Chapter XXIV (2)

Before setting sail I had a good deal of squabbling with Ghattas’s people. I did not want to be brought into the close quarters which the limits of a boat’s deck necessitated with either lepers or slaves, and protested that if I did not shoot the first that came on board, I would at least take good care to report them to the Government. My endeavours in this way to secure my comfort were very far from being so successful as I wished. I had previously written to Kurshook Ali to engage the same boat which had brought him into the country to carry me back to Khartoom, making it an express stipulation that the boat should not convey any slaves. We had come to terms, and everything was apparently quite settled, when it turned out that the boat was not going to return until late in the year. To defer my departure so long was out of the question. Slaves or no slaves, it was all-important to me to be at Khartoom as soon as possible; and when I found that Ghattas’s people were this year going to ship only a limited number, I came to the resolution that, under the circumstances, I would take my chance with them. I knew that Sir Samuel Baker was on the Upper Nile, and did not doubt that his presence would have the effect of making the Government take the most strenuous measures against any import of slaves. I represented as strongly as I could to the people the danger they were incurring by having such property on board, but I might just as well have remonstrated with the winds. In spite of all I could say twenty-seven slaves were shipped, not avowedly as slaves, but so nearly in that capacity as at once to bring them under suspicion of being destined for the market. Undesirable as their company was, still I was thankful to be free from contact with any lepers; making the best, therefore, of an unpleasant business, I went on board on the afternoon of the 26th of June.

[Sidenote: MY OWN SLAVES.]

I confess that I felt a little tongue-tied, through not being myself entirely free from blame. I could not deny that I had three slaves of my own: these were Tikkitikki the Pygmy, Allagabo the Bongo, and Amber the Niam-niam. The other Niam-niam youth I left behind in the Seriba, after having gained him his freedom and seen him duly admitted into the Mohammedan sect by circumcision, the only means by which his social position could be secured. With regard to these lads I profess I had not the least squeamishness in carrying them away with me, and I felt none of that misgiving which other travellers have expressed when they have been tempted to a like proceeding. I felt that I could not leave them to a doubtful fate after they had been serving me faithfully for nothing, and attending me for two whole years in the desert; and I had no kind of idea that I was reducing myself to the level of a slave-dealer by determining to retain them and to introduce them to European civilisation, for if I left them behind I was quite aware that they would be immediately consigned to the ordinary lot of slavery. Rather was I disposed to compare myself with those noble-minded Orientals who, although they look upon the regular slave-dealer’s calling as the vilest and most degrading of all professions, yet do not consider the possession of slaves to be in itself illegitimate or inconsistent with the purest morality.

It may be well to transcribe here my original diary of the passage down the Gazelle. It will not, I believe, be without interest, if it be only to show that the length of the river has hitherto been much exaggerated on all previous maps:—

“_June 26th._—Sailed for about four hours, until evening,
along the Kyt. A light breeze. The Kyt channel from eight
to ten feet deep; its bottom one great mass of valisneria.

“_27th._—Dull, cloudy day. A contrary N.N.E. wind has
prevented us from getting beyond the mouth of the Dyoor.

“_28th._—Slow progress, on account of the continued N.N.E.
wind. In the afternoon a more favourable breeze. The boat’s
crew affirm that after passing the mouth of the Dyoor the
water becomes whiter. I cannot say that I can perceive
any difference; the water is clear and colourless, and
free from any flavour of the swamps, as if it had been
distilled. Elephants to be seen marching about the shore,
considerably in front of the demarcation line made by the
trees. To the west of the channel are columns of smoke from
some adjacent murah. Acacia-forests (none of the trees
more than forty feet high) line both sides of the land
subject to inundation; nowhere do these exceed a width of
two miles. We proceed through clumps of ambatch, and make
a wide bend to the west round an island which the sailors
call Gyerdiga. Continued sailing at night under a good west
wind.

“_29th._—Quite early at a place where the river is not 500
feet across; the contracted spot enclosed by bush-forest.
Soon afterwards we pass the mouth of the Bahr-el-Arab.
There is a favourable breeze from the south-east. In the
afternoon we reach the first Nueir villages. Some of the
great _Balæniceps rex_ are standing on the white ant-hills;
have they been there ever since I last saw them there,
two years and more ago? At evening a negro is dying from
dysentery; according to custom, the poor creature is thrown
overboard before life is really extinct. I fear my own
feelings of satisfaction at getting home again make me
somewhat callous to this horrible proceeding.

