Stirring scenes in savage lands

by James Greenwood

One of these, whom Mr. Bruce found to be the favourite, was about six feet high, and corpulent beyond all proportion. She seemed to him, next to the elephant and rhinoceros, to be the largest living creature he had ever met with. Her features were perfectly like those of a negro; a ring of gold passed through her under lip, and weighed it down, till, like a flap, it covered her chin, and left her teeth bare, which were very small and fine. The inside of her lip she had made black with antimony. Her ears reached down to her shoulders, and had the appearance of wings; she had in each of them a large ring of gold, somewhat smaller than a man’s little finger, and about five inches in diameter. The weight of these had drawn down the hole where the ear was pierced so much that three fingers might easily pass above the ring. She had a gold necklace of several rows, one above another, to which were hung rows of sequins pierced. She had on her ancles two manacles of gold, larger than any our traveller had ever seen upon the feet of felons, with which he could not conceive it was possible for her to walk; but afterwards he found they were hollow. The others were dressed pretty much in the same manner; only there was one who had chains which came from her ears to the outside of each nostril, where they were fastened. There was also a ring put through the gristle of her nose, and which hung down to the opening of her mouth. It had altogether something of the appearance of a horse’s bridle. Upon his coming near them, the eldest put her hand to her mouth and kissed it, saying at the same time, in very vulgar Arabic, “Kif-halek howajah?” How do you do, merchant? Mr. Bruce never in his life was more pleased with distant salutations than at this time. He answered, “Peace be among you! I am a physician, and not a merchant.” There was not one part of their whole bodies, inside and outside, in which some of them had not ailments. The three queens insisted upon being blooded, which desire Mr. Bruce complied with, as it was an operation that required short attendance; but, upon producing the lancets, their hearts failed them. They then all called out for the Tabange, which, in Arabic, means a pistol; but what they meant by this word was the cupping-instrument, which goes off with a spring like the snap of a pistol. He had two of these, but not then in his pocket. He sent his servant home, however, to bring one, and, that same evening, performed the operations upon the three queens with great success. The room was overflowed with an effusion of royal blood, and the whole ended with their insisting upon his giving them the instrument itself, which he was obliged to do, after cupping two of their slaves before them, who had no complaints, merely to shew them how the operation was to be performed.

On another occasion there was recommended to his care a certain Welled Amlac. He had with him two servants, one of whom, as well as his master, was ill with an intermitting fever. As our traveller was abundantly supplied with every necessary, the only inconvenience he suffered by this was, that of bringing a stranger and a disease into his family. Being, however, in a strange country himself, and daily standing in need of the assistance of its inhabitants, he perceived the policy of rendering services whenever opportunity offered; and, accordingly, received his two patients with the best possible grace. To this he was the more induced as he was informed that Welled Amlac was of the most powerful, resolute, and best attended robbers in all Maitsha; that this man’s country lay directly in his way to the source of the Nile; and that under his protection he might bid defiance to Woodage Asahel, who was considered as the great obstacle to that journey. After several weeks’ illness the patient recovered. When he first came to Mr. Bruce’s house, he was but indifferently clothed; and having no change, his apparel naturally grew worse, so that when his disease had entirely left him he made a very beggarly appearance indeed. One evening Mr. Bruce remarked that he could not go home to his own country without kissing the ground before the Iteghe, by whose bounty he had been all this time supported. He replied, “Surely not;” adding that he was ready to go whenever Mr. Bruce should think proper to give him his clothes. The latter imagined that Welled Amlac might have brought with him some change of apparel, and delivered it into the custody of our traveller’s servant; but, on farther explanation, he found that his patient had not a rag but what was on his back, and he plainly told Mr. Bruce, that he would rather stay in his house all his life than be so disgraced before the world as to leave it after so long a stay, without his clothing him from head to foot; asking with much confidence: “What signifies your curing me, if you turn me out of your house like a beggar?” Mr. Bruce still thought there was something of jest in this, and meeting Ayto Aylo, told him, laughing, of the conversation that had passed. “There is do doubt,” answered he very gravely, “that you must clothe him; it is the custom.” “And his servant too?” asked Mr. Bruce. “Certainly, his servant too: and if he had ten servants that eat and drank in your house, you must clothe them all.”—“I think,” rejoined our traveller, “that a physician, at this rate, had much better let his patients die than recover them at his own expense.”—“Yagoube,” said his friend, “I see this is not a custom in your country, but here it invariably is, and if you would pass for a man of consequence you cannot avoid complying with it, unless you would make Welled Amlac your enemy. The man is opulent, it is not for the value of the clothes, but he thinks his importance among his neighbours is measured by the respect shewn him by the people afar off. Never fear, he will make you some kind of return; and as for his clothes, I shall pay for them.” “By no means,” replied Mr. Bruce; “I think the custom so curious that the knowledge of it is worth the price of the clothes, and I assure you that, intending as I do to go through the Maitsha, I consider it as a piece of friendship in you to have brought me under this obligation.” After this explanation Mr. Bruce immediately procured the clothes; a girdle, and a pair of sandals, amounting in the whole to about two guineas, which Welled Amlac received with the same indifference as if he had been purchasing them for ready money. He then asked for his servants’ clothes, which he observed were too good, and that he should take them for his own use when he arrived at Maitsha.

