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

At three in the afternoon of the 20th March, a cannon-shot gave the signal for departure. The Wernes' water-skins were already filled and their baggage packed; in an instant their tents were struck and camels loaded; with baggage and servants they took their place at the head of the column and rode up to the Bascha, who was halted to the east of Damer, with his beautiful horses and dromedaries standing saddled behind him. He complained of the great disorder in the camp, but consoled himself with the reflection that things would go better by-and-by. "It was truly a motley scene," says Mr Werne. "The Turkish cavalry in their national costume of many colours, with yellow and green banners and small kettle-drums; the Schaïgië and Mograbin horsemen; Bedouins on horseback, on camels, and on foot; the Schechs and Moluks (little king) with their armour-bearers behind them on the dromedaries, carrying pikes and lances, straight swords and leather shields; the countless donkeys and camels – the former led by a great portion of the infantry, to ride in turn – drums and an ear-splitting band of music, The Chabir (caravan-leader) was seen in the distance mounted on his dromedary, and armed with a lance and round shield; the Bascha bestrode his horse, and we accompanied him in that direction, whilst gradually, and in picturesque disorder, the detachments emerged from the monstrous confusion and followed us. The artillery consisted of two field-pieces, drawn by camels, which the Bascha had had broken to the work, that in the desert they might relieve the customary team of mules.

"Abd-el-Kader, the jovial Topschi Baschi, (chief of the artillery,) commanded them, and rode a mule. The Turks, (that is to say, chiefly Circassians, Kurds, and Arnauts or Albanians,) who shortly before could hardly put one leg before the other, seemed transformed into new men, as they once more found themselves at home in their saddles. They galloped round the Bascha like madmen, riding their horses as mercilessly as if they had been drunk with opium. This was a sort of honorary demonstration, intended to indicate to their chief their untameable valour. The road led through the desert, and was tolerably well beaten. Towards evening the Bascha rode forwards with the Chabir. We did not follow, for I felt myself unwell. It was dark night when we reached the left bank of the Atbara, where we threw ourselves down amongst the bushes, and went to sleep, without taking supper."

The campaign might now be said to be beginning; at least the army was close upon tribes whose disposition, if not avowedly hostile, was very equivocal, and the Bascha placed a picket of forty men at the only ford over the Atbara, a clear stream of tolerable depth, and with lofty banks, covered with rich grass, with mimosas and lofty fruit-laden palm-trees. The next day's march was a severe one – ten hours without a halt – and was attended, after nightfall, with some danger, arising partly from the route lying through trees with barbed thorns, strong enough to tear the clothes off men's bodies and the eyes out of their heads, and partly from the crowding and pressure in the disorderly column during its progress amongst holes and chasms occasioned by the overflowing of the river. Upon halting, at midnight, a fire was lighted for the Bascha, and one of his attendants brought coffee to Mr Werne; but he, sick and weary, rejected it, and would have preferred, he says, so thoroughly exhausted did he feel, a nap under a bush to a supper upon a roasted angel. They were still ascending the bank of the Atbara, a winding stream, with wildly beautiful tree-fringed banks, containing few fish, but giving shelter, in its deep places, to the crocodile and hippopotamus. From the clefts of its sandstone bed, then partially exposed by the decline of the waters, sprang a lovely species of willow, with beautiful green foliage and white umbelliferous flowers, having a perfume surpassing that of jasmine. The Wernes would gladly, have explored the neighbourhood; but the tremendous heat, and a warm wind which played round their temples with a sickening effect, drove them into camp. Gunfire was at noon upon that day; but it was Mr Werne's turn to be on the sick-list. Suddenly he felt himself so ill, that it was with a sort of despairing horror he saw the tent struck from over him, loaded upon a camel, and driven off. In vain he endeavoured to rise; the sun seemed to dart coals of fire upon his head. His brother and servant carried him into the shadow of a neighbouring palm-tree, and he sank half-dead upon the glowing sand. It would suffice to abide there during the heat of the day, as they thought, but instead of that, they were compelled to remain till next morning, Werne suffering terribly from dysentery. "Never in my life," he says, "did I more ardently long for the setting of the sun than on that day; even its last