Of course we have now a constant succession of news from the front. It is very contradictory, but the general report is [pg 338]that Theodore is marching towards Dalanta, to attack us on our way. Some of the spies assert that two o’clock on Friday night is the hour fixed for our destruction. If Theodore does mean, as is likely enough, to make a night attack, I do not think he would be weak enough to let it be known many hours beforehand as to where it will take place. However, it is no use offering any speculation now upon events which we may see determined in two or three days, and the result of which will be known by telegraph long before this letter can reach London.
Santarai, March 29th.
We are beginning to believe Magdala to be a fata morgana, an ignis fatuus, which gets more and more distant the nearer we approach it. At Dildee we were told that it was only four marches distant. We have made three marches, and have sixty more miles to go; and yet Magdala is not more than twenty-five miles in a straight line, and is visible from a point four miles distant from this camp. It is found, however, that the country is perfectly impracticable, and that we must take a detour of sixty miles to get there. I can hardly imagine what this country in a direct line to Magdala can be like, for we have passed over hundreds of miles which no one would have imagined it possible for an army with its baggage-animals to surmount. We have scaled mountains and descended precipices; we have wound along the face of deep ravines, where a false step was death; we are familiar with smooth slippery rock and with loose boulders; and after this expedition it can hardly be said that any country is impracticable for an army determined to advance. I hear, however, that between this and Magdala there are perpendicular [pg 339]precipices running like walls for miles, places which could scarcely be scaled by experienced cragsmen, much less by loaded mules. We must therefore make a detour. It is tiresome, for everyone is burning with impatience to be at Magdala, and to solve the long-debated problems—will Theodore fight? will he fight in the open, or defend Magdala? or will he hand over the captives with an apology? and shall we be content to receive one? I believe that I can answer the last question with certainty. We shall not. If Theodore sends in the captives we shall receive them, but shall certainly exact retribution from him. We shall either take him prisoner or compel him to fly. If we obtain the prisoners unhurt, we shall still take Magdala. If he escape to the mountains with a few adherents, we shall, in that case, be content to retire, and to leave the task of hunting him down to his numerous enemies; but if he murder the prisoners we shall ourselves remain here until he is captured. I think I may positively state that this, or something very like it, is the tenor of the instructions given to Sir Robert Napier by the Government; and I think that they will be heartily approved by all, except by those negrophilists who deny that a black man can do wrong. It would be impossible to allow Theodore to go unpunished; indeed, it would be offering a premium to all savage potentates in future time to make prisoners of any English travellers who may fall into their hands.
I now return to Dildee, from which place I last wrote, while we were halting in consequence of the tremendous march of the preceding day. Upon the evening of the day upon which we halted we heard that General Staveley had arrived with the force under his command at a stream five [pg 340]miles in our rear, and had there halted. He had with him the 4th, a wing of the 33d, six companies of the Punjaub Pioneers, Twiss’s Battery, and the Naval Rocket Train. It was decided that the wing of the 33d, who were with us, should halt for a day, and should come on as a complete regiment, and that the 4th, which is numerically much weaker than the 33d, should push on with the advance. The next day’s march was short, but severe, as we had to climb a mountain 3000 feet above our camping-ground. It was hard work, but was got over much more speedily than usual, as the train was much smaller, owing to our diminished numbers; and we had consequently fewer of the tedious blocks so trying to both man and beast. The road was in most places pretty good; but was dangerous for a long distance where it wound along the face of a deep ravine. The country here must be either much more densely populated, or the people much more industrious than in most of the districts over which we have passed; for there were patches of cultivation to the very top of the mountain, which, where we crossed it, was about 11,000 feet above the sea. The mountain side was bare of trees, or even bushes; but, curiously enough, very near the summit were large quantities of small palm-trees, with thick straight stems, three or four feet high, and clustered heads of spreading leaves. Several Indian officers agreed with me in considering them to be a species of palm, but we had no botanist amongst us, and it seemed most unlikely that even dwarf palm-trees should be growing in such a lofty and exposed position. I have only before seen palm-trees twice in Abyssinia, once at Goun Gonna, where two or three grew near the church, and in a valley between Attegrat and Antalo.