“_30th._—A clouded sky, and the wind contrary. We
heave-to in a backwater that is overgrown with grass for
seventy-five feet from either bank: a solitary doom-palm
marks the spot. Again sail on throughout the night, the
breeze having once more become favourable.

[Sidenote: DOWN THE GAZELLE.]

“_July 1st._—At 8 o’clock A.M. pass the Nueir villages, at
which we stayed for a day on our passage out. It is unsafe
to land now; a Vokeel of Kurshook Ali’s was murdered not
long since. The district is full of bushes; white ant-hills
and low acacia-hedges are frequent. A hippopotamus is
leaning against a great stem upon the bank; we approach
within thirty paces of the flesh-coloured brute, but it
makes no attempt to get into the water. A bullet is fired,
but seems to take no effect; the great beast totters about
as though it needed support. All the crew assert that it
is hopelessly ill, and has gone, as usual, on the land to
die; no one, however, explains why it still stands upright.
Large herds of Dinka cattle graze on the northern bank.
Towards evening we arrive at the lake-like opening by the
mouth of the Gazelle, where the water is a mile across. A
tremendous gale gets up from the N.N.E.; the boat is tossed
about on the muddy bottom of the river and dashed against
the floating islands of grass. The mast and sail-yards
creak as though they must snap in two; the boatmen shout
according to their habit, but the Reis cannot join them
because he is hoarse with a cold. There is an incessant
invocation of the saints of the Nile: a mingled outcry of
‘ya Seyet, ya Sheikh Abd-el-kader, Aboo Seyet, ya Sheikh
Ahmed-el-Nil.’

“_2nd._—A good west wind carries us betimes past the mouth
of the Gazelle. I am surprised to find the floating grass
in almost the same condition as in the winter of 1869;
the water, however, is higher now, and consequently the
entrance to the main stream is easier.”

From these contemporary notes it will at once be inferred that the entire length of the Gazelle was navigated by us in four and a half days of very moderate sailing. If the stream is from 136 to 140 miles long, as nearly all the existing maps have represented it, we must have sailed at a rate of about thirty miles a day; but for my part I feel sure that this estimate of our speed must be reduced by at least one-quarter.

All the comfort of our future progress was marred by the incessant plagues of flies, and all its regularity was interrupted by the same grass-obstructions that had impeded us on our former voyage. Before we could enter the side channel known as the Maia Signora, we had to make our way by a narrow cut of water that rushed along like a wild brook, and forced itself through the masses of vegetation on either side of the river, which here, I should suppose, was about half a mile wide. The depth of the fairway varied from six feet to eight feet, and the boat nowhere touched the bottom. The best plan that I can devise for rendering the stream permanently navigable would be to erect dams at certain intervals, and it appears to me that the small depth of water would render the project far from difficult of accomplishment.

We spent the 3rd in sailing along the channel of the Maia Signora, which was 300 feet in width. Towards evening we re-entered the main-stream. At night we continued to drift along, borne gradually onward by the slow current; but, in case of being surprised by sudden gusts of strong wind, we did not hoist a sail. The open channel was about 500 feet in width, but on the northern side it was divided from the actual shore by a growth of grass that was scarcely less than 3000 feet across. The morning brought us in sight of the huts in the Shillook district of Tooma.

[Sidenote: A HYÆNA-WOMAN.]

A horrible association will be for ever linked to my memories of that night. Dysentery is a disorder to which the negroes, on changing their mode of living, are especially liable, and an old female slave, after long suffering, was now dying in the hold below. All at once, probably attacked by a fit of epilepsy, she began to utter the most frightful shrieks and to groan with the intensest of anguish. Such sounds I had never heard before from any human being, and I hardly know to what I may compare them, except it be to the unearthly yells of the hyænas as they prowl by night amidst the offal of the market-towns of the Soudan. Beginning with a kind of long-drawn sigh, the cries ended with the shrillest of screams, and were truly heartrending. From my recess in the bow of the boat, that was partitioned off by a screen of matting, I could not see what was going on, and conscious that I was quite powerless to accomplish any alleviation for the sufferer, I tried to shut out the melancholy noise by wrapping myself closely round in my bed-clothes. Presently I was conscious of the sound of angry voices; then came a sudden splash in the water amidst the muttered curses upon the “marafeel” (the hyæna), and all was still. The inhuman sailors had laid hold upon the miserable creature in her death-agonies, and, without waiting for her to expire, had thrown her overboard. In their own minds they were perfectly convinced that she was a witch or hyæna-woman, whose existence would inevitably involve the boat in some dire calamity.

