As soon as the signal for the march was given, the slaves were forced to join their detachments, and, in case of delay for one minute only, the whip and butt-end of the musket were again at work. Old men and infirm women, bent down with the weight of years and care, who could scarcely creep along, suffered like treatment, and when too weak to move on were left to perish on the sand. Children were not allowed to take leave of their nearest relatives; a tear and a look of sorrow was the only tribute they could pay to the unfortunate beings delivered over to their doom. To prevent a father or a mother from perishing in this miserable manner, their wives or daughters, who were unfettered, would take one of these wretches between two of them, who, passing his arms round the neck of both, was thus dragged on, or even at times carried. Children above six years of age, or even at the age of four, were forced to walk; they also generally succumb to the fatigues of the march, and are then carried by their mothers or sisters. I have seen a mother with an infant on one arm, and a child of two years of age on the other, at last charge herself with a grown boy on her back, until she sank herself exhausted under this triple load.
The officers commanding on these expeditions are more especially to blame for the cruelty of the troops, for, riding at a distance in front, or in the rear of the transport, they do not trouble themselves about the condition of their prisoners, but leave them entirely to the mercy of a ruthless soldiery. If an officer of more feeling should happen to be in command, the circumstance is instantly known by the diminished mortality on the road. I once met with one of them who feelingly attended to the children and the sick; who ordered them to be mounted on the beasts of burden when too weak to proceed, and I saw him even take one or even two of the children on his own horse. This man may lay his head on his pillow in peace, free from the reproach of having augmented the sufferings of his unfortunate fellow-creatures, whilst many of his comrades must quail under the pangs of a guilty conscience for the fearful death of hundreds of human beings.
An hour before sunset a halt was again ordered, and rations of boiled dokn were once more served. But in the night the misery of the slaves reached its very climax. In the month of January, when the changes of temperature are ordinarily very perceptible, and the thermometer generally falls below 4° Reaumur (41° Fahrenheit), the cold is felt as severely as when at 4° or 5° below 0° of Reaumur (23° to 20, 75° Fahrenheit), in the northern parts of Germany. Imagine, now, the poor negroes in a state of absolute nudity, without the means of covering themselves, and debilitated by hunger and fatigue, when some idea may be formed of the sufferings they had to endure; fires were certainly lighted, but the scanty supply of wood rendered it impossible to defend these poor wretches from the effects of cold. The shrieks and sobs of the children, the cries of the wounded, and the groans of the sick, were perfectly horrifying, and in the morning an infant was once found dead and stiff with the cold at its mother’s breast. It is true that the negroes have no covering in their own villages beyond a girdle or a piece of linen passed round their loins, but then they lie at night in their huts, or cover themselves with the skins of animals, none of which they can find on their march. Those who wore the sheba could not sleep at night for pain, as it so severely compresses the neck that it impedes every movement, and thus not one man was free from suffering. A woman far advanced in pregnancy was delivered in the night without assistance. I gave the poor mother a shirt, in which she wrapped her infant, and thus safely carried it to Lobeid, and in compassion for her weak state I lent her my ass to ride. I am unequal to the task of narrating all the horrors I witnessed during the few days I attached myself to the convoy; no words are sufficiently expressive to describe the sufferings of the slaves, and no tongue can tell the painful sensations of a man of feeling who witnesses these atrocities. I did all in my power, with entreaties and presents, to make the troops, and the irregular natives forming the escort, more compassionate, and thus many a man was induced to take a child who could not move its jaded feet along the burning sand upon his back, or to relieve a mother exhausted by its weight, and carry it during the whole of the day. Unfortunately, however, I was not able to put a stop to all acts of cruelty, and was forced on one occasion to see an unfeeling soldier fell a man to the ground with the butt-end of his musket because unable to keep pace with the rest: his feet, in fact, refused their office: he had been wounded in that part during the siege, the wound had inflamed, and the pain had quite overpowered him. I lost all command of my feelings on witnessing this brutal act, drew my sword, and should have cut down the inhuman barbarian, if my servant had not seized my arm and wrested my sword and pistols from my hand; nor did he return my arms to me before he saw that my passion had cooled. On the eighth day the expedition arrived at Lobeid. The distribution, described in the former chapter, now took place, and this is, properly speaking, the chief cause of the harsh and merciless behaviour of the soldiery towards the slaves; for they know, that they will be compelled to receive them in liquidation of their arrears of pay, at a value far above the price they will obtain from the slave-merchants; that the slaves, moreover, frequently die before they can dispose of them, in which case the loss falls upon them, and they must serve the government for months gratuitously. Hence they do all in their power to rid themselves of the old and infirm slaves before they reach Lobeid, in order to avoid the inconvenience of being forced to take one of these men in lieu of their pay. If the payment of the troops in the Belled-Soodan were effected in cash, as it is in the other provinces, I am convinced that the unfortunate slaves would meet with more humane treatment. But thanks to the noble Queen Victoria of England, whose eye of compassion has penetrated into these distant realms, and cheered the hearts of the dejected and oppressed inhabitants,—at whose earnest representations, in fine, these slave-hunts have been put an end to by Mehemed Ali himself,—thousands of these poor negroes, who from year to year trembled under the fear of a similar fate, may now live in peace and tranquillity; and the prayers of the emancipated, offered up to the throne of the Almightly for this truly great monarch cannot fail to reward her humanity by a prosperous and happy reign. According to reports from Kordofan, no expedition for kidnapping slaves was ordered in the year 1839, and the troops were paid in cash; but those, unfortunately, of 1840 and 1841 sound very differently, for Mehemed Ali, in spite of his solemn promise to put an end to all further slave-hunts, had again commenced these revolting expeditions.