Arrived at the top of the pass, we found ourselves at the head of a deep ravine, on the side of which, a quarter of a mile from the summit, it was decided that the camp should be pitched. A more uncomfortable place for a camp could hardly be imagined. The ground was ploughed, and was extremely sloping. The supply of water was deficient, and was four or five hundred feet below us, and the wind swept over the top of the pass with piercing force. However, there was no help for it. The 4th had started four miles behind us, and there was no ground even so good as that selected for another seven miles. Immediately on our arrival, and before the tents were pitched, a tremendous shower came on, and everyone got drenched before the baggage-animals arrived with the tents. The black earth turned, as if by magic, into slimy clay, and our position was the reverse of agreeable. Far worse, however, was the condition of the 4th, which, having halted at Dildee for two hours, did not arrive until between eight and nine in the evening, wetted of course to the skin. We now felt bitterly the inconvenience of not having even one change of clothes with us. It could, however, have hardly been foreseen that, after having had only two or three showers since we arrived in Abyssinia, we were to be exposed to heavy rains regularly every day, which has, with one exception, been the case for the last week. As it is, it is impossible to say how long we shall be in our present state of only having the clothes we stand in. It is a week since we left our little all behind us at Lât. We are still a week’s march from Magdala, and may calculate on being fully a month without our baggage. Officers have all managed somehow to bring on a second shirt and pair of stockings; but the soldiers have no change of any kind. For them, and indeed [pg 342]for the officers, to be wetted through day after day, and to have no dry clothes to put on, and this at an altitude of 11,000 feet above the sea, and when the cold at night is more pierceing than anything I ever experienced, is trying in the extreme, and a great many are already complaining of rheumatic pains. That night at the top of the hill was the most unpleasant that officers or men have passed since their arrival in the country: wet through, cold, and lying upon ground so steep that we kept perpetually sliding down off our waterproof sheet. As to lying in the orthodox fashion, side by side, with all the heels close to the pole, like the spokes of a wheel, the thing was simply impossible. In many of the tents the men’s feet would have been a yard higher than their heads. However, there were few grumblings at the discomfort; but I can answer that I for one was greatly pleased when I saw daylight break, to get up from my uncomfortable sliding couch. We were ordered to start at eight, but the men’s things were still so wet that the march was postponed for two hours, to allow the blankets and greatcoats to be dried in the wind and sun.
Our next march was again only seven miles to a place called Muja, not that there was a village of any kind there, or indeed at eighteen out of twenty places we have stopped at. To suppose that the natives have a name for every field is absurd. Two speculations have been started as to how the quartermaster-general’s department always obtain a name for our camping-ground—the one is that they say something to a native, and the first word he utters they put down at once for the station; the other is that they draw a certain number of vowels and consonants from a bag, drop them on the ground, and see what word they form. It is certain that [pg 343]scarcely a name corresponds with those set down in maps, and instead of calling these flats and plains by any name the first native may tell them, it would be much more sensible, and would render it much more easy for an English reader to follow our course, if our quartermasters were to take some good map, and fix upon the name which most nearly corresponds with the position of our camps.
The seven-miles road down to Muja was not difficult, but was one of the most dangerous we have passed over. The path for the whole distance wound along on the face of a deep ravine. It was often little more than a foot wide, and was formed sometimes upon rock, and sometimes on black earth, which had been dried hard by the wind and sun before we passed along it, but which if wet would have been perfectly impassable. Had a storm come on when we were upon it, we must have stopped to unload the animals. As it was, only one stumbled and went over the edge, and was of course killed.
We have had a good many casualties lately among the animals. The Scinde Horse, too, have lost several horses, but this is hardly surprising from the way in which they ride them. A Scinde horseman, and I believe most of the native cavalry, have an idea that it shows good horsemanship to ride a horse up and down very steep places. It would be a great saving of horseflesh if an order were issued that all native cavalry should dismount and lead their horses up, if not down also, long or steep hills. Our camping-ground at Muja was flat and turfy, but it had the disadvantage of being a great height above water. Sir Robert Napier himself upon his arrival rode a couple of miles farther in search of some site more convenient for watering the animals, but he was unsuccessful in [pg 344]doing so. The camping-ground had also the disadvantage of a very great scarcity of wood.