After five days' march we reached El Obeid, and from here the Bishop made a tour through Jebel Nuba, while Father Ohrwalder remained at El Obeid, and was eventually sent to the mission station of Delen, in southern Kordofan. I stayed in El Obeid a few days only, and, having received telegraphic orders to proceed to Foga, I bid my two friends farewell. One of them—the good Bishop—I was destined never to see again; he died in Khartum on 10th October, 1881. The other,—my dear friend Ohrwalder,—like myself, was soon to go through many strange and horrible experiences before we were again to meet as fellow-captives of the as yet unknown Mahdi, who was shortly to overthrow every vestige of Government authority in the Sudan.
Two days later I quitted El Obeid, and, travelling via Abu Haraz and Shallota, reached Foga, where I found a telegram from His Highness the Khedive, officially appointing me Governor-General of Darfur, and directing me to proceed forthwith to El Fasher, to take over the duties from Ali Bey Sherif. I had some urgent business to do in Dara, and several private letters to attend to; but I thought it advisable to proceed at once to El Fasher, where I arrived on 20th April. Here I found much intriguing going on, from the Mudir down to the lowest clerk in the office; the Kadi and his employés were all at variance, and even the clerks of the law-courts had sued each other for contempt. Several petitions had been filed against officials; there were all sorts of charges pending against false witnesses; cases regarding breaches of morality abounded; in fact, it would have required years to settle the mass of suits and petitions brought before me for decision. A few I managed to settle, but I regret to say that I had to leave the greater number pending. The most important case was that against Nur Angara, his sanjak, and the Kulkul officials, who, with their complainants, had all been summoned to El Fasher, whence, after freely bribing the officials with money and slaves, they were sent back to Kulkul without any decision having been given. There was a large box full of correspondence on this subject, most of which was not worth the paper it was written on; I therefore sent instructions to Nur Angara, his officials, and the complainants, who were all living at Kulkul without work, to come to El Fasher; and, pending his arrival, I endeavoured to establish some sort of order in regard to tributes, taxation, etc. Several cases had also been filed against the late Mudir, Said Bey Guma,—who was at the same time commander of the troops,—but it was impossible to prove them; and as it was imperative that I should have an assistant, I reinstated him as Mudir of El Fasher. There was no doubt he was an intriguer; besides being excessively parsimonious, he was not liked by the officers, and was famed for his vocabulary of bad language; but at the same time he was a brave soldier in the field, and this quality,—especially amongst Egyptians,—was excessively rare in these distant regions. I therefore re-employed him, on condition that he would amend his ways; and I frankly told him that if he gave me the slightest trouble I should discharge him, and pack him off to Khartum. I knew this would be a terrible punishment; for, though an Egyptian, he had become greatly attached to Darfur.
Major Hassan Effendi Rifki, commanding at Dara, I transferred to the command of a battalion at El Fasher, under Ali Bey Sherif, as he was constantly drunk; but no sooner had he come under my observation than he appeared before me twice in a state of intoxication, and I was obliged to discharge him and send him to Khartum. Meanwhile, Nur Angara and the host of defendants and complainants duly arrived, and I very soon found out that the latter had been for the most part his friends, through whose help he had become Mudir; but as he had abandoned them, they were anxious to revenge themselves by plotting against him. On the other hand, Nur Angara himself was a most resolute villain; without rhyme or reason, and often merely to satisfy his own brutal pleasure, he shed blood; and as for his views in regard to the property of his fellow creatures, they were beyond the conception of the most advanced Social Democrat in the world. As he was a Bey, and held the rank of colonel, I ordered the proper salute to be fired when he entered the fort, gave him a hearty welcome, and ordered his attendants to be lodged in one of Omar Wad Darho's houses, lying to the north of the town. He was a tall, beardless man, with a dark copper-coloured complexion, and the usual three slits on his cheeks; he had an energetic and wild look, but when talking he appeared to be a perfectly harmless individual. He was a Dongolawi, and had been brought up by the Shaigi, Melek Tumbal, who was formally a sanjak, and claimed descent from the Shaigia kings. When quite a boy he had come to Cairo, and, owing to his connection with Zubeir and his son, he had acquired to some extent the good-will of the Government. He had an old mother of about sixty years of age living in Dongola, and in spite of his wild character she had the same affection and care for her son which Rauf Pasha's mother had for him. It is said that when Gordon was in Dongola, an old woman asked to see him, and on entering, said: "I am Nur Angara's mother, and have come to seek your help." "But," said Gordon, "you have a good-for-nothing son, who passes his time in riotous living instead of looking after his old mother." "Ah!" said the old woman, "may he be always happy! I forgive him, but I want you to help me." Gordon presented her with £50 from his own pocket, and she returned home heaping blessings on his head and on that of her undutiful son.
After speaking some time to Nur Angara about his province, I referred quite casually to his great case, saying that I had had no time to examine carefully into the matter, and that when he and his traducers had rested sufficiently, I proposed sending them on to El Obeid. The next day happened to be the first of Ramadan, and all the people were fasting except Nur Angara, who did little else but drink araki and om bilbil, and listen to the music of antelope-horns and noggaras played by his attendants, and every now and then he ordered the big war-drum to be beaten. So irritated was I by this constant noise that I sent orders to him to stop it, telling him at the same time that it was a matter of no concern to me whether he fasted or not; but I declined to allow him—a Moslem, and an Egyptian official—to cause public annoyance, and I told him he had no right to disregard public opinion. "I shall comply with your orders," said he, "and stop my noisy amusements; but I never did care for Ramadan, and never shall. I shall continue to drink as much as I like, and I don't care a brass farthing what people say or think of me." I could see that he was then under the influence of drink, so I ordered him to go to his house and prepare to leave. Two days later he quitted El Fasher for El Obeid, and on arrival there was at once discharged from the Government service. Ali Bey Sherif also left when he had finally handed over the province to me, and I now proposed going on a tour of inspection through the entire country, with the administration of which I had been intrusted.
