Ismailia Part 9

These arrangements occupied the whole morning. In the afternoon I again inspected them. Having asked the officer whether any of the negresses would wish to be married, he replied that all the women wished to marry, and that they had already selected their husbands!

This was wholesale matrimony, that required a church as large as Westminster Abbey, and a whole company of clergy!

Fortunately, matters are briefly arrranged in Africa. I saw the loving couples standing hand in hand. Some of the girls were pretty, and my black troops had shown good taste in their selection. Unfortunately, however, for the Egyptian regiment, the black ladies had a strong antipathy to brown men, and the suitors were all refused. This was a very awkward affair. The ladies having received their freedom, at once a.s.serted "woman's rights."

I was obliged to limit the matrimonial engagements, and those who were for a time condemned to single blessedness were placed in charge of certain officers to perform the cooking for the troops and other domestic work. I divided the boys into cla.s.ses; some I gave to the English workmen to be instructed in carpenter's and blacksmith's work; others were apprenticed to tailors, shoemakers, &c., in the regiment, while the best looking were selected as domestic servants. A nice little girl, of about three years old, without parents, was taken care of by my wife.

When slaves are liberated in large numbers there is always a difficulty in providing for them. We feel this dilemma when our cruisers capture Arab dhows on the east coast of Africa, and our government becomes responsible for an influx of foundlings. It is generally quite impossible to return them to their own homes, therefore all that can be done is to instruct them in some useful work by which they can earn their livelihood. If the boys have their choice, they invariably desire a military life; and I believe it is the best school for any young savage, as he is at once placed under strict discipline, which teaches him habits of order and obedience. The girls, like those of other countries, prefer marriage to regular domestic work; nevertheless, if kindly treated, with a due amount of authority, they make fair servants for any rough employment.

When female children are about five years old they are most esteemed by the slave-dealers, as they can be more easily taught, and they grow up with an attachment to their possessors, and in fact become members of the family.

Little Mostoora, the child taken by my wife, was an exceedingly clever specimen of her race, and although she was certainly not more than three years old, she was quicker than most children of double her age. With an ugly little face, she bad a beautifully shaped figure, and possessed a power of muscle that I have never seen in a white child of that age. Her lot had fallen in pleasant quarters; she was soon dressed in convenient clothes and became the pet of the family.

On June 17, 1 sent the No. 9 steamer to Khartoum with the post, together with three sons of Quat Kare, who were to represent their father at the divan of Djiaffer Pacha. The old man declined the voyage, pleading his age as an excuse. Mr. Wood also returned, as his health required an immediate change to Egypt. On the 25th, four vessels arrived from the south, two belonging to Kutchuk Ali, one to Agad, and one to a trader named a.s.saballa, from the Bahr Gazal. The latter had thirty-five slaves on board. The others had heard, by some vessels that had gone up from Khartoum, that I had formed a station near the Sobat, and had captured the vessel and slaves of Kutchuk Ali, thus they had landed their slaves at the Bahr Giraffe station. The Bahr Gazal vessel having arrived from a different direction had not received the information. I seized the boat and cargo, and liberated the slaves.

On board the diahbeeah of Kutchuk Ali were four musicians, natives of Pongo, on the river Djoor. Their band consisted of two iron bells, a flageolet and an instrument made of hard wood that was arranged like the musical gla.s.ses of Europe. The latter was formed of ten pieces of a metallic sounding-wood suspended above long narrow gourd sh.e.l.ls. Each piece of wood produced a separate note, and the instrument was played by four sticks, the ends of which were covered with india-rubber. The general effect, although a savage kind of harmony, was superior to most native attempts at music.

The station of Tewfikeeyah had now a.s.sumed an important aspect, and I much regretted that when the time should arrive for our departure to the south it would be abandoned: however, I determined to keep all hands employed, as there is nothing so demoralizing to troops as inaction. At the same time there was a general dislike to the expedition, and all trusted that something might happen that would prevent another attempt to penetrate the marshes of the Bahr Giraffe. There was much allowance to be made for this feeling. The seeds of dangerous disorders, that had been sown by the malaria of the swamps, had now exhibited themselves in fatal attacks of dysentery, that quickly formed a cemetery at Tewfikeeyah.

