The Life and Adventures of Bruce, the African Traveller

by Sir Francis Bond Head

"The simoom," says Bruce, "with the wind at southeast, immediately follows the wind at north, and the usual despondency that always accompanies it. The blue meteor, with which it began, passed over us about twelve, and the ruffling wind that followed it continued till near two. Silence, and a desperate kind of indifference about life, were the immediate effect upon us; and I began now, seeing the condition of my camels, to fear we were all doomed to a sandy grave, and to contemplate it with some degree of resignation. At half past eight in the evening we alighted in a sandy flat, where there was great store of bent grass and trees, which had a considerable degree of verdure, a circumstance much in favour of our camels. We determined to stop here, to give them an opportunity of eating their fill where they could find it."

On the 22d, at six o'clock, as they were crossing this sandy flat, one of the Tucorory was seized with phrensy or madness. He rolled upon the ground, moaned, and refused to continue his journey, or to rise from where he lay. It was death to stop with him; and as each man was barely able to support his own sufferings, and could not participate in those of others, the wretched maniac was left to die among the thirsting sands, under the scorching sun which had already deprived him of his reason. In the evening the party reached Umarack, where another of the camels died, completely worn out and exhausted.

"I here began," says Bruce, "to provide for the worst. I saw the fate of our camels approaching, and that our men grew weak in proportion; our bread, too, began to fail us, although we had plenty of camel's flesh in its stead; our water, though in all appearance we were to find it more frequently than in the beginning of our journey, was nevertheless brackish, and scarcely served the purpose to quench our thirst; and, above all, the dreadful simoom had perfectly exhausted our strength, and brought upon us a degree of cowardice and languor that we struggled with in vain. I therefore, as the last effort, began to throw away everything weighty I could spare, or what was not absolutely necessary, such as all shells, fossils, minerals, and petrifactions that I could get at, the counter-cases of my quadrant, telescopes, and clock, and several such like things.

"Our camels were now reduced to five, and it did not seem that these were capable of continuing their journey much longer. In that case, no remedy remained but that each man should carry his own water and provisions. Now, as no one man could carry the water he should use between well and well, and it was more than probable that that distance would be doubled by some of the wells being found dry; and, if that were not the case, yet, as it was impossible for a man to carry his provisions who could not walk without any burden at all, our situations seemed to be most desperate."

The Bishareen alone, existing in his native element, seemed to keep up his strength, and was in excellent spirits. He had attached himself in a particular manner to Bruce, and, with a part of a very scanty rag which he had round his waist, he neatly made a wrapper to defend Bruce's feet during the day; but the pain occasioned by the cold in the night was scarcely bearable. Bruce offered to free his left hand, which was chained to some one of the company night and day, but the man constantly refused, saying, "Unchain my hands when you load and unload your camels; but keep me to the end of the journey as you began with me: then I cannot misbehave, and lose the reward which you say you are to give me."

Proceeding on their journey, they saw large strata of fossil salt everywhere upon the surface of the ground; and this dismal scene was not much enlivened by passing the body of a man who had been murdered, stripped naked, and was lying on his face unburied. A wound in the hind sinew of his leg was apparent; and he was, besides, thrust through the back with a lance, and had two sword-wounds in the head. During the next day they saw many dead bodies of the Tucorory, who had been scattered by the Bishareen, and left to perish with thirst. In a small pool of water at which they now arrived, they found a small teal or widgeon. The Turk Ismael was preparing to shoot at it with his blunderbuss; but Bruce desired him to refrain, being desirous to ascertain, by its flight, something as to the probable distance of the Nile; he therefore obliged it to take wing. The bird flew straight west, rising as he flew (a melancholy proof that his journey was a long one), till at last, being very high, he vanished from their sight, without seeking to approach the earth: from which it was but too evident that the Nile was yet far removed from them.

This night Georgis and the Turk Ismael were both so ill and so desponding that they had resolved to pursue their journey no farther, but submit to their destiny, as they called it, and stay behind to die. It was with the utmost difficulty Bruce could persuade them to lay aside this resolution; and the next morning he promised they should ride by turns upon one of the camels, a thing that no one had yet attempted.

"After travelling for nearly three days," says Bruce, "we had an unexpected entertainment, which filled our hearts with a very short-lived joy. The whole plain before us seemed thick-covered with green grass and yellow daisies. We advanced to the place with as much speed as our lame condition would suffer us; but how terrible was our disappointment when we found the whole of that verdure to consist in senna and coloquintida, the most nauseous of plants, and the most incapable of being substituted as food for man or beast! We were now very near a crisis one way or the other. Our bread was consumed, so that we had not sufficient for one day more; and, though we had camel's flesh, yet, by living so long on bread and water, an invincible repugnance arose either to smell or taste it. As our camels were at their last gasp, we had taken so sparingly of water, that, when we came to divide it, we found it insufficient for our necessities, if Syene was even so near as we conceived it to be.

"Georgis had lost one eye, and was nearly blind in the other. Ismael and he had both become so stiff by being carried that they could not bear to set their feet to the ground; and I may say for myself, that, though I had supported the wounds in my feet with a patience very uncommon, yet they were arrived at a height to be perfectly intolerable, and, as I apprehended, on the point of mortification. The bandage which the Bishareen had tied about the hollow of my foot was now almost hidden by the flesh swelling over it. Three large wounds on the right foot and two on the left continued open, whence a quantity of lymph oozed continually. It was also with the utmost difficulty we could get out the rag by cutting it to shreds with scissors. The tale is both unpleasant and irksome. Two soles which remained from our sandals, the upper leathers of which had gone to pieces in the sand near Goos, were tied with a cotton cloth very adroitly by the Bishareen. But it seemed impossible that I could walk farther even with his assistance, and therefore we determined to throw away the quadrant, telescope, and timekeeper, and save our lives by riding the camels alternately. But Providence had already decreed that we should not terminate this dangerous journey by our own ordinary foresight and contrivance, but owe it entirely to his visible support and interposition.

"On the 27th, at half past five in the morning, we attempted to raise our camels at Saffieha by every method that we could devise, but all in vain; only one of them could get upon his legs, and that one did not stand two minutes till he kneeled down, and could never be raised afterward. This the Arabs all declared to be the effects of cold; and yet Fahrenheit's thermometer, an hour before day, stood at 42°. Every way we turned ourselves death now stared us in the face. We had neither time nor strength to waste, nor provisions to support us. We then took the small skins that had contained our water, and filled them as far as we thought a man could carry them with ease; but, after all these shifts, there was not enough to serve us three days, at which I had estimated our journey to Syene, which still, however, was uncertain. Finding, therefore, the camels would not rise, we killed two of them, and took as much flesh as might serve for the deficiency of bread, and from the stomach of each of the camels got about four gallons of water, which the Bishareen Arab managed with great dexterity." It is well known that the camel has within him reservoirs, in which he can preserve water for a very considerable time. In caravans making long journeys from the Niger across the desert of Selima, it has been said that each camel lays in a store of water sufficient to support him for forty days. This statement is probably exaggerated; but fourteen or sixteen days, it is well known, an ordinary camel will live, though he have no fresh supply of water; for when he eats, one constantly sees him throw from his repository mouthfuls of water to dilute his food; and nature has contrived this vessel with such properties, that the water within it never putrefies nor turns unwholesome.