Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 70, No. 431, September 1851
"We shall march to-morrow," had long been the daily assurance of those wiseacres, to be found in every army, who always know what the general means to do better than the general himself. At last the much-desired order was issued – of course when everybody least expected it – and, after a night of bustle and confusion, the army got into motion, in its usual disorderly array. Its destination was a mountain called Kassela-el-Lus, in the heart of the Taka country, whither the Bascha had sent stores of grain, and where he proposed passing the rainy season and founding a new town. The distance was about fourteen hours' march. The route led south-eastwards, at first through a level country, covered with boundless fields of tall durra. At the horizon, like a great blue cloud, rose the mountain of Kassela, a blessed sight to eyes that had long been weary of the monotonous level country. After a while the army got out of the durra-fields, and proceeded over a large plain scantily overgrown with grass, observing a certain degree of military order and discipline, in anticipation of an attempt, on the part of the angry Arabs, to rescue Mohammed Din and his companions in captivity. Numerous hares and jackals were started and ridden down. Even gazelles, swift as they are, were sometimes overtaken by the excellent Turkish horses. Presently the grass grew thicker and tall enough to conceal a small donkey, and they came to wooded tracts and jungles, and upon marks of elephants and other wild beasts. The foot-prints of the elephants, in places where the ground had been slightly softened by the rain, were often a foot deep, and from a foot and a half to two feet in length and breadth. Mr Werne regrets not obtaining a view of one of these giant brutes. The two-horned rhinoceros is also common in that region, and is said to be of extraordinary ferocity in its attacks upon men and beasts, and not unfrequently to come off conqueror in single combat with the elephant. "Suddenly the little Schaïgiës cavalry set up a great shouting, and every one handled his arms, anticipating an attack from the Arabs. But soon the cry of 'Asset! Asset!' (lion) was heard, and we gazed eagerly on every side, curious for the lion's appearance. The Bascha had already warned his chase-loving cavalry, under penalty of a thousand blows, not to quit their ranks on the appearance of wild beasts, for in that broken ground he feared disorder in the army and an attack from the enemy. I and my brother were at that moment with Melek Mahmud at the outward extremity of the left wing; suddenly a tolerably large lioness trotted out of a thicket beside us, not a hundred paces off. She seemed quite fearless, for she did not quicken her pace at sight of the army. The next minute a monstrous lion showed himself at the same spot, roaring frightfully, and apparently in great fury; his motions were still slower than those of his female; now and then he stood still to look at us, and after coming to within sixty or seventy paces – we all standing with our guns cocked, ready to receive him – he gave us a parting scowl, and darted away, with great bounds, in the track of his wife. In a moment both had disappeared." Soon after this encounter, which startled and delighted Dr Werne, and made his brother's little dromedary dance with alarm, they reached the banks of the great gohr, (the bed of a river, filled only in the rainy season,) known as El Gasch, which intersects the countries of Taka and Basa. With very little daring and still less risk, the Haddendas, who are said to muster eighty thousand fighting men, might have annihilated the Bascha's army, as it wound its toilsome way for nearly a league along the dry water-course, (whose high banks were crowned with trees and thick bushes,) the camels stumbling and occasionally breaking their legs in the deep holes left by the feet of the elephants, where the cavalry could not have acted, and where every javelin must have told upon the disorderly groups of weary infantry. The Arabs either feared the firearms, or dreaded lest their attack should be the signal for the instant slaughter of their Grand-Shech, who rode, in the midst of the infantry, upon a donkey, which had been given him out of consideration for his age, whilst the three other prisoners were cruelly forced to perform the whole march on foot, with heavy chains on their necks and feet, and exposed to the jibes of the pitiless soldiery. On quitting the Gohr, the march was through trees and brushwood, and then through a sort of labyrinthine swamp, where horses and camels stumbled at every step, and where the Arabs again had a glorious opportunity, which they again neglected, of giving Achmet such a lesson as they had given to his predecessor in the Baschalik. The army now entered the country of the Hallengas, and a six days' halt succeeded to their long and painful march.
