Henty George Alfred
The March to Magdala
Sir Robert Napier is making great efforts to reduce the weight to be carried forward, and in this he is, without doubt, highly to be commended. The great curse of this army is its enormous number of followers. European regiments have quite a little host of sweepers, Lascars, water-bearers, &c. &c. Even the native regiments have a number of followers. Had English troops direct from England been employed, the weight to be carried would have been very much less than it is at present, and the men, being accustomed to shift and work for themselves, would have been more handy. It is said that the soldier’s kit, now very heavy, is to be reduced; but at present the efforts are being directed almost exclusively against officers. An officer, whatever his rank, is to be allowed one mule only, and there is some rumour that even that allowance is to be reduced. I do not hesitate to say that that amount is insufficient. If an officer had his mule merely to carry his baggage it would be ample, but this is very far from being the case. On it he has to carry his groom’s luggage and warm clothes, and those of his body-servant. He has to carry his cooking-utensils, &c., and the rugs, &c., for his horse; consequently he will be lucky if forty or fifty pounds remains for his own kit. This is not a campaign for a week or a month; it may, in all human probability will, last for a year, perhaps longer, and he has to carry clothes, bedding, &c., for a hot and a cold climate. It is simply impossible to do this in the limits of fifty pounds. Regimental officers are ordered to send back their servants to Bombay, only one to be kept for every three officers. Of course such officers will be able to get most of the work they require performed for them by their own men; but, at the same time, it is a hardship both to officers and servants. In all cases an officer has made an advance of from two to three months’ pay to his servants; in all cases he has provided them with warm clothing; and it is very hard that he should lose all this, and be obliged to turn servants, whom he may have had for years, adrift at a moment’s notice.
Senafe, January 31st.
After the heat and dust of Zulla this place is delightful. The heat of the day is tempered by a cool wind, and the really cold nights brace us up thoroughly. Above all, we have no dust. We are clean. One has to stop for a month upon the Plain of Zulla thoroughly to appreciate the pleasure of feeling clean. Here, too, there is water – not only to drink, but to wash in. After being dust-grimed and unable to wash, the sensation of being free from dust and enabled to wash at pleasure is delightful. Having with great difficulty succeeded in purchasing baggage-animals, I started early from Zulla, and arrived at Koomaylo in plenty of time to be able to examine the wonderful changes which have taken place there in the last three weeks. There were then some hundreds of animals there; now there are thousands. The lines of the mules and ponies extend in every direction; besides which are bullocks, camels, and elephants. Koomaylo is indeed the head-quarters of the transport-train animals. The camel divisions are here. They go down to the landing-place one day, are fed there, and come back loaded next day, getting their water only here. The elephants work in the same way, but they have to be watered at each end of their journey. The bullock division is here, and works upwards to Rayray Guddy, three days’ march, taking up stores and bringing down Senafe grass when there is any to spare. Four mule and pony divisions are here; these, like the bullocks, work to Rayray Guddy and back. The sick animals of these six divisions are also here, and number nearly twelve hundred, including camels. The watering of all these animals morning and evening is a most interesting sight. There are long troughs, into which water is pumped continuously from the little American pumps. The different animals have each their allotted troughs. As they arrive they are formed in lines, and as one line has drunk the next advances. There is no bustle or confusion, for there is an ample supply of water for all. The water is very clear and good, but is quite warm, and most of the animals object to it the first time of tasting. Although the mules are in better condition than they were some time since, very many of them are still very weak, especially those that have been stationed at Rayray Guddy, where they get nothing to eat but the coarse Senafe hay, and have had very frequently to go without even this. The greatest difficulty of the transport train at present is most unquestionably in its drivers. The greater part were, as I have before said, collected haphazard from the scum of Smyrna, Beyrout, Alexandria, Cairo, and Suez. They are entirely without any idea of discipline, are perfectly reckless as to the Government stores, and are brutally cruel to their animals. By cruel, I do not mean actively cruel, but passively cruel. They do not thrash their mules much, they are too indifferent to the pace at which they travel to put themselves to the trouble of hurrying them. But they are horribly