Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 70, No. 431, September 1851
The most renowned chief of the mutinous tribes of Taka, the conqueror of the Turks under Churdschid Bascha, was Mohammed Din, Grand-Schech of the Haddenda. This personage, awed by the approach of Achmet's formidable force, sent his son to the advancing Bascha, as a hostage for his loyalty and submission. Achmet sent the young man back to his father as bearer of his commands. The next day the army crossed the frontier of Taka, which is not very exactly defined, left the Atbara in their rear, and, moving still eastwards, beheld before them, in the far distance, the blue mountains of Abyssinia. The Bascha's suite was now swelled by the arrival of numerous Schechs, great and small, with their esquires and attendants. The route lay through a thick forest, interwoven with creeping plants and underwood, and with thorny mimosas, which grew to a great height. The path was narrow, the confusion of the march inconceivably great and perilous, and if the enemy had made a vigorous attack with their javelins, which they are skilled in throwing, the army must have endured great loss, with scarcely a possibility of inflicting any. At last the scattered column reached an open space, covered with grass, and intersected with deep narrow rills of water. The Bascha, who had outstripped his troops, was comfortably encamped, heedless of their fate, whilst they continued for a long time to emerge in broken parties from the wood. Mr Werne's good opinion of his generalship had been already much impaired, and this example of true Turkish indolence, and of the absence of any sort of military dispositions under such critical circumstances, completely destroyed it. The next day there was some appearance of establishing camp-guards, and of taking due precautions against the fierce and numerous foe, who on former occasions had thrice defeated Turkish armies, and from whom an attack might at any moment be expected. In the afternoon an alarm was given; the Bascha, a good soldier, although a bad general, was in the saddle in an instant, and gallopping to the spot, followed by all his cavalry, whilst the infantry rushed confusedly in the same direction. The uproar had arisen, however, not from Arab assailants, but from some soldiers who had discovered extensive corn magazines —silos, as they are called in Algeria – holes in the ground, filled with grain, and carefully covered over. By the Bascha's permission, the soldiers helped themselves from these abundant granaries, and thus the army found itself provided with corn for the next two months. In the course of the disorderly distribution, or rather scramble, occurred a little fight between the Schaïgië, a quarrelsome set of irregulars, and some of the Turks. Nothing could be worse than the discipline of Achmet's host. The Schaïgiës were active and daring horsemen, and were the first to draw blood in the campaign, in a skirmish upon the following day with some ambushed Arabs. The neighbouring woods swarmed with these javelin-bearing gentry, although they lay close, and rarely showed themselves, save when they could inflict injury at small risk. Mr Werne began to doubt the possibility of any extensive or effectual operations against these wild and wandering tribes, who, on the approach of the army, loaded their goods on camels, and fled into the Chaaba, or forest district, whither it was impossible to follow them. Where was the Bascha to find money and food for the support of his numerous army? – where was he to quarter it during the dangerous Chariff, or rainy season? He was very reserved as to his plans; probably, according to Mr Werne, because he had none. The Schechs who had joined and marched with him could hardly be depended upon, when it was borne in mind that they, formerly the independent rulers of a free people, had been despoiled of their power and privileges, and were now the ill-used vassals of the haughty and stupid Turks, who overwhelmed them with imposts, treated them contemptuously, and even subjected them to the bastinado. "Mohammed Din, seeing the hard lot of these gentlemen, seems disposed to preserve his freedom as long as possible, or to sell it as dearly as may be. Should it come to a war, there is, upon our side, a total want of efficient leaders, at any rate if we except the Bascha. Abdin Aga, chief of the Turkish cavalry, a bloated Arnaut; Sorop Effendi, a model of stupidity and covetousness; Hassan Effendi Bimbaschi, a quiet sot; Soliman Aga, greedy, and without the slightest education of any kind; Hassan Effendi of Sennaar, a Turk in the true sense of the word (these four are infantry commanders); Mohammed Ladjam, a good-natured but inexperienced fellow, chief of the Mograbin cavalry: amongst all these officers, the only difference is, that each is more ignorant than his neighbour. With such leaders, what can be expected from an army that, for the most part, knows no discipline – the Schaïgiës, for instance, doing just what they please, and being in a fair way to corrupt all the rest – and that is encumbered with an endless train of dangerous rabble, idlers, slaves, and women of pleasure, serving as a burthen and hindrance? Let us console ourselves with the Allah kerim! (God is merciful.)" Mr Werne had not long to wait for a specimen of Turkish military skill. On the night of the 7th April he was watching in his tent beside his grievously sick brother, when there suddenly arose an uproar in the camp, followed by firing. "I remained by our tent, for my brother was scarcely able