The condition of the unfortunate slaves had become far worse since their confiscation; the very measures that ought to have ameliorated their lot had been but an aggravation of their misery. The supply of corn was rapidly coming to an end; they had, in fact, hardly anything to eat, and the soldiers on guard never dreamed of making the least exertion to provide in any way for their needs, resorting to the use of the kurbatch much more freely than their former masters, who had now lost whatever interest they might have had in their welfare.
My powers of endurance were sorely tried. Incessant on the one hand were the murmurs and complaints; incessant on the other were the scoldings and cursings. If some luckless negro happened to be blessed with a tolerably good and robust constitution so that he kept fat and healthy under all his hardships, he was continually being made a laughing-stock and jeered at for being “a tub;” if, on the contrary, a poor wretch got thin till he was the very picture of misery, he was designated a “hyæna,” and perpetually bantered on account of his “hyæna-face.” I used to have whole kettles full of rice and maccaroni boiled for the poor creatures, but it was, of course, utterly beyond the compass of my resources to do much towards supplying their wants.
On approaching the district of Wod Shellay, we perceived countless masses of black specks standing out against the bright coloured sand. They were all slaves! The route from Kordofan to the east lay right across the land, and was quite unguarded; the spot that we now saw was where the caravans are conveyed over the river on their way to the great dépôt at Mussalemieh. Once again did the sight remind me of Katherine II.’s painted villages in South Russia, although this time in a somewhat different sense.
ARRIVAL AT KHARTOOM.
At length towards sunset, on the 21st of July, we reached the Ras-el-Khartoom. Our entire journey from the Meshera had been accomplished in twenty-five days, six of which had been consumed in stoppages at Fanekama, Fashoda, and Kowa. Upon the whole I congratulated myself on getting so quickly to the end of the trouble. With a quickened pulse I set out alone on foot for the town. Evening was drawing on, and although I met numbers of people, there was no one to recognise me; in my meagre white calico costume I might easily have passed for one of those homeless Greeks, who, without a place to rest their heads, have been forced to seek their fortune in the remotest corners of the earth. I made my way at once to a German tailor named Klein, who had been living for some years in Khartoom, and by the vigorous prosecution of his trade had contributed in no small degree towards the promotion of external culture in the town. He soon provided me with some civilised garments, and I felt myself fit to make my appearance before my old friends, at least such as remained, for some I grieved to learn were dead, and others had left the place.
I found Khartoom itself much altered. A large number of new brick buildings, a spacious quay on the banks of the Blue Nile, and some still more imposing erections on the other side of the river, had given the place the more decided aspect of an established town. The extensive gardens and rows of date-palms planted out nearly half a century back, had now attained to such a development that they could not be altogether without influence on the climate; in spite of everything, however, the sanitary condition of Khartoom was still very unsatisfactory. This was entirely owing to the defective drainage of that portion of the town that had been built below the high-water level. In July, when I was there, I saw many pools almost large enough to be called ponds that could never possibly dry up without the application of proper means for draining them off; stagnant under the tropical sun, they sent forth such an intolerable stench that it was an abomination to pass near them. When it is remembered that Khartoom is situated in the desert-zone (for the grassy region does not begin for at least 150 miles farther to the south) there can appear no necessary reason why it should be more unhealthy than either Shendy or Berber; all that is wanted is that the sanitary authorities should exercise a better management and see that stagnant puddles should be prevented.
As I have already intimated, I found that not a few of my former acquaintances during my absence had fallen victims to the fatal climate; but no loss did I personally deplore more than that of the missionary Blessing, who died just a fortnight before my arrival; Herr Duisberg had left Khartoom, and since his departure Blessing had managed all my affairs, and it was from him that I had received my last despatches in the negro-countries. I found his young widow perfectly inconsolable, and the sight of her grief made me feel doubly what a blank his death had left.
On the day after my arrival I telegraphed to Alexandria to announce my safe return. The message reached its destination in the course of two days; the charge for twenty words was four dollars. The telegram had to be written in Arabic, and in the compressed yet lucid form of that language ran as follows:—“German Consulate-General, Alexandria. Arrived July 21st. Telegraph to Braun at the Berlin Academy that he may inform my mother. Nothing else necessary.” The telegraph had only been established during the last few months, and as yet was scarcely in full working order. The officials were young and inexperienced at their work, and the direct line of communication was broken in two places by the messages having to be conveyed across the river; as a further defect, the Morse system was partially in use, and it was only beyond Assouan that the needle-system had been adopted. Except for the conciseness of its forms of expression, Arabic is extremely unsuitable for telegraphy; the deficiency of vowel symbols makes proper names all but undecipherable to any one who is previously unacquainted with them. But with all its temporary shortcomings, the establishment of the telegraph will ever rank as pre-eminent amongst the services rendered by the Government of Ismail Pasha.
MY SERVANTS’ DILEMMA.
Dyafer Pasha, to whom I was so much indebted for his liberal intentions on my behalf, received me with his unfailing cordiality, and gave me a lodging in one of the Government buildings that was at his disposal; but notwithstanding all his generosity to myself I could not feel otherwise than very much hurt at the unscrupulous manner in which he acted towards my servants. Their faithfulness to myself had made me much interested in them, and I now felt intensely annoyed when I found that, without any communication with me, they had been seized, thrust into irons, and set to work in the galleys, leaving me with no one but my three negro lads, and without the services of anybody who knew how to cook. The fact was that, although I had not been made acquainted with it, they had been in possession of some slaves on their own account, representing them as being consigned to their care by friends in the upper district, who wanted to forward them to their homes. It was, I found, quite out of my power to prevent the controllers of the different Seribas all along my route from making presents of slaves to my servants; any protest on my part was always practically useless, and only tended to produce an irritating disagreement between us. At the time of our embarkation at the Meshera I imagined that they were accompanied only by the wives of two of them, one of their children, and two young boys who had been so long with them that I quite regarded them as a recognised part of their belongings; but it turned out in reality that they had no less than fifteen slaves, which they were surreptitiously carrying with them. The whole lot were now confiscated in one common batch; no distinction was made—men, wives, and children were all included in the general fate. This was as illegal as it was unjust, for every slave who has borne any children is reckoned as a wife, although there may have been no regular marriage.