It would be of very little interest to trace the military operations of Achmet Bascha, which were altogether of the most contemptible description – consisting in the chasuas, or razzias already noticed, sudden and secret expeditions of bodies of armed men against defenceless tribes, whom they despoiled of their cattle and women. From his camp at the foot of Kassela-el-Lus, the Bascha directed many of these marauding parties, remaining himself safely in a large hut, which Mr Werne had had constructed for him, and usually cheating the men and officers, who had borne the fatigue and run the risk, out of their promised share of the booty. Sometimes the unfortunate natives, driven to the wall and rendered desperate by the cruelties of their oppressors, found courage for a stout resistance.
"An expedition took place to the mountains of Basa, and the troops brought back a large number of prisoners of both sexes. The men were almost all wounded, and showed great fortitude under the painful operation of extracting the balls. Even the Turks confessed that these mountaineers had made a gallant defence with lances and stones. Of our soldiers several had musket-shot wounds, inflicted by their comrades' disorderly fire. The Turks asserted that the Mograbins and Schaïgiës sometimes fired intentionally at the soldiers, to drive them from their booty. It was a piteous sight to see the prisoners – especially the women and children – brought into camp bound upon camels, and with despair in their countenances. Before they were sold or allotted, they were taken near the tent of Topschi Baschi, where a fire was kept burning, and were all, even to the smallest children, branded on the shoulder with a red-hot iron in the form of a star. When their moans and lamentations reached our hut, we took our guns and hastened away out shooting with three servants. These, notwithstanding our exhortations, would ramble from us, and we had got exceedingly angry with them for so doing, when suddenly we heard three shots, and proceeded in that direction, thinking it was they who had fired. Instead of them, we found three soldiers, lying upon the ground, bathed in their blood and terribly torn. Two were already dead, and the third, whose whole belly was ripped up, told us they had been attacked by a lion. The three shots brought up our servants, whom we made carry the survivor into camp, although my brother entertained slight hopes of saving him. The Bascha no sooner heard of the incident than he got on horseback with Soliman Kaschef and his people, to hunt the lion, and I accompanied him with my huntsman Sale, a bold fellow, who afterwards went with me up the White Nile. On reaching the spot where the lion had been, the Turks galloped off to seek him, and I and Sale alone remained behind. Suddenly I heard a heavy trampling, and a crashing amongst the bushes, and I saw close beside me an elephant with its calf. Sale, who was at some distance, and had just shot a parrot, called out to know if he should fire at the elephant, which I loudly forbade him to do. The beast broke its way through the brushwood just at hand. I saw its high back, and took up a safe position amongst several palm-trees, which all grew from one root, and were so close together that the elephant could not get at me. Sale was already up a tree, and told me the elephant had turned round, and was going back into the chaaba. The brute seemed angry or anxious about its young one, for we found the ground dug up for a long distance by its tusk as by a plough. Some shots were fired, and we thought the Bascha and his horsemen were on the track of the lion, but they had seen the elephant, and formed a circle round it. A messenger galloped into camp, and in a twinkling the Arnaut Abdin Bey came up with part of his people. The elephant, assailed on all sides by a rain of bullets, charged first one horseman, then another; they delivered their fire and galloped off. The eyes were the point chiefly aimed at, and it soon was evident that he was blinded by the bullets, for when pursuing his foes he ran against the trees, the shock of his unwieldy mass shaking the fruit from the palms. The horsemen dismounted and formed a smaller circle around him. He must already have received some hundred bullets, and the ground over which he staggered was dyed red, when the Bascha crept quite near him, knelt down and sent a shot into his left eye, whereupon the colossus sank down upon his hinder end and died. Nothing was to be seen of the calf or of the lion, but a few days later a large male lion was killed by Soliman Kaschef's men, close to camp, where we often in the night-time heard the roaring of those brutes."
