On his return to Assouan, Burckhardt’s first care was to repair, by repose, the inroads which fatigue had made upon his constitution. He then repaired to Esne, where he established his head-quarters. It being his policy to excite but little attention, he very seldom went into company, dressed meanly, and reduced his expenditure to the lowest possible sum. The cheapness of provisions was incredible. His whole expenditure for himself, his servant, his dromedary, and his ass not exceeding one shilling and sixpence per day, while his horse cost him no more than sixteen pence per month.
Here he remained until the 2d of March, 1814, when he joined himself, as a petty trader, to another caravan, which was proceeding from Deraou to Berber. The caravan, consisting of about fifty merchants, with their slaves and beasts, moved under the protection of about thirty Ababde Arabs, who, though no heroes or philosophers, were not remarkably deficient either in courage or humanity. Burckhardt was a man more apt to blame than praise. If an individual performed a generous action, he generally evinced a disposition to attribute it to some selfish or mean motive, probably from the opinion that it might be considered vulgar and unphilosophical to betray a belief in disinterested virtue. It is to be regretted, however, that he should have indulged in this unamiable habit of thinking, as nothing more surely tends to awaken the resentment or suspicion of the reader, who will be led to imagine that he who constantly misrepresents the motives of men may sometimes, from unknown causes, be tempted to misrepresent their manners and actions also. If we do not entertain this opinion of Burckhardt, it is that we exercise towards him a higher degree of charity than he was accustomed to exercise towards others.
The march of a caravan through the desert is a magnificent spectacle. There is a kind of sublime daring in thus venturing upon what seem to be the secret places of nature; the places whence the simoom, the hurricane, and the locust-cloud issue forth upon their fatal errands, and where many tremendous phenomena, peculiar to those dreary regions, present themselves, at intervals, to the astonished but delighted eye of the traveller.
Burckhardt, on this occasion, possessed no command over his own movements. He travelled, halted, ate, slept, in obedience to the fantasy of the caravan-leaders; who were ignorant, however, that the humble trader, whom they regarded, at most, with compassion, was at that moment forming reflections, and bringing observations to maturity, which were, perhaps for ages, to affect the opinion entertained by the civilized world of their character and pursuits. Meanwhile the merchants, who were chiefly engaged in the debasing traffic of slaves, and, as may be supposed, cherished no respect for any thing but riches, and the power which commands riches, looked upon their humble companion with undisguised contempt; for imbecility and ignorance are of themselves incapable of appreciating intellectual superiority, and reverence it only when it is exerted for their defence or destruction. The scorn which our traveller entertained for those miscreants was, therefore, just. They constantly treated him with contumely, though he professed a belief in the same law and the same prophets; plundered his water-skins, or obstructed his filling them at the wells, thus exposing him to the danger of perishing of thirst; circulated, in the towns where they stopped, the report that he was a spy; and, in short, put in practice every art which their dastardly malice and shallow brains could conceive, in order to disgust him with the trade, and thus free themselves from a new competitor. But they were slave-dealers: an epithet which comprises every thing most loathsome and abominable; and their manners entirely corresponded with their occupation, being marked by a degree of depravity which language blushes to describe.
At the end of a week’s journey, the caravan arrived at the celebrated wells of El Haimar, in the vicinity of which they found the tomb of a Mameluke chief, who died on this spot. “His companions, having enclosed the naked corpse within low walls of loose stones, had covered it over with a large block. The dryness of the air had preserved the corpse in the most perfect state. Looking at it through the interstices of the stones which enveloped it, it appeared to me a more perfect mummy than any I had seen in Egypt. The mouth was wide open, and our guide related that the man had died for want of water, although so near the wells.” Next day they passed Wady Ollaky, a fine valley, extending east and west from the Nile to the Red Sea. Here were numerous trees and excellent pasture; advantages which caused it to be regarded with peculiar veneration by the Bedouins; and every man, as he traversed it on his ass or camel, took a handful of dhourra, and threw it on the ground, as a kind of pious offering to the good genius of the Wady.
On the following day, in crossing Wady El Towashy, or the Valley of the Eunuch, Burckhardt saw the tomb of that Mahomet Towash whose body was found on the sands by Bruce, three days after he had been murdered by his guides. The principal facts in Bruce’s narrative of this transaction Burckhardt found to be true, but he imagined that the details of the story must have been “made up.” Nothing can be conceived more insolent or absurd than this skepticism. Why should it be supposed that we were to accept the testimony of this young man, coming from a country where assuredly truth is not more respected than it is in Britain, and who, compared with Bruce, was an unknown and an inferior person, before that of an English gentleman, whose education was conducted with the utmost care, and who, except as a traveller, was never regarded, I believe, other than as a person of probity and honour? The principle which teaches the despots of the East to respect each other’s harems, when, by the chances of war, they fall into their hands, as Darius’s fell into those of Alexander, should, we think, be acted upon by travellers, who, unless upon the amplest and most satisfactory information, should beware of tampering with the integrity of each other’s characters. The contrary proceeding must, in the end, be productive of a degree of skepticism which would extinguish all enthusiasm and enterprise in travellers, who, at this rate, could expect no better fate than to be denounced as liars by every timid knave, who, skulking by his own fireside, might be impelled by envy to rail at those who boldly measure sea and land, and undergo the extremity of hardships to obtain an honourable reputation.
