Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 70, No. 431, September 1851

bimbaschi or major, and was attached, as engineer, to Achmet's person, with good pay and many privileges. "At a later period he would have made me bey, if I – not on his account, for he was an enlightened Circassian, but on that of the Turkish jackasses – would have turned Mussulman. I laughed at this, and he said no more about it." Delighted to have secured the services of the two Germans, Achmet ordered it to be reported to his father-in-law, Mehemet Ali, for his approval, and took counsel with his new officers concerning the approaching campaign. Turk-like, he proposed commencing it in the rainy season. Mr Werne opposed this as likely to cost him half his army, the soldiers being exceedingly susceptible to rain, and advised the erection of blockhouses at certain points along the line of march where springs were to be found, to secure water for the troops. The Bascha thought this rather a roundabout mode of proceeding, held his men's lives very cheap, and boasted of his seven hundred dromedaries, every one of which, in case of need, could carry three soldiers. His counsellors were dismissed, with injunctions to secresy, and on their return home they found at their door, as a present from the Bascha, two beautiful dromedaries, tall, powerful, ready saddled for a march, and particularly adapted for a campaign, inasmuch as they started not when muskets were fired between their ears. A few days later, Mr Werne was sent for by Achmet, who, when the customary coffee had been taken, dismissed his attendants by a sign, and informed him, with a gloomy countenance, that the people of Taka refused to pay their tulba , or tribute. His predecessor, Churdschid Bascha, having marched into that country, had been totally defeated in a chaaba , or tract of forest. Since that time, Achmet mournfully declared, the tribes had not paid a single piastre, and he found himself grievously in want of money. So, instead of marching south-westward to Darfour, as he had intended, he would move north-eastward to Taka, chastise the stubborn insolvents, and replenish the coffers of the state. "Come with me," said he, to Mr Werne; "upon the march we shall all recover our health," (he also suffered from frequent and violent attacks of fever;) "yonder are water and forests, as in Germany and Circassia, and very high mountains." It mattered little to so restless and rambling a spirit as Mr Ferdinand Werne whether his route lay inland towards the Mountains of the Moon, or coastwards to the Red Sea. His brother was again sick, and spoke of leaving the country; but Mr Werne cheered him up, pointed out to him upon the map an imaginary duchy which he was to conquer in the approaching war, and revived an old plan of going to settle at Bagdad, there to practise as physician and apothecary. "We resolved, therefore, to take our passports with us, so that, if we chose, we might embark on the Red Sea. By this time I had seen through the Bascha, and I resolved to communicate to him an idea which I often, in the interest of these oppressed tribes, had revolved in my mind, namely, that he should place himself at their head, and renounce obedience to the Egyptian vampire. I did subsequently speak to him of the plan, and it might have been well and permanently carried out, had he not, instead of striving to win the confidence of the chiefs, tyrannised over them in every possible manner. Gold and regiments! was his motto."

Meanwhile the influential Dr Gand had fallen seriously ill, and was so afflicted with the irritability already referred to as a consequence of the climate, that no one could go near him but the two Wernes. He neglected Joseph's good advice to quit Chartum at once, put it off till it was too late, and died on his journey northwards. His body lay buried for a whole year in the sand of the desert; then his family, who were going to France, dug it up to take with them. Always a very thin man, little more than skin and bone, the burning sand had preserved him like a mummy. There was no change in his appearance; not a hair gone from his mustaches. Strange is the confusion and alternation of life and death in that ardent and unwholesome land of Nubia. To-day in full health, to-morrow prostrate with fever, from which you recover only to be again attacked. Dead, in twenty-four hours or less corruption is busy on the corpse; bury it promptly in the sand, and in twelve months you may disinter it, perfect as if embalmed. At Chartum, the very focus of disease, death, it might be thought, is sufficiently supplied by fever to need no other purveyors. Nevertheless poisoning seems a pretty common practice there. Life in Chartum is altogether, by Mr Werne's account, a most curious thing. During the preparations for the campaign, a Wurtemberg prince, Duke Paul William of Mergentheim, arrived in the place, and was received with much pomp. "For the first time I saw the Bascha sit upon a chair; he was in full uniform, a red jacket adorned with gold, a great diamond crescent, and three brilliant stars upon his left breast, his sabre by his side." The prince, a fat good-humoured German, was considerably impressed by the state displayed, and left the presence with many obeisances. The next day he dined with the Bascha, whom he and the Wernes hoped to see squatted on the ground, and feeding with his fingers. They were disappointed; the table was arranged in European fashion; wine of various kinds was there, especially champagne, (which the servants, notwithstanding Werne's remonstrances, insisted on shaking before opening, and which consequently flew about the room in foaming fountains;) bumper-toasts were drunk; and the whole party, Franks and Turks, seem to have gradually risen into a glorious state of intoxication, during which they vowed eternal friendship to each other in all imaginable tongues; and the German prince declared he would make the campaign to Taka with the Bascha, draw out the plan, and overwhelm the enemy. This jovial meeting was followed by a quieter entertainment given by the Wernes to the prince, who declared he was travelling as a private gentleman, and wished to be treated accordingly; and then Soliman Effendi, the Sicilian renegade, made a respectful application for permission to invite the " Altezza Tedesca ," for whom he had conceived a great liking. A passage from Mr Werne is here worth quoting, as showing the state of society at Chartum. "I communicated the invitation, with the remark that the Sicilian was notorious for his poisonings, but that I had less fear on his highness' account than on that of my brother, who was already designated to replace him in his post. The prince did not heed the danger; moreover, I had put myself on a peculiar footing with Soliman Effendi, and now told him plainly that he had better keep his vindictive manœuvres for others than us, for that my brother and I should go to dinner with loaded pistols in our pockets, and would shoot him through the head ( brucciare il cervello ) if one of us three felt as much as a belly-ache at his table. The dinner was served in the German fashion; all the guests came, except Vaissière (formerly a French captain, now a slave-dealer, with the cross of the legion of honour.) He would not trust Soliman, who was believed to have poisoned a favourite female-slave of his after a dispute they had about money matters. The dinner went off merrily and well. The duke changed his mind about going to Taka, but promised to join in the campaign on his return from Fàszogl, and bade me promise the Bascha in his name a crocodile-rifle and a hundred bottles of champagne."

