“Night.—All is at length settled, and we start to-morrow morning at the break of day. I believe the káfilah will be allowed to proceed, although one mithcal a head is to be paid, and we have fifty persons and one hundred camels. I am unable to tell you for certain the route we are to take, as it will depend upon circumstances. Only two persons beside Mohammed El Abd accompany us, so that after all the talk at Wád Nún, I shall go in my original party of five, including Abú and myself. I fear there is much suffering before us, as no preparation has been made for any kind of food by the Taghakánths. Berúk put up for us one canter of rice, and one of barley; but El Abd can eat about six pounds a day. There are no milk camels here; and as we do not go to the tents, I fear I shall be deprived of this luxury. It is said, however, that one has been sent for, and is to meet us, I hope in good time. I knew from the first my route was the most difficult and dangerous; but it has far exceeded my expectations.”
In a postscript Mr. D. adds—“All are in bustle and all in fear, but Abú and myself;” and yet in a letter dated Wád Nún, October 7th 1836, he says—“My mind is made up to the certainty that I shall leave my bones in Sudán.” Still with all these misgivings his zeal in the cause of science never abated one jot. “Before this reaches you,” he says, “I shall be wending my way over Africa’s burning sands to a sort of fame, or the sad ‘bourne from which no traveller returns;’ if to the former, truly happy shall I be to renew your valued friendship; but if to the latter, think sometimes of the poor lost wanderer.”
The laurel of fame to which Mr. D. aspired, was he feared reserved for a more successful adventurer in the person of Monsr. Antoine D’Abbadie, who said in the rooms of the Royal Society, that he should give Mr. D. the go-by in Sudán, that he had been ten years preparing himself for the trip, and had come to London to get an English passport, as he intended to travel à l’Anglaise, for the French were in bad odour amongst the natives of Africa, in consequence of their forcible occupation of the country. “He was,” says Mr. D. “a good naturalist, and astronomer, and had ample means at his command, insomuch that he purposed, like Monsr. le Baron Taylor, to travel en Prince with his servants in hose and doublet, &c. But think you that I who wear the sword-belt of his Britannic Majesty’s Agent and Consul General, high and exalted in fame and dignity, will allow myself to be beaten by a Frenchman! If I do I’ll— No, I never swear. Abú shall make kuskasu of me first.” To the preceding specimen of the liveliness of Mr. D.’s mind, may be added the following. “Your Excellency’s writing and mine remind me of the old proverb—‘Tel Padron, tel Secretoire.’ I will, however, back yours to be the most difficult. This is as it should be. The disciple must not be above his master. You will say I write hard scratches. I know it—I have only steel pens.” So too when speaking of some extract of camomile sent from Gibraltar, he remarks that “the druggist ought to present it to the Society of Antiquarians, and accompany it with a paper to prove that it was some of the veritable remains of the medicine chest, that Noah carried with him into the Ark. Its antiquity would give a fair colour for the assertion.”
Mr. D., however, could at times act the philosopher as well as the punster. At the conclusion of the account of his trip to Wád Draha, he says,—“I am in better health than ever, and never was in better condition. The Sheïkh backs me to win. I worked harder than any man, and never once touched meat; out-walked all, out-rode some, slept less than any, and never but once lost my temper. The people in this district are between the Moors and the Arabs, and the hardest to manage. I cannot tell half the pleasure and profit I have derived from this excursion. I have visited a large track of country, quite unknown to Europeans, and have seen much of Arab life; heard their discussions on politics, and the stories of their bards, who are wont to beguile away an hour or two of the night together, with a history of the migrations of the various tribes. I can now compare the Western Arab with his brother of the East. I have for some time made up my mind that happiness is ideal; that to too many of us it is ‘the gay to-morrow of the mind, which never comes.’ If any people, however, can be justly called happy, the Arabs on the borders of the Sahara are so. Confident in the power of their religion to gain them Paradise; creating for themselves no artificial wants, and perfectly satisfied with what nature provides for them, they calmly resign themselves to the will of Providence, and are strangers to all care. I am neither a missionary nor a cobler, and have nothing to do with the care of souls or soles; but I really feel that any attempt to alter the course of these people’s lives might be fairly met with the observation of the Satirist, who knew human nature so well.
Pol me occidistis, amici,
Non servastis, ait; cui sic extorta voluptas
Et demptus per vim menti gratissimus error.”
In allusion to the few wants of the Arab Mr. D. says in a loose memorandum, “His camels not only carry his wives, children, and tent, but feed them; his cows enable him to sell two or three jars of butter, and his fowls a basket of eggs weekly; his sheep will give him twenty-five lambs annually beyond what he consumes; the wool from them gives him from four to six haicks and a carpet; his barley feeds his cattle while vegetation ceases, and some of it is sown to re-produce and make his kuskasu.”