It was about five o’clock in the afternoon when we passed the mouth of the Gazelle. Nearly all next day a contrary north wind prevailed, and was so strong that we were obliged to put in upon the right-hand bank. From the spot where we lay-to I counted as many as forty villages on the opposite shore. The district was called Nelwang, and the whole of the surrounding region belonged to the once powerful Shillook chieftain Kashgar, now no longer formidable, as he had lately been reduced to subjection and his entire dominion converted into a regular Egyptian province. Of this altered condition of things we had received no intelligence, and consequently we were in no little trepidation when we saw the natives crossing the river in large numbers just above the place where we were stopping. But we need not have been under any apprehensions. It was soon manifest that the Shillook party had no hostile intentions, and were gathered together merely for a hunting excursion in the forests beyond the right bank of the river.

On observing the crowd of Shillooks our first impulse had been to make our way into the middle of the stream. It was past noon, and we were intently watching the movements of the hunters, when our attention was suddenly attracted by four men, dressed in white, shouting and gesticulating to us from the opposite bank. We could not imagine what Mohammedans were doing in this part of the country, and without loss of time pushed across and took the men on board. They proved to be Khartoom boatmen sent by the Mudir of Fashoda to inform us that his camp was close at hand, and that it was requisite for all boats coming down the river to stop there and submit to a rigid investigation as to what freight and passengers they were carrying. Our long sail-yard had been observed from the camp, and active measures had been immediately taken to prevent us from continuing our voyage without undergoing the prescribed scrutiny.

We had not long to wait before an unaccustomed surging of the water made us aware that a steamer was quite close upon us; in a few moments more the “Remorquer,” No. 8, was alongside, and a rope thrown out by which we had to be towed down to the camp.

However elated I might be at the prospect of being now so soon restored to intercourse with men of a higher grade than those with whom I had been long associated, I must confess that this our first greeting from the civilized world rather jarred upon my sensibilities, and in the sequel resulted in some bitter disappointment.

For nearly a couple of hours we were quietly towed down the river until, at a spot just above the mouth of the Sobat, we came to a side arm of the main stream, called the Lollo. Turning off abruptly into this we found ourselves proceeding in a direction that was quite retrograde as compared with that in which we had just come, and in another couple of hours reached the Mudir’s temporary camp in the district of Fanekama. His force consisted of 400 black soldiers, fifty mounted Baggara, and two field guns.

The Lollo flows almost parallel to the main-stream at a distance varying from a quarter of a league to two leagues. It is said to be about eighteen leagues in length; its current is extremely weak, and its depth from ten to fifteen feet; in many places it was from 800 to 1000 feet in width, and consequently at this season as wide as the main-stream itself: during the winter, however, it dwindles down to a mere shallow khor.

[Sidenote: FANEKAMA.]

The little steam-tug was an iron boat of 24 horse-power: its sides were so eaten up by rust that they were like a sieve, and the decrepit old captain, almost as worn-out as his vessel, was everlastingly patching them up with a compound of chalk and oil. Besides this, there were lying off Fanekama three Government boats and two large “negger” belonging to Agahd’s company that had come from the Meshera Elliab on the Bahr-el-Ghazal; these had been conveying no less than 600 slaves, all of whom had been confiscated. Notwithstanding that Sir Samuel Baker was still on the upper waters of the river, the idea was quite prevalent in all the Seribas that as soon as “the English pasha” had turned his back upon Fashoda, the Mudir would relapse into his former habits, levy a good round sum on the head of every slave, and then let the contraband stock pass without more ado. But for once the Seriba people were reckoning without their host. The Mudir had been so severely reprimanded by Baker for his former delinquencies that he thought it was his best policy, for this year at least, to be as energetic as he could in his exertions against the forbidden trade; and his measures were so summary, and executed with such methodical strictness, that unless I had known him I could scarcely have believed him to be a Turk. He was now especially anxious to show off his authority before me as the first witness who would have the power of reporting his activity and decision to the world at large.