rays exercised the same painful power on my hair, which seemed to be in a sort of electric connection with just as many sunbeams, and to bristle up upon my head. And no sooner had the luminary which inspired me with such horror sunk below the horizon, than I felt myself better, and was able to get on my legs and crawl slowly about. Some good-natured Arab shepherd-lads approached our fire, pitied me, and brought me milk and durra-bread. It was a lovely evening; the full moon was reflected in the Atbara, as were also the dark crowns of the palm-trees, wild geese shrieked around us; otherwise the stillness was unbroken, save at intervals by the cooing of doves. There is something beautiful in sleeping in the open air, when weather and climate are suitable. We awoke before sunrise, comforted, and got upon our dromedaries; but after a couple of hours' ride we mistrusted the sun, and halted with some wandering Arabs belonging to the Kabyle of the Kammarabs. We were hospitably received, and regaled with milk and bread." 3 3 These Kammarabs possess a tract on the left or south bank of the Atbara. The distribution of the different tribes, as well as the line of march and other particulars, are very clearly displayed in the appropriate little map accompanying Mr Werne's volume. Opposite to the Kammarabs, "on the right bank of the Atbara, are the Anafidabs, of the race or family of the Bischari. They form a Kabyle (band or community) under a Schech of their own. How it is that the French in Algiers persist in using Kabyle as the proper name of a nation and a country, I cannot understand." — Feldzug von Sennaar , p. 32.

When our two Germans rejoined headquarters, after four days' absence, they found Achmet Bascha seated in the shade upon the ground in front of his tent, much burned by the sun, and looking fagged and suffering – as well he might be after the heat and exposure he had voluntarily undergone. Nothing could cure him, however, at least as yet, of his fancy for marching in the heat of the day. Although obstinate and despotic, the Bascha was evidently a dashing sort of fellow, well calculated to win the respect and admiration of his wild and heterogeneous army. Weary as were the two Wernes, (they reached the camp at noon,) at two o'clock they had to be again in the saddle. "A number of gazelles were started; the Bascha seized a gun and dashed after them upon his Arabian stallion, almost the whole of the cavalry scouring after him like a wild mob, and we ourselves riding a sharp trot to witness the chase. We thought he had fallen from his horse, so suddenly did he swing himself from saddle to ground, killing three gazelles with three shots, of which animals we consumed a considerable portion roasted for that night's supper." The river here widened, and crocodiles showed themselves upon the opposite shore. The day was terribly warm; the poor medico was ill again, suffering grievously from his head, and complaining of his hair being so hot ; and as the Salamander Bascha persisted in marching under a sun which, through the canvass of the tents, heated sabres and musket-barrels till it was scarcely possible to grasp them, the brothers again lingered behind and followed in the cool of the evening, Joseph being mounted upon an easy-going mule lent him by Topschi Baschi, the good-humoured but dissolute captain of the guns. They were now divided but by the river's breadth from the hostile tribe of the Haddenda, and might at any moment be assailed; so two hours after sunset a halt was called and numerous camp-fires were lighted, producing a most picturesque effect amongst the trees, and by their illumination of the diversified costumes of the soldiery, and attracting a whole regiment of scorpions, "some of them remarkably fine specimens," says Mr Werne, who looks upon these unpleasant fireside companions with a scientific eye, "a finger and a half long, of a light colour, half of the tail of a brown black and covered with hair." It is a thousand pities that the adventurous Mrs Ida Pfeiffer did not accompany Mr Werne upon this expedition. She would have had the finest possible opportunities of curing herself of the prejudice which it will be remembered she was so weak as to entertain against the scorpion tribe. These pleasant reptiles were as plentiful all along Mr Werne's line of march as are cockchafers on a summer evening in an English oak-copse. Their visitations were pleasantly varied by those of snakes of all sizes, and of various degrees of venom. "At last," says Mr Werne, "one gets somewhat indifferent about scorpions and other wild animals." He had greater difficulty in accustoming himself to the sociable habits of the snakes, who used to glide about amongst tents and baggage, and by whom, in the course of the expedition, a great number of persons were bitten. On the 12th April "Mohammed Ladham sent us a remarkable scorpion – pity that it is so much injured – almost two fingers