to stir, and the infantry also remained quiet, trusting to their mounted comrades. But when I saw Bimbaschi Hassan Effendi lead a company past us, and madly begin to fire over the powder-waggons, as if these were meant to serve as barricades against the hostile lances, I ran up to him with my sabre drawn, and threatened him with the Bascha, as well as with the weapon, whereupon he came to his senses, and begged me not to betray him. The whole proved to be mere noise, but the harassed Bascha was again up and active. He seemed to make no use of his aides-de-camp, and only his own presence could inspire his troops with courage. Some of the enemy were killed, and there were many tracks of blood leading into the wood, although the firing had been at random in the darkness. As a specimen of the tactics of our Napoleon-worshipping Bascha, he allowed the wells, which were at two hundred yards from camp, to remain unguarded at night, so that they might easily have been filled up by the enemy. Truly fortunate was it that there were no great stones in the neighbourhood to choke them up, for we were totally without implements wherewith to have cleared them out again." Luckily for this most careless general and helpless army, the Arabs neglected to profit by their shortcomings, and on the 14th April, after many negotiations, the renowned Mohammed Din himself, awed, we must suppose, by the numerical strength of Achmet's troops, and over-estimating their real value, committed the fatal blunder of presenting himself in the Turkish camp. Great was the curiosity to see this redoubted chief, who alighted at Schech Defalla's tent, into which the soldiers impudently crowded, to get a view of the man before whom many of them had formerly trembled and fled. "Mohammed Din is of middle stature, and of a black-brown colour, like all his people; his countenance at first says little, but, on longer inspection, its expression is one of great cunning; his bald head is bare; his dress Arabian, with drawers of a fiery red colour. His retinue consists, without exception, of most ill-looking fellows, on whose countenances Nature seems to have done her best to express the faithless character attributed to the Haddenda. They are all above the middle height, and armed with shields and lances, or swords." Next morning Mr Werne saw the Bascha seated on his angarèb, (a sort of bedstead, composed of plaited strips of camel-hide, which, upon the march, served as a throne,) with a number of Shechs squatted upon the ground on either side of him, amongst them Mohammed Din, looking humbled, and as if half-repentant of his rash step. The Bascha appeared disposed to let him feel that he was now no better than a caged lion, whose claws the captor can cut at will. He showed him, however, marks of favour, gave him a red shawl for a turban, and a purple mantle with gold tassels, but no sabre, which Mr Werne thought a bad omen. The Schech was suffered to go to and fro between the camp and his own people, but under certain control – now with an escort of Schaïgiës, then leaving his son as hostage. He sent in some cattle and sheep as a present, and promised to bring the tribute due; this he failed to do, and a time was fixed to him and the other Shechs within which to pay up arrears. Notwithstanding the subjection of their chief, the Arabs continued their predatory practices, stealing camels from the camp, or taking them by force from the grooms who drove them out to pasture.
Mr Werne's book is a journal, written daily during the campaign but, owing to the long interval between its writing and publication, he has found it necessary to make frequent parenthetical additions, corrective or explanatory. Towards the end of April, during great sickness in camp, he writes as follows: – "My brother's medical observations and experiments begin to excite in me a strong interest. He has promised me that he will keep a medical journal; but he must first get into better health, for now it is always with sickening disgust that he returns from visiting his patients; he complains of the insupportable effluvia from these people, sinks upon his angarèb with depression depicted in his features, and falls asleep with open eyes, so that I often feel quite uneasy." Then comes the parenthesis of ten years' later date. "Subsequently, when I had joined the expedition for the navigation of the White Nile, he wrote to me from the camp of Kàssela-el-Lus to Chartum, that, with great diligence and industry, he had written some valuable papers on African diseases, and was inconsolable at having lost them. He had been for ten days dangerously ill, had missed me sadly, and, in a fit of delirium, when his servant asked him for paper to light the fire, had handed him his manuscript, which the stupid fellow had forthwith burned. At the same time, he lamented that, during his illness, our little menagerie had been starved to death. The Bascha had been to see him, and by his order Topschi Baschi had taken charge of his money, that he might not be robbed, giving the servants what was needful for their keep, and for the purchase of flesh for the animals. The servants had drunk the money intended for the beasts' food. When my brother recovered his health, he had the fagged, (a sort of lynx,) which had held out longest, and was only just dead, cut open, and so convinced himself that it had died of hunger. The annoyance one has to endure from these people is beyond conception, and the very mildest-tempered man – as, for instance, my late brother – is compelled at times to make use of the whip."