cruel in a passive way. They will continue to work their animals with the most terrible sore backs. They will never take the trouble to loosen the chain which forms part of the Bombay headgear, and which, unless it is carefully watched, will cut into the flesh under the chin, and in hundreds of cases has done so. They will jerk at the rein of their draught-mules until the clumsy bit raises terrible swellings in the mouth; they will say no word about the ailments of their beasts until they can absolutely go no single step further, and then, instead of taking them to the hospital lines, they turn them adrift, and report upon their arrival at night that the mules have died upon the way. There is, however, far less of this going on now than formerly, for a mounted inspector accompanies each train, and many of the large convoys have officers in charge of them. But not only for their cruelty and carelessness are these Egyptian, Levant, and Turk drivers objectionable; they are constantly mutinous. I saw the other day at Zulla a party of fifty who had arrived a few days before deliberately refuse to work. They did not like the place, and they would go back. Everything was tried with them; they were kept upon less than half rations and water for days, but they sturdily refused to do anything. The whole party might of course have been flogged, but that would not have made them work; and the first day that they went out with mules they would have thrown their burdens off and deserted with their animals. I was present when Colonel Holland, director-general of transport, endeavoured to persuade them to work. They steadily refused, and even when he promised that they should be sent back to Suez by the first ship, they refused to do any work whatever until the time for embarkation. As they stood in a circle round him, some gesticulating, but most standing in surly obstinacy, I thought I had never seen such a collection of thorough ruffians in my life – the picked scoundrels of the most lawless population on earth. I stopped one day at Koomaylo, and then came rapidly up the pass. The road is now really a very fair road for the whole distance, with the exception of four miles between Koomaylo and lower Sooro. This piece of road has not, by some strange oversight, been yet touched; but I hear that the 25th Native Infantry, one wing of which regiment is at Koomaylo, are to be set to work at it at once. It is along the flat of the valley, and only requires smoothing, and removing boulders, so that a few days will see this, the last piece of the road, completed. For the rest of the distance the road is everywhere as good as a bye-road in an out-of-the-way district at home. In many places it is very much better. Up the passes at Sooro and Rayray Guddy it is really an excellent road. The vast boulders, which I described upon the occasion of my first passing through it, are either shattered to pieces by blasting, or are surmounted by the road being raised by a gradual incline. Too much praise cannot be given to the Bombay Sappers and Miners, who have carried out these works. The same party, after finishing these passes, have now just completed a broad zigzag road from the bottom of the pass up to the Senafe plain. This was before the most trying part of the whole journey, now it is a road up which one might drive in a carriage and pair, and which reminds one of the last zigzags upon the summits of the Mount Cenis and St. Gothard passes. The whole of the works I have described are at once samples of skilful engineering and of unremitting exertion. No one who passed through six weeks ago would have believed that so much could possibly be effected in so short a time. Next only to the Bombay Sappers credit must be given to the Beloochee regiment, one wing of which under Major Beville at Sooro, and the other under Captain Hogg at Rayray Guddy, have made the road along those places where blasting was not required.
The Beloochees are a remarkably fine regiment, and work with a willingness and good-will which are beyond praise. Great regret is expressed on all sides that they have not been selected to accompany the 33d regiment upon its advance, especially as they are armed with Enfield rifles.
The Beloochees are deservedly one of the most popular regiments in the Indian service, and there is an esprit de corps– a feeling of personal attachment between men and officers, and a pride on the part of the latter to belong to so good a regiment – which the present extraordinary and unsatisfactory state of the Indian service renders altogether out of the question in the regular native regiments. There an officer forms no part of the regiment. He belongs to it for the time being, but if he goes home for leave, he will upon his return be posted in all probability to some other regiment. In this way all esprit de corps, all traces of mutual good feeling between men and officers, is entirely done away with. How such a system could ever have been devised, and how, once devised, it has ever been allowed to continue, is one of those extraordinary things which no civilian, and no military man under the rank of colonel, can understand.