Long and costly were the preparations for the march; the more so that Mr Werne and his brother, who saw gleaming in the distance the golden cupolas of Bagdad, desired to take all their baggage with them, and also sufficient stores for the campaign – not implicitly trusting to the Bascha's promise that his kitchen and table should be always at their service. Ten camels were needed to carry the brothers' baggage. One of their greatest troubles was to know how to dispose of their collection of beasts and birds. "The young maneless lion, our greatest joy, was dead – Soliman Effendi, who was afraid of him, having dared to poison him, as I learned, after the renegade's death, from one of our own people." But of birds there were a host; eagles, vultures, king-cranes, ( grus pavonina , Linn.;) a snake-killing secretary, with his beautiful eagle head, long tail, and heron legs; strange varieties of water-fowl, many of which had been shot, but had had the pellets extracted and the wounds healed by the skill of Dr Werne; and last, but most beloved, "a pet black horn-bird, ( buceros abyss. L.,) who hopped up to us when we called out 'Jack!' – who picked up with his long curved beak the pieces of meat that were thrown to him, tossed them into the air and caught them again, (whereat the Prince of Wurtemberg laughed till he held his sides,) because nature has provided him with too short a tongue; but who did not despise frogs and lizards, and who called us at daybreak with his persevering ' Hum, hum ,' until we roused ourselves and answered 'Jack.'" Their anxiety on account of their aviary was relieved by the Bascha's wife, who condescendingly offered to take charge of it during their absence. Mehemet Ali's daughter suffered dreadfully from ennui in dull, unwholesome Chartum, and reckoned on the birds and beasts as pastime and diversion. Thus, little by little, difficulties were overcome, and all was made ready for the march. A Bolognese doctor of medicine, named Bellotti, and Dumont, a French apothecary, arrived at Chartum. They belonged to an Egyptian regiment, and must accompany it on the chasua . 2 2 "The word chasua signifies an expedition along the frontier, or rather across the frontier, for the capture of men and beasts. These slave-hunts are said to have been first introduced here by the Turks, and the word chasua is not believed to be indigenous, since for war and battle are otherwise used harba (properly a lance) and schàmmata . Chasua and razzia appear to be synonymous, corrupted from the Italian cazzia , in French chasse ." — Feldzug von Sennaar , &c., p. 17. Troops assembled in and around Chartum, the greater part of whose garrison, destined also to share in the campaign, were boated over to the right bank of the Blue Nile. Thence they were to march northwards to Damer – once a town, now a village amidst ruins – situated about three leagues above the place where the Atbara, a river that rises in Abyssinia, and flows north-westward through Sennaar, falls into the Nile. There the line of march changed its direction to the right, and took a tolerably straight route, but inclining a little to the south, in the direction of the Red Sea. The Bascha went by water down the Nile the greater part of the way to Damer, and was of course attended by his physician. Mr Werne, finding himself unwell, followed his example, sending their twelve camels by land, and accompanied by Bellotti, Dumont, and a Savoyard merchant from Chartum, Bruno Rollet by name. There was great difficulty in getting a vessel, all having been taken for the transport of provisions and military stores; but at last one was discovered, sunk by its owner to save it from the commissariat, and after eleven days of sickness, suffering, and peril – during which Mr Werne, when burning with fever, had been compelled to jump overboard to push the heavy laden boat off the reef on which the stupid Rëis had run it – the party rejoined headquarters. There Mr Werne was kindly received by Achmet, and most joyfully by his brother. Long and dolorous was the tale Dr Joseph had to tell of his sufferings with the wild-riding Bascha. Three days before reaching Damer, that impatient chieftain left his ship and ordered out the dromedaries. The Berlin doctor of medicine felt his heart sink within him; he had never yet ascended a dromedary's saddle, and the desperate riding of the Bascha made his own Turkish retinue fear to follow him. His forebodings were well-founded. Two hours' rough trot shook up his interior to such an extent, and so stripped his exterior of skin, that he was compelled to dismount and lie down upon some brushwood near the Nile, exposed to the burning sun, and with a compassionate Bedouin for sole attendant, until the servants and baggage came up. Headache, vomiting, terrible heat and parching thirst – for he had no drinking vessel, and the Bedouin would not leave him – were his portion the whole day, followed by fever and delirium during the night. At two o'clock the next day (the hottest time) the Bascha was again in the saddle, as if desirous to try to the utmost his own endurance and that of his suite. By this time the doctor had come up with him, (having felt himself better in the morning,) after a six hours' ride, and terrible loss of leather, the blood running down into his stockings. Partly on his dromedary, partly on foot, he managed to follow his leader through this second day's march, at the cost of another night's fever, but in the morning he was so weak that he was obliged to take boat and complete his journey to Damer by water. Of more slender frame and delicate complexion than his brother, the poor doctor was evidently ill-adapted for roughing it in African deserts, although his pluck and fortitude went far towards supplying his physical deficiencies. Most painful are the accounts of his constantly recurring sufferings during that arduous expedition; and one cannot but admire and wonder at the zeal for science, or ardent thirst for novelty, that supported him, and induced him to persevere in the teeth of such hardship and ill-health. At Damer he purchased a small dromedary of easy paces, and left the Bascha's rough-trotting gift for his brother's riding.

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