Whilst Mohammed Din and the other Shechs, accompanied by detachments of Turkish troops, intended partly to support them in their demands, and partly to reconnoitre the country, endeavoured to get together the stipulated tribute, the army remained stationary. But repose did not entail monotony; strange incidents were of daily occurrence in this singular camp. The Wernes, always anxious for the increase of their cabinet of stuffed birds and beasts, sent their huntsman Abdallah with one of the detachments, remaining themselves, for the present at least, at headquarters, to collect whatever might come in their way. The commander of the Mograbins sent them an antelope as big as a donkey, having legs like a cow, and black twisted horns. From the natives little was to be obtained. They were very shy and ill-disposed, and could not be prevailed upon, even by tenfold payment, to supply the things most abundant with them, as for instance milk and honey. In hopes of alluring and conciliating them, the Bascha ordered those traders who had accompanied the army to establish a bazaar outside the fence enclosing the camp. The little mirrors that were there sold proved a great attraction. The Arabs would sit for whole days looking in them, and pulling faces. But no amount of reflection could render them amicable or honest: they continued to steal camels and asses whenever they could, and one of them caught a Schaigie's horse, led him up to the camp, and stabbed him to death. So great was the hatred of these tribes to their oppressors – a hatred which would have shown itself by graver aggressions, but for Achmet's large force, and above all, for their dread of firearms. Within the camp there was wild work enough at times. The good-hearted, hot-headed Werne was horribly scandalised by the ill-treatment of the slaves. Dumont, the French apothecary, had a poor lad named Amber, a mere boy, willing and industrious, whom he continually beat and kicked, until at last Mr Werne challenged him to a duel with sabres, and threatened to take away the slave, which he, as a Frenchman, had no legal right to possess. But this was nothing compared to the cruelties practised by other Europeans, and especially at Chartum by one Vigoureux, (a French corporal who had served under Napoleon, and was now adjutant of an Egyptian battalion,) and his wife, upon a poor black girl, only ten years of age, whom they first barbarously flogged, and then tied to a post, with her bleeding back exposed to the broiling sun. Informed of this atrocity by his brother, who had witnessed it, Mr Werne sprang from his sickbed, and flew to the rescue, armed with his sabre, and with a well-known iron stick, ten pounds in weight, which had earned him the nickname of Abu-Nabut, or Father of the Stick. A distant view of his incensed countenance sufficed, and the Frenchman, cowardly as cruel, hastened to release his victim, and to humble himself before her humane champion. Concerning this corporal and his dame, whom he had been to France to fetch, and who was brought to bed on camel-back, under a burning sun, in the midst of the desert, some curious reminiscences are set down in the Feldzug, as are also some diverting details of the improprieties of the dissipated gunner Topschi Baschi, who, on the 1st May, brought dancing-girls into the hut occupied by the two Germans, and assembled a mob round it by the indecorous nature of his proceedings. Regulations for the internal order and security of the camp were unheard of. After a time, tents were pitched over the ammunition; a ditch was dug around it, and strict orders were given to light no fire in its vicinity. All fires, too, by command of the Bascha, were to be extinguished when the evening gun was fired. For a short time the orders were obeyed; then they were forgotten; fires were seen blazing late at night, and within fifteen paces of the powder. Nothing but the bastinado could give memory to these reckless fatalists. "I have often met ships upon the Nile, so laden with straw that there was scarcely room for the sailors to work the vessel. No matter for that; in the midst of the straw a mighty kitchen-fire was merrily blazing."
