I awoke in the morning to find the gyassa[#] moored off the base camp of Major Peake's sudd-cutting expedition. Close by lay a trim, smart-looking gun-boat. AH was bustle and stir on board, and it was obvious that they were getting up steam. I drank in the sight, momentarily expecting to see it fade before my eyes, and to find myself once more wearily plodding through those maddening swamps. The transition from ceaseless anxiety and hungry misery to full-bellied content and tobacco-soothed repose had been so sudden; I was as a man who, after long time staggering in the dark, is suddenly thrust into the full glare of sunlight, and could hardly grasp that it was at last all over. Nothing to do but sit and be carried along towards clean shirts, collars, glasses, friends--all that makes life a thing of joy. How many people realize what all these things mean? How many people have ever caught the exquisite flavour of bread-and-butter? the restful luxury of clean linen? the hiss of Schweppe's? One must munch hippo-meat alone, save one's sole shirt from contact with water as from a pestilence lest it fall to pieces, and drink brackish mud for days, to realize all this. Sensations are but contrasts, and in the strong picture contrasts must be strong. We all have our allotted portions of black and white paint; how we lay it on is a question of temperament. One mixes the pigments carefully and paints his life an even grey. Another dashes in the light and shade with a palette-knife. Such an one is the wanderer in strange climes.
[#] Nile sailing-boat.
Captain Hayes-Sadler, the Governor of Fashoda, was in command of the gunboat, and kindly offered to take me down to Khartoum. They told me that Captain Gage, Dr. Milne, Commandant Henri, Lieut. Bertrand, and Lieut. de Tonquedec had all passed about four days before. De Tonquedec, a most delightful and entertaining man, was the last Frenchman to evacuate the Nile. He had been sent up to supplement the occupation begun by Marchand, and had done by far the finest work of all. No undertaking has ever been more absurdly overrated than Marchand's expedition to Fashoda. It was seized upon by the military party, and boomed to the echo as a set-off to the Dreyfusards. As a matter of fact, he never touched an inch of new country, but merely carried out successfully a very able bit of transport organization with everything in his favour--sound lieutenants, unlimited funds, and one of the best-equipped expeditions that ever set foot in Africa, supported by excellent native troops in his Senegalese. All the labour of the country was retained for him, and compulsion used where there was any difficulty in obtaining carriers. Hundreds of miles of navigable water took his goods almost to the Congo-Nile divide, and thence it was simply a question of moving from post to post till the watershed was crossed, and he could place his boats on the navigable waters of the Nile. The only real difficulty, that of reoccupying the Bahr-el-Ghazal posts, had been already accomplished by the Belgians, whom the French kicked out. Once on the navigable Nile, they had but to go with the current till they reached Fashoda; the waters of the Bahr-el-Ghazal and Lake No happening to be comparatively free from sudd obstructions. They were strong enough to defy resistance at the hands of the Shilluks, who have nothing but ambatch canoes, and once entrenched at Fashoda they would have been poor creatures if they could not have beaten off a handful of Dervishes. As an able example of African transport it stands in the van of similar undertakings, but as a daring or dangerous feat it does not stand in the same class as Gage and Milne's descent of the Nile, or De Tonquedec's performance. His duty was a most hazardous one, as, with nothing but a handful of Senegalese and a sous-officier, he penetrated overland through the terrible Dinkas to the Upper Nile, and occupied Gaba Shambeh. Marchand is a world-word. When I arrived at Marseilles and inquired after De Tonquedec, nobody had ever heard of him.
Fortune favoured me when I started on the descent of the Nile. I knew that Khartoum had fallen, but nothing more. I had imagined that the Redjaf Dervishes were still occupying Bohr and the Upper Nile, and that the Khalifa was still at large on the Fashoda district of the Nile. But shortly after I started the Dervishes fled from Bohr before the advance of the Belgians, and while I was wearily plodding along, Sir Francis Wingate killed the Khalifa, and annihilated the Dervish army at Om Debrikat. The Abyssinians had finally retired from the Sobat, and by this happy combination of luck I had a clear route, though I did not know it, and my anxiety lest I should unexpectedly stroll into a Dervish or Abyssinian camp was considerable. Captain C. G. Steward, R.A., D.S.O., was in command of the base camp, and was sadly fretting at having had his orders to proceed to South Africa cancelled.
There were several gunboats employed on the sudd-cutting operations. Many of the Dervish prisoners had been sent south for the work, and were looking uncommonly well, which speaks volumes for the efficient transport system. The method of procedure was as follows:--The sudd, which at times is 30 ft. thick and sufficiently solid for the elephant to pass over, was cut into large blocks. A wire hawser was then attached, and the mass was pulled away by two steamers. When it floated clear it was cut up, and allowed to drift away with the stream. Many of these floating masses had accumulated opposite the base camp, and bade fair to form another sudd obstruction. In places where a portion was cut out, the water from the pressure caused by the pent-up river surged forth like a wave, bringing up water-logged canoes, bloated crocodiles, and various other unexpected apparitions. The fish rose in incredible swarms to these breathing-places. At one place the men took off their loose trousers, tied the ends, and baled out over four hundred large fish in less than an hour. The work was so hard that no one had time to get fever, and the health of the expedition had been excellent. After several months of desperate toil, the undertaking is now happily completed, and there is a clear riverway from Khartoum to Redjaf; and Fort Berkeley, the outpost of the Uganda Protectorate, instead of being nearly four months from Mombasa, is now within one month of Cairo. A weekly service of steamers should effectually prevent the sudd from re-forming. By judicious treatment, possibly on the lines that I have suggested in a subsequent chapter, the waterway might be made permanent, and its navigable facilities greatly improved. There is, undoubtedly, as pointed out by Gordon, the great difficulty of fuel, but probably in the near future oil will obviate this.