The first thing was to get all slaves whatever carried on shore, that is to say all who were black and who were not Mohammedans; no distinction was made in favour of such as had come after having already been in Khartoom, although they might have been reported in the list of the crews that had worked the boats up the river.

Among the 600 slaves now brought in Agahd’s boats there were representatives of no less than eighteen different tribes. The small-pox, however, had raged so frightfully among them that fear of contagion alike for myself and my people deterred me from taking advantage of the unusual opportunity offered for ethnographical investigation. It must not be supposed that these 600 slaves had been the only passengers on Agahd’s boats; in addition to them there had been 200 Nubians, and thus it may be imagined that the most crowded cattle-pens could hardly have been more intolerable than the vessels throughout their voyage.

Many of the black soldiers under the Mudir’s command, recruited as they had been at Khartoom from slaves previously confiscated, made very fair interpreters to assist in classifying the new arrivals according to their race and nationality. Everything about the slaves had to be registered. Their number, the number of tribes that they represented, their age, their sex, the way they had been purchased, the place where they had been captured, the circumstances under which they had fallen into the hands of the Khartoomers, and all particulars of this sort had to be entered in a book. Then each of the Nubians was separately questioned about his own home, his name, his rank, his trade or profession, the number of his slaves, and the price he had paid for them respectively; to each of the traders there was then handed a copy of his own affidavit, to which he was obliged to affix his seal.

[Sidenote: A MINUTE INVESTIGATION.]

An inventory was next taken of all property, so that it might be retained at the pleasure of the Government, guns, ammunition, and ivory being expressly specified. The three Arab clerks entered into such minute details, and made their reports so prolix, that it was necessary for them to apply an amount of patient industry of which I could hardly have believed them capable.

Besides these notaries the Mudir kept a number of smiths and carpenters perpetually employed in the fabrication of the iron fetters and wooden sheybas to bind the Reis and all the men that were not absolutely indispensable for the navigation of the boat. Every possible precaution seemed to be taken, and even seals were made for the use of those who had none of their own with which to attest their affidavits. It took two days to complete our inspection; but when it came to an end, three soldiers were sent on board as a guard, and we were allowed to proceed. Free from the polluted air of Fanekama, I began to feel that I could breathe again.

A day and a half brought us to Fashoda, where I was equally surprised and gratified to hear of a kindness that had been intended to be shown me. Dyafer Pasha, the Governor-General, immediately on hearing of the destitute condition in which I had been left by the burning down of Ghattas’s Seriba, had despatched to me such a munificent supply of provisions of every description as would have kept me well for months not only with the means of subsistence, but with many of the elegancies of a civilised life. Had this liberal contribution reached me before I left Bongoland, I think I should have been vastly tempted to defer my return to Europe for another year; but it was not to be; the supplies had been placed under the charge of a company of soldiers who were going up the Gazelle to reinforce the troops already stationed in Dar Ferteet; but the change of wind and the condition of the water had delayed their progress till it was too late to proceed, and they had been obliged to stay at Fashoda until the commencement of the winter.

The condition of the unfortunate slaves had become far worse since their confiscation; the very measures that ought to have ameliorated their lot had been but an aggravation of their misery. The supply of corn was rapidly coming to an end; they had, in fact, hardly anything to eat, and the soldiers on guard never dreamed of making the least exertion to provide in any way for their needs, resorting to the use of the kurbatch much more freely than their former masters, who had now lost whatever interest they might have had in their welfare.

My powers of endurance were sorely tried. Incessant on the one hand were the murmurs and complaints; incessant on the other were the scoldings and cursings. If some luckless negro happened to be blessed with a tolerably good and robust constitution so that he kept fat and healthy under all his hardships, he was continually being made a laughing-stock and jeered at for being “a tub;” if, on the contrary, a poor wretch got thin till he was the very picture of misery, he was designated a “hyæna,” and perpetually bantered on account of his “hyæna-face.” I used to have whole kettles full of rice and maccaroni boiled for the poor creatures, but it was, of course, utterly beyond the compass of my resources to do much towards supplying their wants.

