I hear that Selim Bey and the Egyptian officers departed on the 26th inst. by the steamers Khedive and Nyanza, which brought to the Lake camp from Mswa a large cargo of baggage and several score of fresh refugees.
Emin Pasha reached camp this morning from the Lake. He was accompanied by his daughter, a little girl of six years old, named Ferida, the offspring of an Abyssinian woman. She is extremely pretty, with large, beautiful black eyes.
104 carriers conveyed the Pasha’s luggage and stores of flour, millet, sesamum, honey, and salt.
The head man, Wadi Khamis, who escorted this caravan, reports that one of Selim Bey’s officers stole a Remington rifle and took it with him. This is odd. If these people meditate returning here they should be aware that theft of arms is severely punished.
The Pasha informs me that another mail arrived from Wadelai on the 25th, and that an official letter was handed to Selim Bey from the rebel officers headed by Fadl-el-Mulla, announcing to him that he was deposed from his position as Chief Commander of the Troops, and that he, the Pasha and Casati, were sentenced to death by court-martial. Captain Fadl-el-Mulla has promoted himself on assuming authority to the rank of Bey or Colonel. This is quite in Jack Cade’s style. We must now call him Fadl-el-Mulla Bey.
Feb. 28th.—Sent fifty rifles and seventy-two natives of the Wabiaasi and Ruguji tribes under Lieut. Stairs to the Lake camp to escort another contingent of refugees and convey baggage up to the plateau.
March 1st.—The Pasha, with his own consent, and indeed on his own proposal, has been appointed naturalist and meteorologist to the Expedition. He has accordingly received one aneroid, one max. and min. thermometer, one Bath thermometer, one standard thermometer, two boiling-point thermometers, which, added to his own instruments, equip him completely. No expedition could be so well served as ours will be. He is the most industrious and exact observer that I know.[8]
1889.
March 1.
Kavalli’s.
The Pasha is in his proper element as naturalist and meteorologist. He is of the school of Schweinfurth and Holub. His love of science borders on fanaticism. I have attempted to discover during our daily chats whether he was Christian or Moslem, Jew or Pagan, and I rather suspect that he is nothing more than a Materialist. Who can say why votaries of science, though eminently kindly in their social relations, are so angular of character? In my analysis of the scientific nature I am constrained to associate with it, as compared with that of men who are more Christians than scientists, a certain hardness, or rather indelicacy of feeling. They strike me as being somewhat unsympathetic, and capable of only cold friendship, coolly indifferent to the warmer human feelings. I may best express what I mean by saying that I think they are more apt to feel an affection for one’s bleached skull and frame of unsightly bones, than for what is divine within a man. If one talks about the inner beauty, which to some of us is the only beauty worth anything, they are apt to yawn, and to return an apologetic and compassionate smile. They seem to wish you to infer that they have explored the body through and through, and that it is waste of time to discuss what only exists in the imagination.
Sent seventy-two natives of Mpigwa’s tribe under twelve Zanzibaris to Lake camp for baggage.