Just about this time bad news reached the Wernes. Their huntsman Abdallah, to whom they were much attached by reason of his gallantry and fidelity, had gone a long time before to the country of the Beni-Amers, eastward from Taka, in company of a Schaïgië chief, mounted on one of their best camels, armed with a double-barrelled gun, and provided with a considerable sum of money for the purchase of giraffes. On his way back to his employers, with a valuable collection of stuffed birds and other curiosities, he was barbarously murdered, when travelling, unescorted, through the Hallenga country, and plundered of all his baggage. Sale, who went to identify his friend's mutilated corpse, attributed the crime to the Hallengas. Mr Werne was disposed to suspect Mohammed Ehle, a great villain, whom the Bascha at times employed as a secret stabber and assassin. This Ehle had been appointed Schech of the Hallengas by the Divan, in lieu of the rightful Schech, who had refused submission to the Turks. Three nephews of Mohammed Din (one of them the same youth who had escorted the Wernes safely back to camp when they were in peril of their lives in the Haddenda country) came to visit their unfortunate relative, who was still a prisoner, cruelly treated, lying upon the damp earth, chained to two posts, and awaiting with fortitude the cruel death by impalement with which the Bascha threatened him. Achmet received the young men very coldly, and towards evening they set out, greatly depressed by their uncle's sad condition, upon their return homewards. Early next morning the Wernes, when out shooting, found the dead bodies of their three friends. They had been set upon and slain after a gallant defence, as was testified by their bloody lances, and by other signs of a severe struggle. The birds of prey had already picked out their eyes, and their corpses presented a frightful spectacle. The Wernes, convinced that this assassination had taken place by the Bascha's order, loaded the bodies on a camel, took them to Achmet, and preferred an accusation against the Hallengas for this shameful breach of hospitality. The Bascha's indifference confirmed their suspicions. He testified no indignation, but there was great excitement amongst his officers; and when they left the Divan, Mr Werne violently reproached Mohammed Ehle, whom he was well assured was the murderer, and who endured his anger in silence. "The Albanian Abdin Bey was so enraged that he was only withheld by the united persuasions of the other officers from mounting his horse and charging Mohammed Ehle with his wild Albanians, the consequence of which would inevitably have been a general mutiny against the Bascha, for the soldiers had long been murmuring at their bad food and ill treatment." The last hundred pages of Mr Werne's very closely printed and compendious volume abound in instances of the Bascha's treachery and cruelty, and of the retaliation exercised by the Arabs. On one occasion a party of fifty Turkish cavalry were murdered by the Haddendas, who had invited them to a feast. The town of Gos-Rajeb was burned, twenty of the merchants there resident were killed, and the corn, stored there for the use of the army on its homeward march, was plundered. The Bascha had a long-cherished plan of cutting off the supply of water from the country of the Haddendas. This was to be done by damming up the Gohr-el-Gasch, and diverting the abundant stream which, in the rainy season, rushed along its deep gully, overflowing the tall banks and fertilising fields and forests. As the Bascha's engineer and confidential adviser, Mr Werne was compelled to direct this work. By the labour of thousands of men, extensive embankments were made, and the Haddendas began to feel the want of water, which had come down from the Abyssinian mountains, and already stood eight feet deep in the Gohr. Mr Werne repented his share in the cruel work, and purposely abstained from pressing the formation of a canal which was to carry off the superfluous water to the Atbara, there about three leagues distant from the Gohr. And one morning he was awakened by a great uproar in the camp, and by the shouts of the Bascha, who was on horseback before his hut, and he found that a party of Haddendas had thrashed a picket and made an opening in the dykes, which was the deathblow to Achmet's magnificent project of extracting an exorbitant tribute from Mohammed Din's tribe as the price of the supply of water essential to their very existence. The sole results of the cruel attempt were a fever to the Bascha, who had got wet, and the sickness of half the army, who had been compelled to work like galley-slaves under a burning sun and upon bad rations. The vicinity of Kassela is rich in curious birds and beasts. The mountain itself swarms with apes, and Mr Werne frequently saw groups of two or three hundred of them seated upon the cliffs. They are about the size of a large dog, with dark brown hair and hideous countenances. Awful was the screaming and howling they set up of a night, when they received the unwelcome visit of some hungry leopard or prowling panther. Once the Wernes went out with their