On the 6th of May, the two Wernes mounted their dromedaries and set off, attended by one servant, and with a guide provided by Mohammed Defalla, for the village of El Soffra, at a distance of two and a half leagues, where they expected to find Mohammed Din and a large assemblage of his tribe. It was rather a daring thing to advance thus unescorted into the land of the treacherous Haddendas, and the Bascha gave his consent unwillingly; but Mussa, (Moses,) the Din's only son, was hostage in the camp, and they deemed themselves safer alone than with the half company of soldiers Achmet wanted to send with them. Their route lay due east, at first through fields of durra, (a sort of grain,) afterwards through forests of saplings. The natives they met greeted them courteously, and they reached El Soffra without molestation, but there learned, to their considerable annoyance, that Mohammed Din had gone two leagues and a half farther, to the camp of his nephew Shech Mussa, at Mitkenàb. So, after a short pause, they again mounted their camels, and rode off, loaded with maledictions by the Arabs, because they would not remain and supply them with medicine, although the same Arabs refused to requite the drugs with so much as a cup of milk. They rode for more than half an hour before emerging from the straggling village, which was composed of wretched huts made of palm-mats, having an earthen cooking-vessel, a leathern water-bottle, and two stones for bruising corn, for sole furniture. The scanty dress of the people – some of the men had nothing but a leathern apron round their hips, and a sheep-skin, with the wool inwards, over their shoulders – their long hair and wild countenances, gave them the appearance of thorough savages. In the middle of every village was an open place, where the children played stark naked in the burning sun, their colour and their extraordinarily nimble movements combining, says Mr Werne, to give them the appearance of a troop of young imps. Infants, which in Europe would lie helpless in the cradle, are there seen rolling in the sand, with none to mind them, and playing with the young goats and other domestic animals. In that torrid climate, the development of the human frame is wonderfully rapid. Those women of whom the travellers caught a sight in this large village, which consisted of upwards of two thousand huts and tents, were nearly all old and ugly. The young ones, when they by chance encountered the strangers, covered their faces, and ran away. On the road to Mitkenàb, however, some young and rather handsome girls showed themselves. "They all looked at us with great wonder," says Mr Werne, "and took us for Turks, for we are the first Franks who have come into this country."
Mitkenàb, pleasantly situated amongst lofty trees, seemed to invite the wanderers to cool shelter from the mid-day sun. They were parched with thirst when they entered it, but not one of the inquisitive Arabs who crowded around them would attend to their request for a draught of milk or water. Here, however, was Mohammed Din, and with him a party of Schaïgiës under Melek Mahmud, whom they found encamped under a great old tree, with his fifty horsemen around him. After they had taken some refreshment, the Din came to pay them a visit. He refused to take the place offered him on an angarèb, but sat down upon the ground, giving them to understand, with a sneering smile, that that was now the proper place for him. "We had excellent opportunity to examine the physiognomy of this Schech, who is venerated like a demigod by all the Arabs between the Atbara and the Red Sea. 'He is a brave man,' they say, 'full of courage; there is no other like him!' His face is fat and round, with small grey-brown, piercing, treacherous-looking eyes, expressing both the cunning and the obstinacy of his character; his nose is well-proportioned and slightly flattened; his small mouth constantly wears a satirical scornful smile. But for this expression and his thievish glance, his bald crown and well-fed middle-sized person would become a monk's hood. He goes with his head bare, wears a white cotton shirt and ferda, and sandals on his feet… We told him that he was well known to the Franks as a great hero; he shook his head and said that on the salt lake, at Souakim, he had seen great ships with cannon, but that he did not wish the help of the Inglèb (English;) then he said something else, which was not translated to us. I incautiously asked him, how numerous his nation was. 'Count the trees,' he replied, glancing ironically around him; (a poll-tax constituted a portion of the tribute.) Conversation through an interpreter was so wearisome that we soon took our leave." At Mitkenàb they were upon the borders of the great forest (Chaaba) that extends from the banks of the Atbara to the shores of the Red Sea. It contains comparatively few lofty trees – most of these getting uprooted by hurricanes, when the rainy season has softened the ground round their roots – but a vast deal of thicket and dense brushwood, affording shelter to legions of wild beasts; innumerable herds of elephants, rhinoceroses, lions, tigers, giraffes, various inferior beasts, and multitudes of serpents of the most venomous description. For fear of these unpleasant neighbours, no Arab at Mitkenàb quits his dwelling after nightfall. "When we returned to the wells, a little before sundown, we found all the Schaïgiës on the move, to take up their quarters in an enclosure outside the village, partly on account of the beasts of prey, especially the lions, which come down to drink of a night, partly for safety from the unfriendly Arabs. We went with them and encamped with Mammud in the middle of the enclosure. We slept soundly the night through, only once aroused by the hoarse cries of the hyenas, which were sneaking about the village, setting all the dogs barking. To insure our safety, Mohammed Din himself slept at our door – so well-disposed were his people towards us." A rumour had gained credit amongst the Arabs, that the two mysterious strangers were, sent by Achmet to reconnoitre the country for the Bascha's own advance; and so incensed were they at this, that, although their beloved chief's son was a hostage in the Turkish camp, it was only by taking bypaths, under guidance of a young relative of Schech Mussa's, that the Wernes were able to regain their camp in safety. A few days after their return they were both attacked by bad fever, which for some time prevented them from writing. They lost their reckoning, and thenceforward the journal is continued without dates.