At the station of Sooro and Rayray Guddy little change has been effected since I last described them, and about the same number of men are stationed there; but at Undel Wells, or Guinea-fowl Plain, as it was formerly called, the place was changed beyond all recognition. When last I was there it was a quiet valley, with a few Shohos watering their cattle at a scanty and dirty well. My own party was the only evidence of the British expedition. Now this was all changed. No city in the days of the gold-mining rush in Australia ever sprung into existence more suddenly. Here are long lines of transport-animals, here are commissariat-tents and stores, here a camp of the pioneers. The whole of the trees and brushwood have been cleared away. Here is the watering-place, with its troughs for animals and its tubs for men – the one supplied by one of Bastier’s chain-pumps, a gigantic specimen of which used to pour out a cataract of water for the delectation of the visitors to the Paris Exhibition – the other by one of the little American pumps. Everything works as quietly and easily as if the age of the station was to be counted by months instead of by days.
I found that the telegraph is making rapid progress. The wire now works as far as Sooro, and is also erected downwards from Senafe to Rayray Guddy. It is a very fine copper wire, and in the midst of the lofty perpendicular rocks of the Sooro Pass it looks, as it goes in long stretches from angle to angle, with the sun shining bright upon it, like the glistening thread of some great spider.
It would have been long since laid to Senafe, but the greatest difficulty has occurred in obtaining poles, all those sent from Bombay having been thrown overboard to lighten the vessel in which they were shipped upon an occasion of her running aground. It has been found impossible to procure the poles for the remaining distance; and I hear that a wire coated with india-rubber is to be laid a few inches under the soil.
Senafe itself is but little altered. The 10th Native Infantry are still in their old camp. The 3d Native Cavalry have gone out about eight miles from here to a spot called Goose Plain, and the sappers and miners are encamped in the old lines of the 3d. The 33d lines are in a plain close to, but a little beyond, the old camp, and concealed from view until one has passed it.
On my arrival in camp I found that a deep gloom hung over everyone, and I heard the sad news that Colonel Dunn, the commanding officer of the 33d, had the day before accidentally shot himself when out shooting. The native servant who alone was with him reports that he himself was at the moment stooping to pour out some water, that he heard the report of a gun, and turning round saw his master stagger back, and then sink into a sitting position with the blood streaming from his breast. The man instantly ran back to camp, a distance of five miles, for assistance, and surgeons at once galloped off with bandages, &c., followed by dhoolie wallahs, with a dhoolie to carry him back to camp. When the surgeons arrived, they found Colonel Dunn lying on his back, dead. His flask was open by his side, his cap pulled over his face. He had bled to death in a few minutes after the accident. It is supposed that the gun was at full cock, and that the slight jar of putting the butt to the ground must have let the hammer down. There are very few men who could have been less spared than Colonel Dunn; none more deeply regretted. As an officer he was one of the most rising men in the service, and had he lived would probably have gained its highest honours and position. He was with the 11th Hussars in the Balaclava charge, and when the men were asked to select the man who in the whole regiment was most worthy of the Victoria Cross, they unanimously named Lieutenant Dunn. Never was the Victoria Cross placed on the breast of a more gallant soldier. When the 100th regiment was raised in Canada, he enrolled a very large number of men, and was gazetted its major. After attaining the rank of lieutenant-colonel he exchanged into the 33d, of which, at the time of this sad accident, he was full colonel, and was next on the list for his brigadier-generalship. He was only thirty-five years of age, the youngest colonel in the British service, and would, in all human probability, have been a brigadier-general before he was thirty-six. Known as a dashing officer, distinguished for his personal bravery, a colonel at an age when other men are captains, there was no rank or position in the army which he might not have confidently been predicted to attain, and his loss is a loss to the whole British army. But not less than as a soldier, do all who knew poor Dunn regret him as a man. He was the most popular of officers. Unassuming, frank, kind-hearted in the extreme, a delightful companion, and a warm friend – none met him who were not irresistibly attracted by him. He was a man essentially to be loved. In his regiment his loss is irreparable, and as they stood beside his lonely grave at the foot of the rock of Senafe, it is no disgrace to their manhood to say that there were few dry eyes amongst either officers or men. He was buried, in accordance with a wish he had once expressed, in his uniform, and Wolfe’s lines on the burial of Sir John Moore will apply almost word for word to “the grave where our hero we buried.”