guns for a day's sport amongst the monkeys, but were soon glad to beat a retreat under a tremendous shower of stones. Hassan, a Turk, who purveyed the brothers with hares, gazelles, and other savoury morsels, and who was a very good shot, promised to bring in – of course for good payment – not only a male and female monkey, but a whole camel-load if desired. He started off with this object, but did not again show himself for some days, and tried to sneak out of the Wernes' way when they at last met him in the bazaar. He had a hole in his head, and his shoulder badly hurt, and declared he would have nothing more to say to those transformed men upon the mountain. Mr Werne was very desirous to catch a monkey alive, but was unsuccessful, and Mohammed Ehle refused to sell a tame one which he owned, and which usually sat upon his hut. Mr Werne thinks them a variety of the Chimpanzee. They fight amongst themselves with sticks, and defend themselves fiercely with stones against the attacks of men. Upon the whole the Wernes were highly fortunate in collecting zoological and ornithological specimens, of which they subsequently sent a large number, stuffed, to the Berlin museum. They also secured several birds and animals alive; amongst these a young lion and a civet cat. Regarding reptiles they were very curious, and nothing of that kind was too long or too large for them. As Ferdinand Werne was sitting one day upon his dromedary, in company with the Bascha, on the left bank of the Gasch, the animals shied at a large serpent which suddenly darted by. The Bascha ordered the men who were working at the dykes to capture it, which they at once proceeded to do, as unconcernedly as an English haymaker would assail a hedge snake. "Pursued by several men, the serpent plunged into the water, out of which it then boldly reared its head, and confronted an Arab who had jumped in after it, armed with a hassaie. With extraordinary skill and daring the Arab approached it, his club uplifted, and struck it over the head, so that the serpent fell down stunned and writhing mightily; whereupon another Arab came up with a cord; the club-bearer, without further ceremony, griped the reptile by the throat, just below the head; the noose was made fast, and the pair of them dragged their prize on shore. There it lay for a moment motionless, and we contemplated the terribly beautiful creature, which was more than eleven feet long and half-a-foot in diameter. But when they began to drag it away, by which the skin would of course be completely spoiled, orders were given to carry it to camp. A jacket was tied over its head, and three men set to work to get it upon their shoulders; but the serpent made such violent convulsive movements that all three fell to the ground with it, and the same thing occurred again when several others had gone to their assistance. I accompanied them into camp, drove a big nail into the foremost great beam of our recuba, (hut,) and had the monster suspended from it. He hung down quite limp, as did also several other snakes, which were still alive, and which our servants had suspended inside our hut, intending to skin them the next morning, as it was now nearly dark. In the night I felt a most uncomfortable sensation. One of the snakes, which was hung up at the head of my bed, had smeared his cold tail over my face. But I sprang to my feet in real alarm, and thought I had been struck over the shin with a club, when the big serpent, now in the death agony, gave me a wipe with its tail through the open door, in front of which our servants were squatted, telling each other ghost stories of snake-kings and the like… They called this serpent assala, which, however, is a name they give to all large serpents. Soon afterwards we caught another, as thick, but only nine feet long, and with a short tail, like the Vipera cerastes; and this was said to be of that breed of short, thick snakes which can devour a man." In the mountains of Basa, two days' journey from the Gohr-el-Gasch, and on the road thither, snakes are said to exist, of no great length, but as thick as a crocodile, and which can conveniently swallow a man; and instances were related to Mr Werne of these monsters having swallowed persons when they lay sleeping on their angarèbs. Sometimes the victims had been rescued when only half gorged! Of course travellers hear strange stories, and some of those related by Mr Werne are tolerably astounding; but these are derived from his Turkish, Egyptian, or Arabian acquaintances, and there is no appearance of exaggeration or romancing in anything which he narrates as having occurred to or been witnessed by himself. A wild tradition was told him of a country called Bellad-el-Kelb, which signifies the Country of Dogs, where the women were in all respects human, but where the men had faces like dogs, claws on their feet, and tails like monkeys. They could not speak, but carried on conversation by wagging their tails. This ludicrous account appeared explicable by the fact, that the men of Bellad-el-Kelb are great robbers, living by plunder, and, like fierce and hungry dogs, never relinquishing their prey.