The Egyptian troops were generally sickly and dispirited, and went to their daily work in a slouching, dogged manner, that showed their pa.s.sive hatred of the employment.

I arranged that the sailors should cultivate a piece of ground with corn, while the soldiers should be employed in a similar manner in another position. The sailors were all Nubians, or the natives of Dongola, Berber, and the countries bordering the Nile in the Soudan.

These people were of the same cla.s.s as the slave-hunter companies, men who hated work and preferred a life of indolence, lounging sleepily about their vessels. I quickly got these fellows into order by dividing them into gangs, over which I placed separate headmen, the captains of vessels; one superior officer commanded, and was responsible for the whole.

They only worked six hours daily, but by this simple organization I soon had thirty acres of land cleaned. The gra.s.s and roots were burnt in piles, the ashes spread, and the entire field was dug over and sown with barley, wheat, and dhurra. There is a civilizing influence in cultivation, and nothing is so cheering in a wild country as the sight of well-arranged green fields that are flouris.h.i.+ng in the centre of the neglected wilderness. I had now a promising little farm of about thirty acres belonging to our naval brigade; and a very unpromising farm, that had been managed by my Colonel, Raouf Bey. The soldiers had never even cleared the rough native gra.s.s from the surface, but had turned up the soil in small lots at intervals of about a foot, into which they had carelessly dropped a few grains of corn.

We now found agricultural enemies that were unexpected. Guinea-fowl recognized the importance of cultivation, and created terrible damage.

Small birds of the sparrow tribe infested the newly-sown land in clouds, but worse than these enemies were the vast armies of great ants.

These industrious insects, ever providing for the future, discovered the newly sown barley and wheat, and considering that such an opportunity should not be neglected, they literally marched off with the greater portion of the seed that was exposed. I saw them on many occasions returning in countless numbers from a foray, each carrying in its mouth a grain of barley or wheat. I tracked them to their subterranean nests, in one of which I found about a peck of corn which had been conveyed by separate grains; and patches of land had been left nearly barren of seed.

The large crimson-headed goose of the White Nile quickly discovered that barley was a food well adapted for the physical const.i.tution of geese, and great numbers flocked to the new farm. The guinea-fowl were too wild to approach successfully; however, we shot them daily. I set little boys to scream from daylight till sunset to scare the clouds of small birds; but the boys screamed themselves to sleep, and the sparrows quickly discovered the incapacity of the watchers. Wild fowl were so numerous on an island opposite the farm that we not only shot them as we required, but on one occasion Lieutenant Baker and myself bagged in about two hours sixty-eight ducks and geese, most of which were single shots in flight overhead.

I found the necessity of re-sowing the land so thickly that there should be sufficient grain to allow for the depredations of our enemies. I set vermin traps and caught the guinea-fowl. Then the natural enemy appeared in the wild cats, who took the guinea-fowls out of the traps. At first the men were suspected of stealing the birds, but the unmistakable tracks of the wild cats were found close to the traps, and shortly after the wily cats themselves became victims. These were generally of the genus Herpestris.

When the crops, having resisted many enemies, appeared above ground, they were attacked by the mole crickets in formidable numbers. These destructive insects lived beneath the small solid clods of earth, and issuing forth at night, they bit the young shoot clean off close to the parent grain at the point of extreme sweetness. The garden suffered terribly from these insects, which destroyed whole rows of cuc.u.mber plants.

I had brought ploughs from Cairo. These were the native implements that are used throughout Egypt. There is always a difficulty in the first commencement of agricultural enterprise in a wild country, and much patience is required.

