Two more of the Obeyed soldiers escaped this afternoon; they say the Arabs meditate putting a gun on the Blue Nile above Bourré, and another in front of south front of lines, with the idea of bombarding the town.
Psammitichus[37] besieged Azotus or Ashdod for twenty-nine years (according to Herodotus). What a life for the people of Azotus! One is tired enough of this, and we have only had six months of it. Azotus or Ashdod is a miserable little village between Jafa (which, by the way, is called after Japhet, the son of Noah) and Gaza.
The black soldiers who come in are generally old acquaintances of mine, i.e. they know me, while their black pug faces are all alike to me. I like the Chinese best, then the pug-faced blacks, then the chocolate Soudan people. I do not like the tallow-faced fellaheen, though I feel sorry for them.
Ezekiel xxix. and xxx. are interesting, for they show Egypt to be doomed to be the basest of kingdoms, the slave of kingdoms, never possessing a ruler of its own race (Mahomet Ali was a Sandjak[38] of Salonica, and an alien to this land). The judgments on this land are on account of its cruelties in respect to the slave trade. Berber (which Colonel Stewart ought to pass to-night) is 200 miles from Merowé, where the cataracts cease, thence there is open water to Dongola, 150 miles distant from Merowé; he ought there to find the telegraph open, and so on the 20th of September he ought to be in communication with Cairo and Europe.
One thing puzzles me is, if it was really determined to abandon the Soudan to its fate, why the people of Dongola and of Senheit were not withdrawn, when the determination was taken; there could be no possible object for keeping the peoples in those places. I think if, instead of ‘Minor Tactics’ or books on art of war, we were to make our young officers study ‘Plutarch’s Lives,’ it would be better; there we see men (unsupported by any true belief, pure pagans), making, as a matter of course, their lives a sacrifice, but in our days it is the highest merit not to run away. I speak for myself when I say I have been in dire anxiety, not for my own skin, but because I hate to be beaten, and I hate to see my schemes fail; but that I have had to undergo a tithe of what any nurse has to undergo, who is attached to a querulous invalid, is absurd, and not to be weighed together. When I emerge all are complimentary; when the invalid dies the question is, what should be given to the nurse for her services. We profess to be followers of our Lord, who, from His birth, when He was hunted, till His death, may be said to have had no sympathy or kindness shown Him, yet we (and I say myself especially) cry out if we are placed in any position of suffering, whereas it is our métier, if we are Christians, to undergo such suffering. I have led the officers and officials the lives of dogs while I have been up here; it is spurs in their flanks every day; nothing can obliterate this ill-treatment from my memory. I may say that I have not given them a moment’s peace; they are conies, but I ought to have been more considerate. It is quite painful to see men tremble so when they come and see me, that they cannot hold the match to their cigarette. Yet I have cut off no heads; I only killed two Pashas, and I declare, had it not been for outside influences, those two Pashas would have been alive now; they were judicially murdered.[39] Happy, as far as we can see, are those men who swing in small arcs; unhappy are those who, seeking the field of adventure, swing from the extremes of evil and good. The neutral tint is the best for wear.
What a contradiction is life! I hate Her Majesty’s Government for their leaving the Soudan after having caused all its troubles; yet I believe our Lord rules heaven and earth, so I ought to hate Him, which I (sincerely) do not.
I hear Hansall, the Austrian Consul, is disposed to go with his seven female attendants to the Arabs. I hope he will do so.
Heaps of cattle come in every day, but very little grain. Seyd Mahomet Osman has sent word to his people to go to Kartoum for refuge; this is pleasant for us! but it shows his confidence in our future, and it is a great honour to me, who (thank God) am given faith to outspeak “I am a Christian,” to have obtained such confidence from a man, who would, in the times of my glory, scarcely look at me.
One of his (Seyd Mahomet Osman’s) men going down to Shendy (where his sister, a very plucky woman lives) was taking down a pair of slippers for her, and he brought them here; I wrote my name on the inside of each, and told him to tell the “Sitt,” or lady, when she put them on, she put her claw on my head; the man came back the other day, and said the “Sitt” was delighted with the idea.
What a row the Pope will make about the nuns marrying the Greeks! It is the union of the Greek and Latin churches.