The Bascha grew weary of life in camp, and pined after action. In vain did the Schaïgiës toss the djereed, and go through irregular tournaments and sham fights for his diversion; in vain did he rattle the dice with Topschi Baschi; vain were the blandishments of an Abyssinian beauty whom he had quartered in a hut surrounded with a high fence, and for whose amusement he not unfrequently had nocturnal serenades performed by the band of the 8th regiment; to which brassy and inharmonious challenge the six thousand donkeys assembled in camp never failed to respond by an ear-splitting bray, whilst the numerous camels bellowed a bass: despite all these amusements, the Bascha suffered from ennui. He was furious when he saw how slowly and scantily came in the tribute for which he had made this long halt. Some three hundred cows were all that had yet been delivered; a ridiculously small number contrasted with the vast herds possessed by those tribes. Achmet foamed with rage at this ungrateful return for his patience and consideration. He reproached the Schechs who were with him, and sent for Mohammed Din, Shech Mussa, and the two Shechs of Mitkenàb. Although their people, foreboding evil, endeavoured to dissuade them from obedience, they all four came and were forthwith put in irons and chained together. With all his cunning Mohammed Din had fallen into the snare. His plan had been, so Mr Werne believes, to cajole and detain the Turks by fair words and promises until the rainy season, when hunger and sickness would have proved his best allies. The Bascha had been beforehand with him, and the old marauder might now repent at leisure that he had not trusted to his impenetrable forests and to the javelins of his people, rather than to the word of a Turk. On the day of his arrest the usual evening gun was loaded with canister, and fired into the woods in the direction of the Haddendas, the sound of cannon inspiring the Arab and negro tribes with a panic fear. Firearms – to them incomprehensible weapons – have served more than anything else to daunt their courage. "When the Turks attacked a large and populous mountain near Faszogl, the blacks sent out spies to see how strong was the foe, and how armed. The spies came back laughing, and reported that there was no great number of men; that their sole arms were shining sticks upon their shoulders, and that they had neither swords, lances, nor shields. The poor fellows soon found how terrible an effect had the sticks they deemed so harmless. As they could not understand how it was that small pieces of lead should wound and kill, a belief got abroad amongst them, that the Afrite, Scheitàn, (the devil or evil spirit,) dwelt in the musket-barrels. With this conviction, a negro, grasping a soldier's musket, put his hand over the mouth of the barrel, that the afrite might not get out. The soldier pulled the trigger, and the leaden devil pierced the poor black's hand and breast. After an action, a negro collected the muskets of six or seven slain soldiers, and joyfully carried them home, there to forge them into lances in the presence of a party of his friends. But it happened that some of them were loaded, and soon getting heated in the fire, they went off, scattering death and destruction around them." Most of the people in Taka run from the mere report of a musket, but the Arabs of Hedjàs, a mountainous district near the Red Sea, possess firearms, and are slow but very good shots.