CHAPTER XVIII.
INFORMATION CONCERNING THE COURSE OF THE BAHR-ABIAD (WHITE NILE). — ANTIQUITIES OF KORDOFAN. — BANDANIANIAM.[89]
During my residence in Kordofan, I enjoyed the opportunity of coming in contact with persons who had travelled over the greater part of the South-east and South-west of Africa, and who were able to give me information on many points hitherto subjected to doubt. These were in part Djelabi (merchants), in part Takruri (pilgrims). My chief object in making these inquiries, was to obtain an authentic account of the course of the White Nile, but I was unable to gain satisfactory information for a length of time, and nearly despaired of ever arriving at my end; for the men who travelled in the countries through which this river flows, were partly too deeply engaged in their own business to attend to matters of little or no importance to them, or were such from whose statements no certain conclusions could be deduced. At last, however, I became acquainted with a negro from Runga, who had spent three years of his life in Europe, and then returned to his native country. A lengthened intercourse with this man convinced me that he had enjoyed the opportunity of learning more than his countrymen, and had profited by it, and was, moreover, not addicted to falsehood, as the natives are, almost without exception. He had visited his fatherland after three years of absence, and had made various journeys into other countries. I thought, therefore, that he would be the best man to apply to for information on the course of the White Nile; I found him both intelligent and willing, and obtained the following description, which appears to me most worthy of credence:—
The Bahr-Abiad, or White Nile, flows through Runga, a country situated to the south of Darfour, to which kingdom it is tributary. The river is said to be very broad, but by no means deep, and even fordable by men or cattle. During the dry season, it is not navigable throughout, for in certain spots there is not enough water to float a boat, and the natives are only in few places provided with rafts. From Runga its course is directed towards Bakkara, then towards the country of the Jenky, Dynke, or Denkani, where it is said to receive a tributary stream, of whose course I could obtain no further information. After flowing through the country of the Jenky and Shilluks, the Bahr-Abiad is said to enter Sennaar, where it unites with the Blue Nile, near Khartoom. As I was more anxious to know the course of the river before it reaches Runga, my friend, the negro, introduced me to several of his acquaintances, natives of those countries, which are watered by this stream, and from this source I learnt that it flows through Binga, Wuanga, Gulla, and Banda. I conversed with two or three persons on this subject, two of them natives of Bornu, and the third a native of Binga, who had resided during five years in the former state, and they all coincided in that statement, that a river flows through the country, named in their language the Gazelle-stream, because its water is as pure and transparent as that of springs. They could not tell me its source; but all agreed that it takes its course towards Banda, where it is named the White River, from the colour it assumes, dependent on the nature of the soil through which it flows. I also received intelligence of certain Egyptian antiquities, standing in the desert, between Kordofan and Darfour, at Cab-Belull,[90] a place situated at a distance of two days’ march from Caccie, on the borders of Kordofan. Doum-palms grow by the side of the ruins, and in the dry season water is to be found at a distance of eight miles from the spot. This place is very little known in Kordofan even, for no road passes through the neighbourhood. My informant was a Djelabi (merchant), who, on his return from Darfour, had been compelled to make a considerable circuit to avoid a horde of robbers, and had encamped at Cab-Belull. His camel-drivers, who were Kubbabeesh, were acquainted with this spot, and had frequently, on their former journeys, driven their beasts to this place for pasture. I conclude the ruins to be Egyptian antiquities, as the merchant compared them with those at Luxor, with which he was also acquainted. They are said to consist of large portals, and high walls; some few colossal figures in stone are also reported to be there met with, but the greater part of them is buried in the sands. The Djelabi brought a few camel-drivers to me, who had a knowledge of that neighbourhood, for I had made up my mind to visit the place, but unforeseen circumstances subsequently prevented me from carrying this design into effect.
On the hills, in the neighbourhood of Banda, a race of people dwell, quite uncivilized in manner, warlike and predatory in habit: the enemy, and even the terror, of all the bordering negro tribes. They are of a white complexion, like the Arabs in Egypt, of regular feature, well-grown, and have large blue eyes. They are called by the negroes, Bandanianiam (Anthropophagi), and are said to be of Jewish extraction. The Sultan of Banda institutes hunts to kidnap the girls of this tribe, and Sultan Mohammed Fadel, of Darfour, has a few of them in his harem.