Sir Robert Napier arrived here with his personal staff the day before yesterday, having been five days en route, spending one day carefully examining each station, inquiring, as is his custom, into every detail, and seeing how each department worked. Never was a commander more careful in this inquiry into every detail than is Sir Robert Napier. Nothing escapes him. He sees everything, hears what everyone has to say, and then decides firmly upon what is to be done. The army have rightly an unbounded confidence in him. He is essentially the man for an expedition of this sort. His reputation for dash and gallantry is well known, but at the same time he has a prudence and sagacity which will fit him for the extremely difficult position in which he is placed. If it is possible to make a dash into Central Abyssinia, undoubtedly he will do it; if, on the other hand, it cannot be done without extraordinary risk and difficulty – if it is next to impossible – no amount of outcry at home will drive him to attempt it.
It is believed here that, moved by the home authorities, a rapid dash is on the point of being made, and bets are freely exchanged that the expedition will be over by the 1st of April. For myself, I confess that even in the face of the approaching advance of the first division I have no anticipations whatever that such will be the case. Sir Robert, I believe, does mean to try. Urged on to instant action from home, he will despatch two or three regiments, with cavalry and artillery, and with the lightest possible baggage. But if the country at all resembles that we have already traversed, if it is one tithe as difficult and deficient in food and forage as Abyssinian travellers have told us, I am convinced that the column will have to come to a halt, and wait for supplies, and will have to proceed in a regular military way. I hope that I may be mistaken; I sincerely hope that the advancing column may meet with no insuperable obstacles; but, remembering that it is by no means certain that when we get to Magdala we shall find Theodore and the captives there, I am far more inclined to name nine months than three as the probable time which will elapse before we have attained the objects of our expedition, – that is, always supposing that Theodore does not deliver up the captives as we advance. It is quite certain that the advancing column must depend entirely upon themselves. They will be able to receive no supplies from the rear, for other regiments will take the place of those that go on from Senafe, and the transport train cannot do much more than keep Senafe supplied with provisions at present, even supplemented as their efforts are by those of thousands of the little native cattle. Indeed, had it not been for the quantity of stores brought up by the natives on their own cattle, there would not have been sufficient stores at Senafe to have supplied the troops who now move on. As some 1500 animals will be withdrawn from the strength of the transport train to march with the advance brigade, it is evident that the stores sent up for some time will not be much more than sufficient to supply Senafe, and that no animals will be available to send on fresh supply to the front. The brigade that advances, then, must depend entirely upon itself. It must not hope for any assistance whatever. To say the least, it is an expedition upon the like of which few bodies of men ever started. We have 330 miles to go, across a country known to be exceptionally mountainous and difficult. We have already learned that, with the exception of cattle, the country will provide us with no food whatever. The kings or chiefs through whose territory we march will be but neutral, and even if actively friendly, which they certainly are not, could afford us no practical assistance. To crown all, it may be that towards the end of the march we may have to fight our way through difficult passes, defended by men who, if ill-armed, are at least warlike and brave. History hardly records an instance of such an accumulation of difficulties. Pizarro’s conquest of Mexico, perhaps, ranks foremost among enterprises of this sort, but Pizarro fought his way through the richest country in the world, and could never have had difficulties as to his supplies. There is no question about our conquering – the great question is as to our eating. If we were always certain of finding forage our difficulties would be light in comparison. Unfortunately our mules must eat as well as we, and we know that we shall have long passes where no forage whatever is procurable. If the mules were certain of their food it would be a mere arithmetical question – how many mules are required to convey food for 2500 men for forty days? As it stands now, we have no data to go upon, and whether our present advance succeeds or not is almost entirely dependent upon whether we can obtain forage for our animals. If we can do this, we shall get to Magdala; but if we find that we have to pass long distances without forage, it becomes an impossibility, and we must fall back upon the regular military method of forming dépôts and moving on stage by stage. In this latter case there is no predicting the probable limit of the expedition.