long, black-brown, tail and feet covered with prickly hair, claws as large as those of a small crab… We had laid us down under a green tree beside a cotton plantation, whilst our servants unloaded the camels and pitched the tents, when a snake, six feet long, darted from under our carpet, passed over my leg, and close before my brother's face. But we were so exhausted that we lay still, and some time afterwards the snake was brought to us, one of Schech Defalla's people having killed it." About noon next day a similar snake sprang out of the said Defalla's own tent; it was killed also, and found to measure six feet two inches. The soldiers perceiving that the German physician and his brother were curious in the matter of reptiles, brought them masses of serpents; but they had got a notion that the flesh was the part coveted (not the skin) to make medicine, and most of the specimens were so defaced as to be valueless. Early in May "some soldiers assured us they had seen in the thicket a serpent twenty feet long, and as thick as a man's leg; probably a species of boa – a pity that they could not kill it. The great number of serpents with dangerous bites makes our bivouac very unsafe, and we cannot encamp with any feeling of security near bushes or amongst brushwood; the prick of a blade of straw, the sting of the smallest insect, causes a hasty movement, for one immediately fancies it is a snake or scorpion; and when out shooting, one's second glance is for the game, one's first on the ground at his feet, for fear of trampling and irritating some venomous reptile." As we proceed through the volume we shall come to other accounts of beasts and reptiles, so remarkable as really almost to reconcile us to the possibility of some of the zoological marvels narrated by the Yankee Doctor Mayo in his rhapsody of Kaloolah. 4 4 Blackwood's Magazine , No. CCCCIV., for June 1849. For the present we must revert to the business of this curiously-conducted campaign. As the army advanced, various chiefs presented themselves, with retinues more or less numerous. The first of these was the Grand-Shech Mohammed Defalla, already named, who came up, with a great following, on the 28th March. He was a man of herculean frame; and assuredly such was very necessary to enable him to endure in that climate the weight of his defensive arms. He wore a double shirt of mail over a quilted doublet, arm-plates and beautifully wrought steel gauntlets; his casque fitted like a shell to the upper part of his head, and had in front, in lieu of a visor, an iron bar coming down over the nose – behind, for the protection of the nape, a fringe composed of small rings. His straight-bladed sword had a golden hilt. The whole equipment, which seems to correspond very closely with that of some of the Sikhs or other warlike Indian tribes, proceeded from India, and Defalla had forty or fifty such suits of arms. About the same time with him, arrived two Schechs from the refractory land of Taka, tall handsome men; whilst, from the environs of the neighbouring town of Gos-Rajeb, a number of people rode out on dromedaries to meet the Bascha, their hair quite white with camel-fat, which melted in the sun and streamed over their backs. Gos-Rajeb, situated at about a quarter of a mile from the left bank of the Atbara, consists of some two hundred tokul (huts) and clay-built houses, and in those parts is considered an important commercial depot, Indian goods being transported thither on camels from the port of Souakim, on the Red Sea. The inhabitants are of various tribes, more of them red than black or brown; but few were visible, many having fled at the approach of Achmet's army, which passed the town in imposing array – the infantry in double column in the centre, the Turkish cavalry on the right, the Schaïgiës and Mograbins on the left, the artillery, with kettledrums, cymbals, and other music, in the van – marched through the Atbara, there very shallow, and encamped on the right bank, in a stony and almost treeless plain, at the foot of two rocky hills. The Bascha ordered the Shech of Gos-Rajeb to act as guide to the Wernes in their examination of the vicinity, and to afford them all the information in his power. The most remarkable spot to which he conducted them was to the site of an ancient city, which once, according to tradition, had been as large as Cairo, and inhabited by Christians. The date of its existence must be very remote, for the ground was smooth, and the sole trace of buildings consisted in a few heaps of broken bricks. There were indications of a terrible conflagration, the bricks in one place being melted together into a black glazed mass. Mr Werne could trace nothing satisfactory with respect to former Christian occupants, and seems disposed to think that Burckhardt, who speaks of Christian monuments at that spot, (in the neighbourhood of the hill of Herrerem,) may have been misled by certain peculiarly formed rocks.