In his capacity of physician Mr. Bruce lays down certain simple rules to be observed by persons about to travel into far eastern countries; and though a hundred years old, and more, the said advice is still wholesome, and may be used with advantage by whomsoever it may concern.

Mr. Bruce’s first general advice to a traveller, is to remember well what was the state of his constitution before he visited these countries, and what his complaints were, if he had any; for fear frequently seizes upon the first sight of the many and sudden deaths we see upon our first arrival; and our spirits are so lowered by perpetual perspiration, and our nerves so relaxed, that we are apt to mistake the ordinary symptoms of a disease, familiar to us in our own country, for the approach of one of those terrible distempers that are to hurry us in a few hours into eternity. This has a bad effect in the very slightest disorders; so that it has become proverbial—If you think you shall die you shall die.

If a traveller finds that he is as well after having been some time in this country as he was before entering it, his best way is to make no innovation in his regimen, further than abating something in the quantity. But if he is of a tender constitution, he cannot act more wisely than to follow implicitly the regimen of sober healthy people of the country, without arguing upon European notions, or substituting what we consider succedaneums to what we see used upon the spot. All spirits are to be avoided; even bark is better in water than in wine. The stomach being relaxed by profuse perspiration, needs something to strengthen, not to inflame, and enable it to perform digestion. For this reason (instinct we should call it, if speaking of beasts) the natives of all eastern countries season every species of food, even the simplest and mildest rice, so much with spices, especially with pepper, as absolutely to blister a European palate. These powerful antiseptics providence has planted in these countries for this use; and the natives have, from the earliest time, had recourse to them. And hence, in these dangerous climates, the natives are as healthy as we are in our northern ones.

Our author lays it down, then, as a positive rule of health, that the warmest dishes the natives delight in are the most wholesome strangers can use in the putrid climates of Lower Arabia, Abyssinia, Sennaar, and Egypt itself; and that spirits, and all fermented liquors, should be regarded as poisons; and, for fear of temptation, not so much as be carried along with you, unless as a menstruum for outward applications. Spring or running water, if you can find it, is to be your only drink. You cannot be too nice in procuring this article. But as, on both coasts of the Red Sea, you scarcely find any but stagnant water, the way which our traveller practised, when at any place that allowed time and opportunity, was always this: he took a quantity of fine sand, washed it from the salt quality with which it was impregnated, and spread it upon a sheet to dry; he then nearly filled an oil-jar with water, and poured into it as much from a boiling kettle as would serve to kill all the animalcula and eggs that were in it. He then sifted the dried sand, as slowly as possible, upon the surface of the water in the jar, till the sand stood half a foot at the bottom of it; after letting it settle at night, he drew it off by a hole in the jar with a spigot in it, about an inch above the sand; then threw the remaining sand out upon the cloth, and dried and washed it again. This process is sooner performed than described. The water is as limpid as the purest spring, and little inferior to the finest Spa. Drink largely of this without fear, according as your appetite requires. By violent perspiration the aqueous part of your blood is thrown off; and it is not spirituous liquor that can restore this, whatever momentary strength it may give you from another cause. When hot and almost fainting with weakness from continual perspiration, Mr. Bruce has gone into a warm bath, and been immediately restored to strength, as upon first rising in the morning.

In Nubia, never scruple to throw yourself into the coldest river or spring you can find, in whatever degree of heat you are. The reason of the difference in Europe is that when, by violence, you have raised yourself to an extraordinary degree of heat, the cold water in which you plunge yourself checks your perspiration, and shuts your pores suddenly; the medium is itself too cold, and you do not use force sufficient to bring back the perspiration, which nought but action occasioned: whereas, in these warm countries, your perspiration is natural and constant, though no action be used, only from the temperature of the medium; therefore, though your pores are shut the moment you plunge yourself into the cold water, the simple condition of the outward air again covers you with pearls of sweat the moment you emerge; and you begin the expanse of the aqueous part of your blood afresh from the new stock that you have laid in by your immersion. For this reason, if you are well, deluge yourself from head to foot, even in the house, where the water is plentiful, by directing a servant to throw buckets upon you at least once a day, when you are hottest; not from any imagination that the water braces you, as it is called, for your bracings will last only for a very few minutes: inundations will carry watery particles into your blood, though not equal to bathing in running streams, where the total immersion, the motion of the water, and the action of the limbs, all conspire to the benefit you are in quest of.

Do not fatigue yourself if possible. Exercise is not either so necessary or so salutary here as in Europe. Use fruits sparingly, especially if too ripe. The musa, or banana, in Arabia Felix, are rotten-ripe when they are brought to you. Avoid all sorts of fruits exposed for sale in the markets, as it has probably been gathered in the sun, and carried miles in it, and all its juices are in a state of fermentation. Lay it first upon a table covered with a coarse cloth, and throw frequently a quantity of water upon it; and, if you have an opportunity, gather it in the dew of the morning before dawn of day, for then it is far better.