General Napier is taking the most stringent but necessary steps for reducing the baggage to a minimum. No officer, whatever his rank, is to be allowed more than one mule. Three officers are to sleep in each bell-tent, and one mule is allowed for two bell-tents. One mule is allowed to each three officers for cooking-utensils and mess-stores. Only one native servant is to be allowed for each three officers. No officers, except those entitled to horses in England, are to be mounted; they may, however, if they choose, take their own horse as a pack-animal instead of the mule to which they are entitled, in which case a pack-saddle will be issued to them. Similar reductions are being made among the regimental baggage and followers. The latter, whose name was legion, and who were at least as numerous as the fighting-men, are to be greatly curtailed. The Lascars, sweepers, water-bearers, &c. are either to be sent back, or to be turned into grass-cutters for the cavalry and baggage-animals. The European soldiers are to be limited to 35lb. weight of baggage, and part of this they will have to carry for themselves. All this is as it should be. In India it is policy as well as humanity to take every possible care of the British soldier. He is a very expensive machine, and although, as was found during the mutiny, he can work in the sun during an emergency without his health suffering, still at ordinary times it is far better to relieve him as far as possible from all duties whatever save drill and guard. Labour and food are so cheap in India that the expense of this host of camp-followers is comparatively slight. Here it is altogether different. It was known long before we started that the ground would be exceptionally difficult, that the difficulties of transport would be enormous, and that every mouth extra to be fed was of consequence; and yet in spite of this the European regiments arrived here with little short of 500 followers; and the native regiments have also hosts of hangers-on. As I have said, all this is now very properly to be done away with. The army will march as nearly as possible with European kit and following, and the transport train will be relieved of the incubus of thousands of useless mouths to be provided for. In speaking of the transport train, I should mention that Sir Robert Napier is in no way accountable for its absurd organisation and consequent break down. The Bombay authorities are alone responsible. When the expedition was first seriously talked of in August last, Sir Robert Napier drew up a scheme for a transport train, which I am assured by those who have seen it was excellent. This he sent in on the 23d of August. No notice was taken of it until the middle of September, when Sir Robert was told that a scheme would be prepared by the commissary-general. Another precious month elapsed, and then in the middle of October the present absurd scheme was hatched. It was sent to Sir Robert for his opinion, and he returned it with the memorandum that it was perfectly impracticable. The authorities persisted, however, in the teeth of his opinion, in having their plan carried out; and it was only upon Sir Robert’s repeated and earnest remonstrances that they consented to increase the number of European inspectors and native overlookers to the present ridiculously-insufficient number. The result has abundantly proved the wisdom of the General, and the fatuity of the men who would interfere in every detail, and overrule the opinion of the man to whom everything was to be intrusted from the day of his leaving Bombay. Events have abundantly proved the error of intrusting the management of the expedition to civilians and men of bureaux.
