Here we first obtained more particulars concerning the military revolt at Wed Médineh, which was of the most serious nature, and we should have incurred great danger had we stopped two days longer in that city. The whole of the black soldiers have rebelled, owing to the stay of Emin Pasha. The drill-master and seven white soldiers were immediately killed, the Pasha besieged in his own house and shot at, his overtures disdained, the powder magazine seized. All the guns and ammunition fell into the hands of the negroes, who then chose six leaders, and went off on the road to Fazoql in six bodies to gain their mountain. The regiment here, in which there are at present about 1,500 blacks, was immediately disarmed, and confined to the barracks. The most serious apprehensions are entertained for the future, as Ahmed Pasha Menekle was so imprudent as to take almost all the white troops with him to Taka. For the rest, I might be glad of the flight of the blacks, as they were frightfully ill used by their Turkish masters. Still the revolt can easily put the country into disorder, and then re-act on our expedition. The blacks will, no doubt, endeavour to draw all their countrymen who meet them to their side, particularly the troops of Soliman Pasha, in Sennâr, and of Selim Pasha, in Fazoql; the whites are far too few in number to offer any prolonged resistance. The news have just arrived that five or six hundred slaves of the deceased Ahmed Pasha at the indigo factory at Tamaniât, a little to the north of this place, have fled to the Sudan with their wives and children, and intend to join with the soldiers. The same is said to have occurred at the factory at Kamlîn, so that we are in fear for our friend Bauer, who, though not cruel like the Turks, is strict.
March 26. A report is spreading that the troops at Sennâr, and the people of Melek Idris Adlân, had overcome the negroes. The Tamaniât slaves are also said to have been pursued by the Arnauts, and killed or dragged back, while the rebellion in Kamlîn has been suppressed. Little confidence can yet be placed in these reports, as the news came to me by our khawass from the people of the Pasha, and a wish was particularly expressed to me, that I should spread it further, and write it in my letters to Cairo.
As we were yesterday evening walking in the large and beautiful garden of Ibrahim Chêr, in whose airy well situated house, I write this letter, we saw lofty dark sand clouds rising up like a wall on the horizon. And in the night a violent east wind has arisen and is still blowing, and folds all the trees and buildings in a disagreeable atmosphere of sand, which almost impedes respiration. I fastened the windows and stopped the door with stones, for a sort of shelter from the first break of the storm; nevertheless, it is necessary to keep wiping away the covering of sand which continually settles on the paper.
I have come back so torn and tattered from my Sennâr hunting parties, that I have been obliged at length to determine on adopting the Turkish costume, which I shall not be able to change very soon. It has its advantages for the customs of this country, particularly in sitting on carpets or low cushions; but the flat tarboosh is immensely unpractical under these sunny skies, and the innumerable buttons and hooks are a daily and very troublesome trial of patience.
March 30. We are about to leave Chartûm, as soon as this post of the Pasha is transmitted. The revolution is now definitely suppressed everywhere. It would, no doubt, have had a far worse ending, if it had not broken out some days too early in Wed Médineh. It had already been long planned and consulted on in secret, and was to have commenced simultaneously in Sennâr, Wed Médineh, Kamlîn, Chartûm, and Tamaniât, on the 19th of this month. The precipitation at Wed Médineh, had, however, brought the whole conspiracy into confusion, and had given Emin Pasha time to send a courier to Chartûm, by which the imprisonment and disarming of the negro soldiers here, was possible, ere the news of the insurrection had come to them. Emin Pasha, however, seems to have been quite incapable. The victory is to be ascribed to the courage and presence of mind of a certain Rustan Effendi, who pursued the six hundred negroes with one hundred and fifty determined soldiers, mostly white, reached them near Sennâr, and beat them down, after three attacks and heavy loss. More than a hundred of the fugitives surrendered, and have been led off in chains to Sennâr; the rest were killed in the fight or drowned in the river.
But at the same time the news has arrived, that an insurrection has broken out in Lower Nubia, at Kalabshe, and another village, on account of the imposts; and that therefore, both villages have been immediately razed by Hassan Pasha, who is coming to Chartûm in the place of Emin Pasha, and the inhabitants killed or hunted away.
LETTER XX.
Pyramids of Merοë.
April 22, 1844.
We left Chartûm en the 30th of March, toward evening, and sailed half the night by moonshine.
On the next day we reached Tamaniât. Almost the whole village had disappeared, and only a single wide stretching ruin was to be seen. The slaves had laid everything in ashes on their revolt; only the walls of the factory are yet standing. As I had left the bark on foot, I was quite unprepared to come in the neighbourhood of the still smoking ruins, upon a frightful scene, in an open meadow quite covered with black mangled corpses. The greater part of the slaves, who had been recaptured, had here been shot in masses.