Some of my Egyptian soldiers were good ploughmen, to which employment they had been formerly accustomed; but the bullocks of the country were pigheaded creatures that for a long time resisted all attempts at conversion to the civilized labour of Egyptian cattle. They steadily refused to draw the ploughs, and they determined upon an "agricultural strike." They had not considered that we could strike also, and tolerably hard, with the hippopotamus hide whips, which were a more forcible appeal to their feelings than a "lock-out." However, this contest ended in the bullocks lying down, and thus offering a pa.s.sive resistance that could not be overcome. There is nothing like arbitration to obtain pure justice, and as I was the arbitrator, I ordered all refractory bullocks to be eaten as rations by the troops. A few animals at length became fairly tractable; and we had a couple of ploughs at work, but the result was a series of zigzag furrows that more resembled the indiscriminate ploughings of a herd of wild boar than the effect of an agricultural implement. Nothing will ever go straight at the commencement, therefore the ploughs naturally went crooked; but the whole affair forcibly reminded me of my first agricultural enterprise on the mountains of Ceylon twenty-five years earlier. [*]

[*Footnote: See "Eight Years' Wanderings in Ceylon," published by Longman & Co.]

The mean temperature at the station of Tewfikeeyah had been:

In the month of May, at 6 a.m. 73 degrees Fahrenheit " at Noon 92 degrees "

" June, at 6 a.m. 72 degrees "

" at Noon 86 degrees "

" July, at 6 a.m. 71 degrees "

" at Noon 81 degrees "

During May we had heavy rain during 3 days.

" " light " " 4 " 7 days.

During June we had heavy rain during 5 days.

" " light " " 6 " 11 days " July heavy " " 10 "

" " light " " 4 " 14 days

Sickness increased proportionately with the increase of rain, owing to the sudden chills occasioned by the heavy showers. The thermometer would sometimes fall rapidly to 68 degrees Fahr. during a storm of rain, accompanied by a cold rush of air from the cloud. Fortunately I had provided the troops with blankets, which had not been included in their kit by the authorities at Khartoum.

CHAPTER V.

EXPLORATION OF THE OLD WHITE NILE.

I had long since determined to explore the sudd, or obstructions of the main Nile, in the hope of discovering some new pa.s.sage which the stream might have forced through the vegetation. A s.h.i.+llook, named Abdullah, closely connected with Quat Kare, had promised to accompany me, and to supply the necessary guides. The river was full--thus I started on 11th August, 1870.

The engines of the No. 10 steamer had been thoroughly repaired during our stay at Tewfikeeyah. I had loaded her to the maximum with well-cut "Soont" (Acacia Arabicce), which is the best fuel; and knowing, by the experience of former years, that a scarcity of wood existed near the Bahr Gazal, I had loaded one of the largest vessels (about seventy tons) with a supply, to accompany us as a tender. I had also filled my diahbeeah with selected fuel.

We steamed thirteen hours from Tewfikeeyah, with the tender and diahbeeah in tow, and reached the old sudd about twelve miles beyond the Bahr Giraffe junction. The water below the sudd was quite clear from floating vegetation, as it had been filtered through this extraordinary obstruction.

I will not fatigue the reader by a description of this voyage. We were as usual in a chaos of marshes. We found a small channel, which took us to the Bahr Gazal. This swampy and stagnant lacustine river was much changed since I had last seen it in 1865. It was now a succession of lakes, through which we steamed for several hours, but without discovering any exit, except the main pa.s.sage coming from the west, which is the actual Bahr Gazal.

This was the third time that I had visited this river. Upon the former occasions I had remarked the total absence of current; this was even still more remarkable at the present time, as the river was not only full, but the surface, formerly clogged and choked with dense rafts of vegetation, was now clear. I sounded the depth of the lakes and main channel, which gave a remarkable mean of seven feet throughout, showing that the bottom was remarkably flat, and had not been subjected to the action of any stream that would have caused inequalities in the surface of the ground.

When the vessels lay at anchor, the filth of the s.h.i.+ps remained alongside, thus proving the total absence of stream. It has always appeared to me that some western outlet concealed by the marsh gra.s.s must exist, which carries away the water brought down by the Djour, and other streams, into the lacustrine regions of the Bahr Gazal. There is no doubt that the evaporation, and also the absorption of water by the immense area of spongy vegetation, is a great drain upon the volume subscribed by the affluents from the south-west; nevertheless, I should have expected some stream, however slight, at the junction with the Nile. My experience of the Bahr Gazal a.s.sures me that little or no water is given to the White Nile by the extraordinary series of lakes and swamps, which change the appearance of the surface from year to year, like the s.h.i.+fting phases of a dream.