In the way of tribute, nothing was gained by the imprisonment of Mahommed Din and his companions. No more contributions came in, and not an Arab showed himself upon the market-place outside the camp. Mohammed Din asked why his captors did not kill rather than confine him; he preferred death to captivity, and keeping him prisoner would lead, he said, to no result. The Arab chiefs in camp did not conceal their disgust at the Bascha's treatment of their Grand-Shech, and taxed Achmet with having broken his word, since he had given him the Amàhn – promise of pardon. Any possibility of conciliating the Arabs was destroyed by the step that had been taken. At night they swarmed round the camp, shrieking their war-cry. The utmost vigilance was necessary; a third of the infantry was under arms all night, the consequent fatigue increasing the amount of sickness. The general aspect of things was anything but cheering. The Wernes had their private causes of annoyance. Six of their camels, including the two excellent dromedaries given to them by the Bascha before quitting Chartum, were stolen whilst their camel-driver slept, and could not be recovered. They were compelled to buy others, and Mr Werne complains bitterly of the heavy expenses of the campaign – expenses greatly augmented by the sloth and dishonesty of their servants. The camel-driver, fearing to face his justly-incensed employers, disappeared and was no more heard of. Upon this and other occasions, Mr Werne was struck by the extraordinary skill of the Turks in tracing animals and men by their footsteps. In this manner his servants tracked his camels to an Arab village, although the road had been trampled by hundreds of beasts of the same sort. "If these people have once seen the footprint of a man, camel, horse, or ass, they are sure to recognise it amongst thousands of such impressions, and will follow the trail any distance, so long as the ground is tolerably favourable, and wind or rain has not obliterated the marks. In cases of loss, people send for a man who makes this kind of search his profession; they show him a footprint of the lost animal, and immediately, without asking any other indication, he follows the track through the streets of a town, daily trodden by thousands, and seldom falls to hunt out the game. He does not proceed slowly, or stoop to examine the ground, but his sharp eye follows the trail at a run. We ourselves saw the footstep of a runaway slave shown to one of these men, who caught the fugitive at the distance of three days' journey from that spot. My brother once went out of the Bascha's house at Chartum, to visit a patient who lived far off in the town. He had been gone an hour when the Bascha desired to see him, and the tschansch (orderly) traced him at once by his footmarks on the unpaved streets in which crowds had left similar signs. When, in consequence of my sickness, we lingered for some days on the Atbara, and then marched to overtake the army, the Schaïgiës who escorted us detected, amidst the hoof-marks of the seven or eight thousand donkeys accompanying the troops, those of a particular jackass belonging to one of their friends, and the event proved that they were right." Mr Werne fills his journal, during his long sojourn in camp, with a great deal of curious information concerning the habits and peculiarities of both Turks and Arabs, as well as with the interesting results of his observations on the brute creation. The soldiers continued to bring to him and his brother all manner of animals and reptiles – frogs, whole coils of snakes, and chameleons, which there abound, but whose changes of colour Mr Werne found to be much less numerous than is commonly believed. For two months he watched the variations of hue of these curious lizards, and found them limited to different shades of grey and green, with yellow stripes and spots. He made a great pet of a young wild cat, which was perfectly tame, and extraordinarily handsome. Its colour was grey, beautifully spotted with black, like a panther; its head was smaller and more pointed than that of European cats; its ears, of unusual size, were black, with white stripes. Many of the people in camp took it to be a young tiger, but the natives called it a fagged, and said it was a sort of cat, in which Mr Werne agreed with them. "Its companion and playfellow is a rat, about the size of a squirrel, with a long silvery tail, which, when angry, it swells out, and sets up over its back. This poor little beast was brought to us with two broken legs, and we gave it to the cat, thinking it was near death. But the cat, not recognising her natural prey – and moreover feeling the want of a companion – and the rat, tamed by pain and cured by splints, became inseparable friends, ate together, and slept arm in arm. The rat, which was not ugly like our house rats, but was rather to be considered handsome, by reason of its long frizzled tail, never made use of its liberty to escape." Notwithstanding the numerous devices put in practice by the Wernes to pass their time, it at last began to hang heavy, and their pipes were almost their sole resource and consolation. Smoking is little customary in Egypt, except amongst the Turks and Arabs. The Mograbins prefer chewing. The blacks of the Gesira make a concentrated infusion of this weed, which they call bucca; take a mouthful of it, and roll the savoury liquor round their teeth for a quarter of an hour before ejecting it. They are so addicted to this practice, that they invite their friends to "bucca" as Europeans do to dinner. The vessel containing the tobacco juice makes the round of the party, and a profound silence ensues, broken only by the harmonious gurgle of the delectable fluid. Conversation is carried on by signs.