The Hallengas, amongst whom the expedition now found itself, were far more frank and friendly, and much less wild, than the Haddendas and some other tribes, and they might probably have been converted into useful allies by a less cruel and capricious invader than the Bascha. But conciliation was no part of his scheme; if he one day caressed a tribe or a chief, it was only to betray them the next. Mr Werne was on good terms with some of the Hallenga sheiks, and went to visit the village of Hauathi, about three miles from camp, to see the birds of paradise which abounded there. On his road he saw from afar a great tree covered with those beautiful birds, and which glistened in the sunshine with all the colours of the rainbow. Some days later he and his brother went to drink merissa, a slightly intoxicating liquor, with one of the Fakis or priests of the country. The two Germans got very jovial, drinking to each other, student-fashion; and the faki, attempting to keep pace with them, got crying-drunk, and disclosed a well-matured plan for blowing up their powder-magazine. The ammunition had been stored in the village of Kadmin, which was a holy village, entirely inhabited by fakis. The Bascha had made sure that none of the natives would risk blowing up these holy men, even for the sake of destroying his ammunition, and he was unwilling to keep so large a quantity of powder amidst his numerous camp-fires and reckless soldiery. But the fakis had made their arrangements. On a certain night they were to depart, carrying away all their property into the great caverns of Mount Kassela, and fire was to be applied to the house that held the powder. Had the plot succeeded, the whole army was lost, isolated as it was in the midst of unfriendly tribes, embittered by its excesses, and by the aggressions and treachery of its chief, and who, stimulated by their priests, would in all probability have exterminated it to the last man, when it no longer had cartridges for its defence. The drunken faki's indiscretion saved Achmet and his troops; the village was forthwith surrounded, and the next day the ammunition was transferred to camp. Not to rouse the whole population against him, the Bascha abstained for the moment from punishing the conspirators, but he was not the man to let them escape altogether; and some time afterwards, Mr Werne, who had returned to Chartum, received a letter from his brother, informing him that nine fakis had been hung on palm-trees just outside the camp, and that the magnanimous Achmet proposed treating forty more in the same way.
A mighty liar was Effendina Achmet Bascha, as ever ensnared a foe or broke faith with a friend. Greedy and cruel was he also, as only a Turkish despot can be. One of his most active and unscrupulous agents was a bloodsucker named Hassan Effendi, whom he sent to the country of the Beni-Amers to collect three thousand five hundred cows and thirteen hundred camels, the complement of their tribute. Although this tribe had upon the whole behaved very peaceably, Hassan's first act was to shoot down a couple of hundred of them like wild beasts. Then he seized a large number of camels belonging to the Haddendas, although the tribe was at that very time in friendly negotiation with the Bascha. The Haddendas revenged themselves by burning Gos-Rajeb. In proof of their valour, Hassan's men cut off the ears of the murdered Beni-Amers, and took them to Achmet, who gave them money for the trophies. "They had forced a slave to cut off the ears; yonder now lies the man – raving mad, and bound with cords. Camel-thieves, too – no matter to what tribe they belong – if caught in flagranti, lose their ears, for which the Bascha gives a reward. That many a man who never dreamed of committing a theft loses his ears in this way, is easy to understand, for the operation is performed on the spot." Dawson Borrer, in his Campaign in the Kabylie, mentions a very similar practice as prevailing in Marshal Bugeaud's camp, where ten francs was the fixed price for the head of a horse-stealer, it being left to the soldiers who severed the heads and received the money to discriminate between horse-stealers and honest men. Whether Bugeaud took a hint from the Bascha, or the Bascha was an admiring imitator of Bugeaud, remains a matter of doubt. "Besides many handsome women and children, Hassan Effendi brought in two thousand nine hundred cows, and seven thousand sheep." He might have been a French prince returning from a razzia. "For himself he kept eighty camels, which he said he had bought." A droll dog, this Hassan Effendi, but withal rather covetous – given to sell his soldier's rations, and to starve his servants, a single piastre – about twopence halfpenny – being his whole daily outlay for meat for his entire household, who lived for the most part upon durra and water. If his servants asked for wages, they received the bastinado. "The Bascha had given the poor camel-drivers sixteen cows. The vampire (Hassan) took upon himself to appropriate thirteen of them." Mr Werne reported this robbery to the Bascha, but Achmet merely replied "malluch" – signifying, "it matters not." When inferior officers received horses as their share of booty, Hassan bought them of them, but always forgot to pay, and the poor subalterns feared to complain to the Bascha, who favoured the rogue, and recommended him to the authorities at Cairo for promotion to the rank of Bey, because, as he told Mr Werne with an ironical smile, Hassan was getting very old and infirm, and when he died the Divan would bring charges against him, and inherit his wealth. Thus are things managed in Egypt. No wonder that, where such injustice and rascality prevail, many are found to rejoice at the prospect of a change of rulers. "News from Souakim (on the Red Sea) of the probable landing of the English, excite great interest in camp; from all sides they come to ask questions of us, thinking that we, as Franks, must know the intentions of the invaders. Upon the whole, they would not be displeased at such a change of government, particularly when we tell them of the good pay and treatment customary amongst the English; and that with them no officer has to endure indignities from his superiors in rank."