Our lamented traveller, Livingstone, was completely in error when he conjectured that the large river Lualaba that he had discovered south-west of the Tanganyika lake was an affluent of the Bahr Gazal. The Lualaba is far to the west of the Nile Basin, and may possibly flow to the Congo. I have shown in former works, in describing the system of the Nile, that the great affluents of that river invariably flow from the south-east--vide, the Atbara, Blue Nile, Sobat; and the Asua, which is very inferior so the three great rivers named.

We have lastly the Victoria Nile of the Victoria N'yanza, following the same principle, and flowing from the south-east to the Albert N'yanza.

This proves that the direct drainage of the Nile Basin is from the south-east to the north-west; it is therefore probable that, as the inclination of the country is towards the west, there may be some escape from the lake marshes of the Bahr Gazal in the same direction.

On 21st August, having been absent ten days, during which we had been very hard at work, exploring in the unhealthy marshes of the Bahr Gaza], we returned hopelessly to Tewfikeeyah.

The great river Nile was entirely lost, and had become a swamp, similar to the condition of the Bahr Giraffe. It was impossible to guess the extent of the obstruction; but I was confident that it would be simply a question of time and labour to clear the original channel by working from below the stream. The great power of the current would a.s.sist the work, and with proper management this formerly beautiful river might be restored to its original condition. It would be impossible to clear the Bahr Giraffe permanently, as there was not sufficient breadth of channel to permit the escape of huge rafts of vegetation occupying the surface of perhaps an acre; but the great width of the Nile, if once opened, together with the immense power of the stream, would, with a little annual inspection, a.s.sure the permanency of the work.

I came to the conclusion that a special expedition must be sent from Khartoum to take this important work in hand, as it would be quite useless to annex and attempt to civilize Central Africa, unless a free communication existed with the outer world by which a commercial channel could be opened. My exploration, in which I had been ably a.s.sisted by Lieutenant Baker and Mr. Higginbotham, had proved that for the present it was impossible to penetrate south by the main river, therefore I must make all preparations for an advance by the Bahr Giraffe, where I hoped that our past labour might have in some degree improved the channel.

The close of August showed a mean temperature of 73 6/10 degrees at 6 a.m., and 85 degrees Fahrenheit at noon, with seven days of heavy and seven of light rain. Although the station was admirably drained, the climate acted unfavourably upon the people. On 9th September it was necessary for the unfortunate Dr. Gedge, my chief medical officer, to return to Khartoum, as his state of health required immediate change.

Just as the diahbeeah was leaving the station, a vessel arrived from the Bahr Gazal, by which I received a letter from the German traveller, Dr.

Schweinfurth. This gentleman, to whom I was quite unknown personally, had the extreme courtesy and generosity to intrust me with all the details of his geographical observations, collected in his journey in the Western Nile Basin.

It was necessary for me to return personally to Khartoum to a.s.sure myself that my arrangements should be carried out without delay. I had determined that the expedition should start for the south from Tewfikeeyah on 1st Dec., at which time the Nile would be full, and the wind strong from the north. As Tewfikeeyah was nearly half way in actual distance from Khartoum to Gondokoro, I trusted that we should have time to accomplish the work of cutting through the marshes, and be enabled to pa.s.s the shallows before the river should begin to fall. I therefore sent Mr. Higginbotham to Khartoum to engage vessels; I followed on 15th September, with the No. 10 steamer towing my diahbeeah--and ten empty vessels to bring up a supply of corn.

We reached Khartoum on the 21st Sept. at 9.30 a.m., to the astonishment of the governor and population, who could not understand why I had returned. I now met for the first time the Vicomte de Bizemont, who was to accompany the expedition. This gentleman had been intrusted by the Empress of the French with a very gracious token of her interest in the expedition, which he presented as a gift from her Majesty to my wife. I now heard for the first time the startling news of the war between France and Prussia. I found Dr. Gedge alive, but in a deplorable state of health. It was impossible for him to travel north, therefore he was carefully attended by the Greek physician to the forces, Dr. Georgis. I at once saw that there was no hope of recovery. Mr. Higginbotham had been exceedingly kind and attentive to his wants.

I was very well received by my old friend, Djiaffer Pacha, the governor-general, but as usual the work was all behind-hand, and Mr.