Burckhardt, however, had acquired the habit of suspecting every thing, not because he himself could have been guilty of an untruth, for he was a high-spirited and honourable man, but because he generalized too hastily. I readily pardon his error, therefore, and trust that his involuntary injustice may be injurious neither to Bruce’s character, nor to his own. His picture of what he endured in the course of this journey is sufficient to account for any little asperity of manner observable in his travels. “For myself,” says he, in describing what daily occurred at their halting-places, “I was often driven from the coolest and most comfortable birth into the burning sun, and generally passed the midday hours in great distress; for besides the exposure to heat, I had to cook my dinner, a service which I could never prevail upon any of my companions, even the poorest servants, to perform for me, though I offered to let them share my homely fare. In the evening the same labour occurred again, when fatigued by the day’s journey, during which I always walked for four or five hours, in order to spare my ass, and when I was in the utmost need of repose. Hunger, however, always prevailed over fatigue, and I was obliged to fetch and cut wood, to light a fire, to cook, to feed the ass, and finally to make coffee, a cup of which, presented to my Daraou companions, who were extremely eager to obtain it, was the only means I possessed of keeping them in tolerable good-humour. A good night’s rest, however, always repaired my strength, and I was never in better health and spirits than during this journey, although its fatigues were certainly very great, and much beyond my expectation. The common dish of all the travellers at noon was fetyre, which is flour mixed up with water into a liquid paste, and then baked upon the sadj, or iron plate; butter is then poured over it, or honey, or sometimes a sauce is made of butter and dried bamyé. In the evening some lentils are boiled, or some bread is baked with salt, either upon the sadj or in ashes, and a sauce of bamyé, or onion, poured over lentils, or upon the bread, after it has been crumbled into small pieces. Early in the morning every one eats a piece of dry biscuit, with some raw onions or dates.”
On the 14th of March, on arriving at the Wady el Nabeh, they found the celebrated wells of that valley insufficient to supply the caravan until they should reach the rocks of Shigre, and as no water was anywhere to be found in the intervening space they were reduced to the greatest perplexity. “Upon such occasions as these,” says Burckhardt, “every man gives his opinion: and mine was, that we should kill our thirty-five asses, which required a daily supply of at least fifteen water-skins, that we should load the camels to the utmost of their strength with water, and strike out a straight way through the desert towards Berber, without touching at Shigre; in this manner we might perform the journey in five forced marches.” This plan the Arabs refused to follow. They repaired their water-skins and their sandals, refreshed themselves with bathing in the cool wells, and then set out. But “it was not without great apprehension,” says our traveller, “that I departed from this place. Our camels and asses carried water for three or four days only, and I saw no possibility of escaping from the dreadful effects of a want of water. In order to keep my ass in good spirits, I took off the two small water-skins with which I had hitherto loaded him, and paid one of the Ababdes four dollars to carry four small water-skins as far as Berber; for I thought that if the ass could carry me, I might bear thirst for two days at least, but that if he should break down, I should certainly not be able to walk one whole day without water in this hot season of the year.”
Notwithstanding all these difficulties and sufferings, our traveller considered the Nubian desert, at least as far south as Shigre, far less terrible than that of Syria or Tyh. Trees and water are much more frequent, and though it be intersected in various directions by shaggy barren rocks, the more desolate and awful appearance which it acquires from this circumstance is, in a great measure, compensated for by its consequent grandeur and variety. “Here,” says the traveller, “during the whole day’s march, we were surrounded on all sides by lakes of mirage, called by the Arabs Serab. Its colour was of the purest azure, and so clear that the shadows of the mountains that bordered the horizon were reflected on it with the greatest precision, and the delusion of its being a sheet of water was thus rendered still more perfect.” This mockwater, however, only served to heighten the terrors which the scarcity of real water excited. Every man now began to attach the greatest importance to the small stock he possessed. Burckhardt, who possessed but two draughts of water in the world, drank the moiety of it at once, reserving the remainder for the next day; but, observing the general scarcity, shared the dejection of his companions. At length, their condition having become nearly desperate, they adopted the course recommended by the Ababde chief, and despatched ten or twelve of their companions, mounted on as many camels, to the nearest part of the Nile, which was not more than five or six hours distant; but its banks being inhabited in this part by fierce hostile tribes, nothing but the fear of instant death could have forced them upon this step. They timed their march in such a manner that they would reach the banks of the river by night; when they were directed to select some uninhabited spot, and having there loaded their camels, to return with all speed. “We passed the evening,” says Burckhardt, “in the greatest anxiety, for if the camels should not return, we had little hopes of escape either from thirst or from the sword of our enemies, who, if they had once got sight of our camels, would have followed their footsteps through the desert, and would certainly have discovered us. Many of my companions came in the course of the evening to beg some water of me, but I had well hidden my treasure, and answered them by showing my empty skins. We remained the greater part of the night in silent and sullen expectation of the result of our desperate mission. At length, about three o’clock in the morning, we heard the distant hallooings of our companions; and soon after refreshed ourselves with copious draughts of the delicious water of the Nile.”
This was the last of their sufferings on this route; on the 23d of March they entered on a plain with a slight slope towards the river, which was felt at more than two hours’ distance by the greater moisture of the air. The Arabs exclaimed, “God be praised, we again smell the Nile!” and about ten o’clock at night, the caravan entered the village of Ankhecreh, the principal place in the district of Berber. Burckhardt’s residence at this place was nothing but one continued series of annoyance. The principal delight of the whole population, among whom drunkenness and debauchery were scarcely accounted vices, seemed to consist in deluding and plundering travellers, who on all the envenomed soil of Africa could scarcely be exposed to more irritating insults or extortion than on this spot.