On approaching the district of Wod Shellay, we perceived countless masses of black specks standing out against the bright coloured sand. They were all slaves! The route from Kordofan to the east lay right across the land, and was quite unguarded; the spot that we now saw was where the caravans are conveyed over the river on their way to the great _dépôt_ at Mussalemieh. Once again did the sight remind me of Katherine II.’s painted villages in South Russia, although this time in a somewhat different sense.

[Sidenote: ARRIVAL AT KHARTOOM.]

At length towards sunset, on the 21st of July, we reached the Ras-el-Khartoom. Our entire journey from the Meshera had been accomplished in twenty-five days, six of which had been consumed in stoppages at Fanekama, Fashoda, and Kowa. Upon the whole I congratulated myself on getting so quickly to the end of the trouble. With a quickened pulse I set out alone on foot for the town. Evening was drawing on, and although I met numbers of people, there was no one to recognise me; in my meagre white calico costume I might easily have passed for one of those homeless Greeks, who, without a place to rest their heads, have been forced to seek their fortune in the remotest corners of the earth. I made my way at once to a German tailor named Klein, who had been living for some years in Khartoom, and by the vigorous prosecution of his trade had contributed in no small degree towards the promotion of external culture in the town. He soon provided me with some civilised garments, and I felt myself fit to make my appearance before my old friends, at least such as remained, for some I grieved to learn were dead, and others had left the place.

I found Khartoom itself much altered. A large number of new brick buildings, a spacious quay on the banks of the Blue Nile, and some still more imposing erections on the other side of the river, had given the place the more decided aspect of an established town. The extensive gardens and rows of date-palms planted out nearly half a century back, had now attained to such a development that they could not be altogether without influence on the climate; in spite of everything, however, the sanitary condition of Khartoom was still very unsatisfactory. This was entirely owing to the defective drainage of that portion of the town that had been built below the high-water level. In July, when I was there, I saw many pools almost large enough to be called ponds that could never possibly dry up without the application of proper means for draining them off; stagnant under the tropical sun, they sent forth such an intolerable stench that it was an abomination to pass near them. When it is remembered that Khartoom is situated in the desert-zone (for the grassy region does not begin for at least 150 miles farther to the south) there can appear no necessary reason why it should be more unhealthy than either Shendy or Berber; all that is wanted is that the sanitary authorities should exercise a better management and see that stagnant puddles should be prevented.

As I have already intimated, I found that not a few of my former acquaintances during my absence had fallen victims to the fatal climate; but no loss did I personally deplore more than that of the missionary Blessing, who died just a fortnight before my arrival; Herr Duisberg had left Khartoom, and since his departure Blessing had managed all my affairs, and it was from him that I had received my last despatches in the negro-countries. I found his young widow perfectly inconsolable, and the sight of her grief made me feel doubly what a blank his death had left.

On the day after my arrival I telegraphed to Alexandria to announce my safe return. The message reached its destination in the course of two days; the charge for twenty words was four dollars. The telegram had to be written in Arabic, and in the compressed yet lucid form of that language ran as follows:—“German Consulate-General, Alexandria. Arrived July 21st. Telegraph to Braun at the Berlin Academy that he may inform my mother. Nothing else necessary.” The telegraph had only been established during the last few months, and as yet was scarcely in full working order. The officials were young and inexperienced at their work, and the direct line of communication was broken in two places by the messages having to be conveyed across the river; as a further defect, the Morse system was partially in use, and it was only beyond Assouan that the needle-system had been adopted. Except for the conciseness of its forms of expression, Arabic is extremely unsuitable for telegraphy; the deficiency of vowel symbols makes proper names all but undecipherable to any one who is previously unacquainted with them. But with all its temporary shortcomings, the establishment of the telegraph will ever rank as pre-eminent amongst the services rendered by the Government of Ismail Pasha.

[Sidenote: MY SERVANTS’ DILEMMA.]