And now, as to the advance brigade. Neither its composition nor its date of advance are yet known for certain. The Chief is not a man who says anything about his plans until the moment arrives when the necessary orders are to be given. It will probably comprise the whole or part of the 33d regiment, the 4th regiment – a portion of which is expected to arrive here to-day – the 10th Native Infantry, the Beloochees, the Punjaub Pioneers, the Bombay Sappers and Miners, the 3d Native Cavalry, and the Scinde Horse. Of these, two companies of the 33d regiment, and two of the 10th Native Infantry, are already at Attegrat, thirty-five miles in advance. Three more companies of each regiment started to-day. Brigadier-general Collings goes on with them, and will for the present command the advance. Part of the Pioneers are here, as are the Bombay Sappers. These go on in a day or two to make the road near and beyond Attegrat, the intermediate part having been already made by the 33d regiment. The Scinde Horse are some eight or nine miles away, and near them are the 3d Native Cavalry. I have omitted in my list of troops for the advance brigade to name the mountain trains, and three guns of the artillery, which will be carried by elephants. These animals are expected here in a day or two. I should be sorry to meet them on horseback in a narrow part of the pass, and I expect that they will cause terrible confusion among the transport-animals, for they have all a perfect horror of the elephant – that is, the first time that they see one. When they get to learn that he, like themselves, is a subjugated animal, they cease to feel any terror of him.
There is one pleasing change which has taken place since I last left Senafe, and which I have not yet spoken of. I mentioned that Sir Charles Staveley, when he was up here, ordered huts to be built for the muleteers by the 10th Native Infantry. These are now completed. They are long, leafy bowers, running along in regular lines between the rows of animals. They are very well and neatly built – so regular, indeed, that it is difficult at a short distance to believe that they are really built of boughs. They may not be as warm as houses, but they keep off the wind, and afford a great protection to the muleteers at night. The division here, that of Captain Griffiths, is the first which landed. It is now in very good order, and will accompany the advance brigade. The disease up here is, I am happy to say, on the decrease. The sick animals are out at Goose Plain with the artillery.
Yesterday, in the afternoon, there was a parade of the 33d, and 10th Native Infantry; small parties of the Royal Engineers, of 3d Native Cavalry, and of Scinde Horse were also present. Sir Robert Napier rode along the line, and the regiments then marched past. The little party of the 3d Cavalry came first, followed by the Scinde Horse, and offering as strong a contrast to each other as could be well imagined. The one was upon the European, the other upon the Asiatic model. The Scinde horsemen were much the heavier and more powerful men; and although they have not the military seat or the dashing air of the 3d, they had in their dark dresses, and quiet, determined look, the appearance of men who would be most formidable antagonists. Their horses, although ugly, are strong; and in a charge, it was the opinion of many of those who were looking on, that they would be much more than a match for their more showy rivals. The Scinde Horse are more discussed than any regiment out here; and, indeed, it is so famous a regiment, and is always stationed so much upon the frontiers, that its coming was looked forward to with considerable curiosity. Its appearance is certainly against it; that is, its horses are very ugly animals; but this is not the fault of the regiment, for its station is so far in Northern India that it cannot procure, except at very great cost, any but the native horses. I believe that this is almost the only objection which can be urged against the regiment; the men are remarkably fine; indeed, as I before stated, they are too heavy for cavalry. They are, as a whole, drawn from a much higher and wealthier class of natives than the men of any other regiment; they enlist in the Scinde Horse just as a young nobleman takes a commission in the Guards. There is a very great feeling of esprit de corps, and mutual good-feeling between officers and men; and all are proud of their regiment. The uniform, as I have said in a previous letter, is a long, dark-green coat, with red turban. It is the men’s own choice, and is quite an Eastern uniform; their long curved sabres are also quite Asiatic. The men provide their own carriage; and from this point the transport train will not be called upon to assist them in any way beyond carrying their provisions. I alluded before to the wretched ponies they brought with them; but the case has been explained to me, and there is no blame to be attached to the corps on this score. The men were provided with camels to carry their baggage, and were told that these would do for Abyssinia. While upon their march down to the sea-coast a telegram arrived, stating that camels would not do; and the men were obliged to sell their camels at a sacrifice, and to buy any ponies they could get. I speak of the men doing so, because the horses, &c., are not the property of the Government, but of the men, or rather of some among the men.