"I have now," says Mr Werne, (page 256,) "been more than half a year away from Chartum, continually in the field, and not once have I enjoyed the great comfort of reposing, undressed, between clean white sheets, but have invariably slept in my clothes, on the ground, or on the short but practical angarèb. All clean linen disappears, for the constant perspiration and chalky dust burns everything; and the servants do not understand washing, inasmuch as, contrasted with their black hides, everything appears white to them, and for the last three months no soap has been obtainable. And in the midst of this dirty existence, which drags itself along like a slow fever, suddenly 'Julla!' is the word, and one hangs for four or five days, eighty or a hundred leagues, upon the camel's back, every bone bruised by the rough motion, – the broiling sun, thirst, hunger, and cold, for constant companions. Man can endure much: I have gone through far more than I ever thought I could, – vomiting and in a raging fever on the back of a dromedary, under a midday sun, more dead than alive, held upon my saddle by others, and yet I recovered. To have remained behind would have been to encounter certain death from the enemy, or from wild beasts. We have seen what a man can bear, under the pressure of necessity; in my present uniform and monotonous life I compare myself to the camels tied before my tent, which sometimes stand up, sometimes slowly stretch themselves on the ground, careless whether crows or ravens walk over their backs, constantly moving their jaws, looking up at the sun, and then, by way of a change, taking a mouthful of grass, but giving no signs of joy or curiosity."
From this state of languid indifference Mr Werne was suddenly and pleasurably roused by intelligence that a second expedition was fitting out for the White Nile. He and his brother immediately petitioned the Bascha for leave to accompany it. The desired permission was granted to him, but refused to his brother. There was too much sickness in the camp, the Bascha said; he could not spare his doctor, and lacked confidence in the Italian, Bellotti. The fondly-attached brothers were thus placed in a painful dilemma: they had hoped to pursue their wanderings hand in hand, and to pass their lives together, and loth indeed were they to sunder in those sickly and perilous regions. At last they made up their minds to the parting. It has been already recorded in Mr Werne's former work, how, within ten days of their next meeting, his beloved brother's eyes were closed in death.
In various respects, Mr Werne's Feldzug is one of the most curious books of travel and adventure that, for a very long time, has appeared. It has three points of particular attraction and originality. In the first place, the author wanders in a region previously unexplored by Christian and educated travellers, and amongst tribes whose bare names have reached the ears of but few Europeans. Secondly, he campaigns as officer in such an army as we can hardly realise in these days of high civilisation and strict military discipline, – so wild, motley, and grotesque are its customs, composition, and equipment, – an army whose savage warriors, strange practices, and barbarous cruelties, make us fancy ourselves in presence of some fierce Moslem horde of the middle ages, marching to the assault of Italy or Hungary. Thirdly, during his long sojourn in camp he had opportunities such as few ordinary travellers enjoy, and of which he diligently profited, to study and note down the characteristics and social habits of many of the races of men that make up the heterogeneous population of the Ottoman empire. Some of the physiological and medical details with which he favours us, would certainly have been more in their place in his brother's professional journal, than in a book intended for the public at large; and passages are not wanting at which the squeamish will be apt to lay down the volume in disgust. For such persons Mr Werne does not write; and his occasional indelicacy and too crude details are compensated, to our thinking, by his manly honest tone, and by the extraordinary amount of useful and curious information he has managed to pack into two hundred and seventy pages. As a whole, the Expedition to the White Nile, which contains a vast deal of dry meteorological and geographical detail, is decidedly far less attractive than the present book, which is as amusing as any romance. We have read it with absorbing interest, well pleased with the hint its author throws out at its close, that the records of his African wanderings are not yet all exhausted.