Dyafer Pasha, to whom I was so much indebted for his liberal intentions on my behalf, received me with his unfailing cordiality, and gave me a lodging in one of the Government buildings that was at his disposal; but notwithstanding all his generosity to myself I could not feel otherwise than very much hurt at the unscrupulous manner in which he acted towards my servants. Their faithfulness to myself had made me much interested in them, and I now felt intensely annoyed when I found that, without any communication with me, they had been seized, thrust into irons, and set to work in the galleys, leaving me with no one but my three negro lads, and without the services of anybody who knew how to cook. The fact was that, although I had not been made acquainted with it, they had been in possession of some slaves on their own account, representing them as being consigned to their care by friends in the upper district, who wanted to forward them to their homes. It was, I found, quite out of my power to prevent the controllers of the different Seribas all along my route from making presents of slaves to my servants; any protest on my part was always practically useless, and only tended to produce an irritating disagreement between us. At the time of our embarkation at the Meshera I imagined that they were accompanied only by the wives of two of them, one of their children, and two young boys who had been so long with them that I quite regarded them as a recognised part of their belongings; but it turned out in reality that they had no less than fifteen slaves, which they were surreptitiously carrying with them. The whole lot were now confiscated in one common batch; no distinction was made—men, wives, and children were all included in the general fate. This was as illegal as it was unjust, for every slave who has borne any children is reckoned as a wife, although there may have been no regular marriage.

Four separate appeals did I take the trouble to make to the Pasha for the emancipation of my servants. Even at last my success was only partial, for I could not obtain the restitution of freedom either to the women or the children, although their confiscation had been specially illegal. The Pasha was on the point of starting for Egypt, but I could not permit any circumstance of the kind to prevent my doing everything in my power to assist my servants, who had shown such fidelity for a period of three years. I could not find it in my heart to leave them to fight out their cause for themselves with the arbitrary and disorderly administration that I knew well enough would follow the Pasha’s departure. I resolved, therefore, to take the men on with me to Cairo. I incurred a considerable extra expense by travelling with so large a retinue; but I would not be daunted, and after a world of trouble I succeeded ultimately in obtaining redress for their grievances.

I told the Pasha that, grateful as I was for all his hospitality and kindness to myself, I could not help being extremely annoyed at the trick that had been played me. Nothing, I assured him, could obliterate the impression that he had looked upon me as an easy dupe: his proceedings in this respect were quite an insult. I gave him my opinion that if he wanted to suppress the slave-trade he must see that the laws were carried out all over the country, and not merely along the river. Repressive measures, that were enforced at isolated and uncertain intervals, were of no use at all, and only served to inflame the population with increased hatred to the Franks. For what good, I asked him, was it to lay an embargo upon the boats when (to take only one example) the Mudir of Kordofan quietly allowed the slave-trade to be carried on in his province to such an extent that in a single year no less than 2700 slave-dealers had made their way to Dar Ferteet; and whilst they were there not only had the Egyptian commander raised no objection to their proceedings, but had so far coalesced with his officers as practically to become a professional slave-dealer himself.

[Sidenote: EXPOSTULATION.]

The ill-feeling and smothered rage against Sir Samuel Baker’s interference, nurtured by the higher authorities, breaks out very strongly amongst the less reticent lower officials. In Fashoda, and even in Khartoom, I heard complaints that we (the Franks) were the prime cause of all the trouble, and if it had not been for our eternal agitation with the Viceroy such measures would never have been enforced. Yet they need to be instructed that it was never the intention either of Wilberforce or any of our modern philanthropists that men should, under any pretext, be robbed of their wives, or parents of their children, or even that slaves should be wrested from the hands of the traders merely to be distributed amongst the soldiers, or to be compelled to become soldiers themselves. And, as I pointed out to the officials, the very reproaches they made tended to lower the Viceroy, just because they implied that his commands were only influenced by external pressure from foreign Powers. I tried further to make them see that it was quite impossible for any ruler to maintain proper authority unless his subordinates, whose duty it was to support him, did their utmost to contribute to his dignity.

On the 9th of August I once again took my passage on board a Nile boat, this time under more comfortable and less ambiguous circumstances. With a favourable wind and high water our voyage was very rapid. On the fourth day we reached Berber. Here I found excellent quarters in the house of my friend Vasel, and for the first time, after many months, had the enjoyment of intercourse with a well-educated fellow-countryman. Vasel had been a benefactor to the land by erecting a large portion of the telegraph lately opened between Assouan and Khartoom, and, in spite of his exertions in a climate that had been fatal to so many Europeans, had hitherto enjoyed unbroken health.