Just as I was making preparations to start, news arrived that a fight had occurred between the Maheria and Bedeyat Arabs at Bir el Malha; and a few days afterwards Hasaballa, the head-Sheikh of the Maheria, with many of the chiefs, arrived to represent the case. It appeared that the Maheria Arabs had gone, as usual, to the natron fields at Bir el Malha on the Arbaïn road, ten days' march north of El Fasher, to procure natron to sell in Darfur; here they had been surprised and attacked by their deadly enemies, the Bedeyat, who lived in the northeast portion of Wadai, and who captured some fifteen hundred camels, and took upwards of one hundred and sixty men prisoners. These tribes had been at war with each other from remotest times, and men captured were generally ransomed at the rate of ten to fifteen camels a head. It was usually considered that the Bedeyat belonged to Darfur, though they never paid tribute; and that, I suppose, was the reason for the Maheria Sheikhs coming to me to ask for the forcible return of the captured men and camels.
The road between Assiut and Darfur had been formerly much used by merchants, and large caravans used to pass along it; but it had been discovered that it was also used as a slave route, and several merchants had been caught in this traffic and had been exiled; consequently, the Egyptian Government had given orders for the road to be closed. From the first day I arrived in El Fasher, I had heard nothing but complaints about the stoppage of trade along this road, and I had already represented to the Government that this was the direct trade route with Egypt, and would serve as an outlet for the ivory, feathers, skins, and tamarisk fruit with which the country abounded, instead of sending it in a roundabout way to Khartum, and thence down the Nile, involving the merchants in heavy transport expenses as well as long delays. Government now approved of my reopening trade by this road, but held me responsible that no slaves should be sent along it. No sooner had I received this permission than I ordered a caravan to be prepared, and, under the guarantee and guidance of Sheikh Mohammed Wad Idris, some eight hundred camels started for Egypt, and in less than seven weeks I received a telegram via Khartum announcing their safe arrival at Assiut.
As I was very anxious to inspect the northern and western frontiers of Darfur, the complaint of the Maheria afforded me a pretext for doing so, and for settling their affairs as well. I therefore ordered them to supply, without delay, one hundred and fifty baggage-camels, and one hundred "suga," or large water-skins made of bullock's hide; this they readily agreed to do, and we named the village of Melek Hagger (the chief of the Zaghawa Arabs), lying to the north of Kebkebia, as the rendezvous.
About the middle of December, 1881, I left El Fasher with two hundred infantry and some irregular Shaigia cavalry, under Omar Wad Darho. This individual, it will be remembered, had been sent by Ali Bey Sherif to settle the Madibbo-Egeil differences, and having found on my return to Darfur that he had acted unjustly, I had discharged him; but he had subsequently told me that he had been ordered by Ali Bey Sherif to collect a considerable sum of money for him, and that, therefore, he could not act otherwise. I pardoned and reinstated him; moreover, most of the Shaigia horsemen in El Fasher were his relatives, and he was the only man who appeared to be able to exercise any degree of authority over them.
The first night after leaving El Fasher we camped near the Migdob wells, about half way to Kobbé; and when it was dark, I happened to stroll towards the wells, accompanied by one of my attendants. I was dressed in much the same way as the soldiers, and it was too dark for me to be recognised; I therefore came close to the well, and watched the women drawing water. Some Shaigia now came up to water their horses, and asked the women for their buckets, which they refused to give. "We shall first fill our jars," they said, "and then you can use the buckets." "Your words are as a punishment sent from God," replied one of the Shaigia; "this is the result of bringing liberty into the country. By Allah! were it not so, and were not Slatin with us, you and your vessels would very soon be our property." "God grant him a long life!" was the retort; and I strolled quietly away, thoroughly pleased to have heard with my own ears an admission from the mouths of Sudanese that they were thankful to the Europeans for having released them from the oppression and violence which had hitherto characterised the system of government in this country.
At 11 A. M. the next day we reached Kobbé, the old trade capital of Darfur, which was now inhabited principally by Jaalin, whose fathers and grandfathers, immigrating from the Nile valley, had intermarried with the local people. The Mamur of this place was a certain Emiliani dei Danziger, of a Venetian family of Austrian origin. He had been given this position by Gordon, and I now sent him to act as Mudir of Dara. The people seemed sorry to say good-bye to him; they said he was a good man, and when slaves and masters disagreed, and the former wanted to leave the latter, he had often been able, by quiet words, to effect a reconciliation. Fortunately, I was not called upon to give any immediate decisions here on the slave question, and the following morning, leaving Kobbé, we marched, via Sanied el Kebir and Bir el Gidar, to Kebkebia, where we arrived in two days. Kebkebia is situated on a rocky plateau, and just at the edge of a deep khor. In the centre of the town was a square, loopholed enclosure about nine feet high, constructed of rough stones and mud, smeared with whitewash, in which were the huts of the officers and the small garrison. Formerly the Mudir and troops were quartered at Kulkul, but had been transferred here about a year and a half before. The buildings had not been completed, and, in consequence, the houses of Nur Angara and the other officials were situated outside the enclosure. The khor contained some good gardens and some very high palm-trees, which gave the town a most picturesque appearance.