A few hours' steaming took us past the Sobat junction, where there is now but a small post of Soudanese under a native officer, and to the world-famed Fashoda. Here I handed over the first trans-continental post-bag, which I had brought through with me, to Captain Hayes-Sadler, who stamped the post-cards with the gorgeous red seal of Fashoda. Here, too, I received the first letter that had reached me for eighteen months, in which I learned that my oldest friend had fallen at Glencoe, at the very beginning of the war--to wit, Lieut. John Taylor, of the King's Royal Rifles. Curiously enough, the last letter that I had received on leaving civilization had been from him. Verily Africa is an accursed land. Many of the good friends whom I had met during our journey have already gone, and again and again I hear of fresh gaps in the chain.
I went and looked at the little French fort built of bricks that were taken from the ruined buildings of Fashoda. It is a very insignificant structure, and I should have been very sorry to be inside with a seven-pounder playing on the fort. There are still a few pawpaw trees planted by Marchand, the shrivelled fruit of which we took on board, and utilized as vegetable marrows. The Rek or King of the Shilluks lives near Fashoda; he is the descendant of a hundred kings, or something of that kind. I am not sure that his pedigree does not go back to the time of the Pharaohs. I had the pleasure of seeing his mop-headed Majesty ride past, attended by numerous courtiers. The Shilluk villages are about a mile away from the channel of the Nile, to avoid being flooded during the rains. The Dervishes kidnapped many thousands of the flower of their youth for military service. The Rek is a delightful old gentleman, and presented Captain Hayes-Sadler with an order not unconnected with crocodiles. The Shilluks are a most moral people, and live contentedly under an ample code of laws admirably suited to their social condition and mode of life. Any attempt to interfere with the belief and customs of such a people seems unwise. In view of the appalling misery and want at home, it is difficult to justify the large sums of money spent in upsetting the, in many cases, admirable existing state of society in Africa. Centuries have evolved a state of society most suitable to the surroundings and conditions of life. Why try to upset it? On the voyage down to Fashoda I saw many Shilluk fishermen wading in the shallow water, and endeavouring to spear fish. The spear used is of great length, and the pointed end is tied back to form a bow, by which means the point is induced to run along the top of, instead of sticking into, the mud. It seemed an unprofitable business, but, like most natives, they appear quite hopeful. They train their hair into gigantic mops, and dye it red with cow-dung. Many of the men have splendid features, and are extremely handsome. They hunt the hippo with great daring, pursuing the beasts in tiny ambatch canoes, which are often broken up by the infuriated bulls. They plunge a barbed spearhead into the skin, and then paddle ashore with the end of the attached rope; every one lends a hand, and the struggling brute is eventually hauled ashore and despatched.
North of Fashoda we saw many herds of waterbuck, hartebeeste (Senegalensis?), and roan grazing on the flats which lie between the marshy banks and the bush. One evening I was standing on deck, and noticed ahead of the steamer an animal sitting on the top of the bank watching us. As we passed alongside, it moved, and we saw that it was a splendid leopard. It strolled away quite unconcernedly, watching us round its shoulder, and slowly swishing its long tail to and fro; then it went and sat under a tree, whence it lazily regarded us till we were out of sight. At Djebel Ain we had to leave the gunboat, as the extraordinarily low Nile prevented steamers from crossing the ford, and we were forced to proceed to the next navigable stretch in a large gyassa or native boat. Djebel Ain is the end of the northern telegraph line, and I could at last wire and relieve the anxiety of my friends and relations. It was just fourteen months since I had left the end of the southern, or Mr. Rhodes's, section. Hayes-Sadler's Soudanese orderly, who looked after me, was a most delightful old gentleman. He could not quite understand me, and was continually demanding explanations of me: "Whence comes he, this man?" "Is he a soldier?" Hayes-Sadler explained that I was not, but was travelling for the pleasure of seeing the country. "Ah! you are a strange people, you English Effendis: how comes it that he wears not the moustache even as the other Effendis?" He was informed that I was of a slightly different ginss (tribe) to the others, and was quite satisfied at the explanation. After that he referred to me as "the Great White Effendi from the South." "He is a strange man, and verily comes from afar; yet I like that man--I look upon him as the apple of my eye," he informed his master. He was a splendid fellow, and I much enjoyed his polite and gentlemanly attentions after the dirty creatures with whom I had so long been in contact.
At the northern end of the ford we found the steamer waiting for us, and I first met Captain Gage and Dr. Milne, of whom I had heard so much. We were a numerous and jolly party on board, and with the exception of a morning's sand-grouse shooting, in the course of which eight guns bagged something over one hundred and fifty brace in a couple of hours, we arrived without further incident at Omdurman. Here we were bewildered with true Egyptian Army hospitality, and our time was spent in wildly flying from mess to mess.
The Sirdar gave a great dinner, at which he invited all the British and Egyptian commanding officers to meet the "tourists" from the south. Our simultaneous arrival was an extraordinary coincidence: Milne and Gage from the east, De Tonquedec, Bertrand, and Henri from the west, I from the south, and Hayes-Sadler from the north, and that in what was almost the uttermost end of the earth. After the dinner there was a great Soudanese dance; all the battalions broke up into their tribes and danced their tribal dances by torchlight: the spectacle was most weird. Sir Francis Wingate kindly asked me to stay with him at the Palace, which is already nearly completed.