The deaths during the last fever-season had been more than usually numerous. In Khartoom, in 1870, almost all the resident Europeans had been fatally attacked, and amongst them Dr. Ori, the renowned Italian zoologist, after successfully withstanding the deleterious atmosphere for ten successive years. Soon afterwards Thibaud, the head of the French vice-consulate, was carried to the grave, followed in the course of a week by the whole of his family. He had spent forty-three years of his life at Khartoom; as an associate of Arnaud’s, and in company with Werne and Sabatier, he had taken part in the memorable expedition that in 1841 was sent out by Mehemet Ali to discover the sources of the Nile, and in the prosecution of their task ascended as far as Gondokoro. To the melancholy death of Blessing I have already referred; and now, on reaching Berber, I learnt that my old friend Lavargue had succumbed to fever only a short time before my arrival. He, too, had been residing for many years in the Soudan.

And now the next to go was my little Tikkitikki. He had for some time been marked by the unsparing hand of death, and here it was during my stay at Berber that I had to mourn his loss. At Khartoom he had been taken ill with a severe attack of dysentery, probably induced by change of air and very likely aggravated by his too sumptuous diet. His disorder had day by day become more deeply seated; my care in nursing seemed to bring no alleviation, and every remedy failed to take effect; he became weaker and weaker, till his case was manifestly hopeless, and, after lingering three weeks, sunk at last from sheer exhaustion.

Never before, I think, had I ever felt a death so acutely; my grief so weakened and unmanned me that my energies flagged entirely, so that I could scarcely walk for half an hour without extreme fatigue. Since that date two years have passed away, but still the recollection of that season of bitter disappointment is like a wound that opens afresh.

[Sidenote: START FOR SAUKIN.]

The other two negro-boys, according to my intention, were to be playmates and companions for my little Pygmy; but now that he had been taken from me I took measures to provide for them in a different way. The elder one, Amber, a true Niam-niam, I left behind in Egypt, under the care of my old friend Dr. Sachs, the celebrated physician of Cairo; my little Bongo, Allagabo Teem, was taken to Germany for the purpose of receiving a careful education.

I was delayed in Berber by the sad circumstances of my little _protégé’s_ death; but independently of that, my stay was prolonged by waiting for a courier who, by the orders of his Highness the Khedive, was on his way to meet me. The German Consul-General Von Jasmund, with his accustomed solicitude for all who were in any way entrusted to his protection, had procured me this favour. Fearing that I should be in want, he had commissioned the courier to bring me money, medicines, arms, and clothing of all description. Meanwhile I had amply provided myself at Khartoom with everything of which I stood in need, and was consequently anxious, if I could, to stop the progress of the envoy. It was, however, several days, even with the help of the telegraph, before I could find out how far he had advanced, or could succeed in countermanding his orders.

On the 10th of September I was ready to start for Suakin. The route that I took was the same, through the valleys of Etbai, by which I had journeyed on starting three years previously. My little caravan consisted now but of thirteen people. By the help of fourteen camels we accomplished the journey in a fortnight, without any misadventure. Once again I was in sight of the sea. It was with the truest interest that I regarded the faithful few that were round about me, and as I looked down from the summit of the Attaba, 3415 feet high, that enabled me to gaze beyond the intervening stretch of land to Suakin and to catch the extended deep-blue line of sea, my feelings could be understood by none except by a wanderer who, like myself, had been lingering in the depths of an untraversed country. On the 26th of September I embarked at Suakin, and after a pleasant voyage of four days landed at Suez; by the 2nd of November I had reached Messina.

Thus, after an absence of three years and four months, I was once again upon the soil of Europe.

FOOTNOTES:

[95] Allagabo is the Arabic rendering of the Greek Theodore
(gift of God); by the Dinka the lad was called “Teem,”
_i.e._ “a tree,” because his native name was “Lebbe,”
which is the Bongo word for a species of mimosa.

[96] _Vide_ vol. i., chap. vii.

[97] The barometer gave an altitude of 1396 feet here, and
about the same at two other points on our route to
the Meshera, but as these were only single readings
I cannot vouch for their accuracy. Readings at the
Meshera taken in 1869, and repeated in 1871, gave 1452
feet as the height there.