only sweeter, were also cultivated. White and yellow
and exceedingly fragrant flowers and golden and red fruit shone in the
dark foliage everywhere. Emin had also imported pomegranates, small fig
trees, and grapevines. Of vegetables there were our cucumbers, several
kinds of cabbage, all the Arabian vegetables, as well as the cassava,
the sweet batata,[5] and sugar cane.
The government made a profit out of the garden as the surplus of its
products was sold daily for a fixed sum. There were such gardens at all
the stations and Emin exerted himself to supply the natives with seeds
of all kinds and instructions how to plant them so that they might have
the benefit of fruit and vegetables. He explained, however, that the
negroes were so easy-going and childlike by nature that he always had
trouble with them. They cultivated rice, coffee, cotton, and all the
products of Emin's garden, but in spite of all his admonitions they
would never remember to retain seed corn. So, when the time came for
sowing, appeals for seed were made on all sides and the governor was
kept busy in sending for it. The negro had no anxiety for the coming
day, for "Father Emin" was in Lado. A visit was next made to the drug
department, from which a shaded walk led to the back of the garden,
where there were several cabins for the use of the sick. The walk was a
charming one, as it was shut off from the vegetable garden near by by
hedges of flowers.
They now reached a spot where the walk widened and Dr. Junker uttered an
exclamation of joyous surprise. A lovely picture was before him. Under a
canopy of blue and purple flowers and green vines sat a beautiful
Arabian woman upon cushions rocking a charming child upon her knees. It
was the little Ferida, Emin's daughter, early bereft of her mother. She
greeted her father with a joyous outcry, took the outstretched hand of
the unknown guest in the most friendly manner, and gazed at him with
indescribably deep, dark, serious eyes. She was a solitary child,
without companions of her own age, without playthings or instruction,
who would have had plenty of companions in Europe. She had to be
carefully protected from the dangers of the tropical world, from snakes
and deadly scorpions, which frequently made their way into the house
through open windows. She could never leave the garden and go down to
the river, for beasts of prey, which they often heard howling not far
away, frequently attacked people and dragged them off. So Ferida had to
stay the whole day with her dark-skinned nurse, a tall woman in a
scarlet undergarment and white loose wrapper, eagerly waiting for the
evening hour when the father would have time to see his darling.
At such times the serious man and the lovely child would sit close to
each other upon a bench in the dense shade of the bananas, watching the
play of the shadows which the bluish moonlight made through the foliage
upon the dark red ground. Over all reigned a mysterious silence, only
broken by the rustling of the banana leaves. Great bats flitted like
spirits through the air. "The father of the four wings," as the Arabs
call the nightjar, with its long fantastic feathers, which in flying
give it the appearance of a dragon, flew noiselessly about. Bluish
lights marked the course of the great "lamp carriers," the tropical
fireflies, and whirring night butterflies fluttered about, hardly
visible to the eye in their dark dress. All nature was filled with the
deepest peace. Then Emin would tell her of his quiet peaceful life in
the far northern cities; of his joyous yet strenuous student life in
beautiful Berlin; of his journey over the blue sea, which Ferida cannot
yet imagine, notwithstanding his description of it; of Constantinople
and its splendid palaces with their golden domes; of the desert, with
its burning sun and the silence of the dreamy nights, when the stars are
unnaturally bright; of brown and black people with their different
habits and costumes; of wars and adventures; of the terrors of forest
fires, and of the curious dwellings of the negroes. Then he would
describe the plants, birds, and four-footed animals he had studied so
closely and tell her fables and romances that he had heard on his many
journeys from the natives, so that his child, who had no story books,
might at least have a pretty one of her own father's telling.