Before Lakono, sultan of the Bari, and his favourite sultana Ischok, an ordinary-looking lady with two leathern aprons and a shaven head, came on board Selim's vessel, the Turks made repeated attempts to obtain information from some of the Sheiks concerning the gold mines, whose discovery was the main object of the expedition. A sensible sort of negro, one Lombé, replied to their questions, and extinguished their hopes. There was not even copper, he said, in the land of the Bari, although it was brought thither from a remoter country, and Lakono had several specimens of it in his treasury. On a gold bar being shown to him, he took it for copper, whence it was inferred that the two metals were blended in the specimens possessed by the sultan, and that the mountains of the copper country also yielded the more precious ore. This country, however, lay many days' journey distant from the Nile, and, had it even bordered on the river, there would have been no possibility of reaching it. At a very short distance above Palenja, the expedition encountered a bar of rocks thrown across the stream. And although Mr Werne hints the possibility of having tried the passage, the Turks were sick of the voyage and were heartily glad to turn back. At the period of the floods the river rises eighteen feet; and there then could be no difficulty in surmounting the barrier. Now the waters were falling fast. The six weeks lost by Arnaud's fault were again bitterly deplored by the adventurous German—the only one of the party who really desired to proceed. Twenty days sooner, and the rocks could neither have hindered an advance nor afforded pretext for a retreat. To Mr Werne's proposal, that they should wait two months where they were, when the setting in of the rains would obviate the difficulty, a deaf ear was turned—an insufficient stock of provisions was objected; and although the flotilla had been stored for a ten months' voyage, and had then been little more than two months absent from Chartum, the wastefulness that had prevailed gave some validity to the objection. One-and-twenty guns were fired, as a farewell salute to the beautiful country Mr Werne would so gladly have explored, and which, he is fully convinced, contains so much of interest; and the sluggish Egyptian barks retraced their course down stream.
It is proper here to note a shrewd conjecture of Mr Werne's, that above the point reached by himself and his companions, the difficulties of ascending the river would greatly and rapidly increase. The bed becomes rocky, and the Bach'r el Abiat, assuming in some measure the character of a mountain stream, augments the rapidity of its current: so much so, that Mr Werne insists on the necessity of a strong north wind, believing that towing, however willingly and vigorously attempted, would be found unavailing. This is another strong argument in favour of employing steamboats.
Although the narrative of the homeward voyage is by no means uninteresting, and contains details of the river's course valuable to the geographer and to the future explorer, it has not the attraction of the up-stream narrative. The freshness is worn off; the waters sink, and the writer's spirits seem disposed to follow their example; there is all the difference between attack and retreat—between a cheerful and hopeful advance, and a retrograde movement before the work is half done. But, vexed as an enthusiastic and intrepid man might naturally feel at seeing his hopes frustrated by the indolent indifference of his companions, Mr Werne could hardly deem his five months thrown away. We are quite sure those who read his book will be of opinion that the time was most industriously and profitably employed.
A sorrowful welcome awaited our traveller, after his painful and fatiguing voyage. There dwelt at Chartum a renegade physician, a Palermitan named Pasquali, whose Turkish name was Soliman Effendi, and who was notorious as a poisoner, and for the unscrupulous promptness with which he removed persons in the slightest degree unpleasing to himself or to his patron Achmet Bascha. In Arabia, it was currently believed, he had once poisoned thirty-three soldiers, with the sole view of bringing odium upon the physician and apothecary, two Frenchmen, who attended them. In Chartum he was well known to have committed various murders.
"Although this man," says Mr Werne, "was most friendly and sociable with me, I had everything to fear from him on account of my brother, by whom the Bascha had declared his intention of replacing him in the post of medical inspector of Bellet-Sudàn. It was therefore in the most solemn earnest that I threatened him with death, if upon my return I found my brother dead, and learned that they had come at all in contact. 'Dio guarde, che affronto!' was his reply; and he quietly drank off his glass of rum, the same affront having already been offered him in the Bascha's divan; the reference being naturally to the poisonings laid to his charge in Arabia and here."
At Chartum Mr Werne found his brother alive, but on the eleventh day after his return he died in his arms. The renegade had had no occasion to employ his venomous drugs; the work had been done as surely by the fatal influence of the noxious climate.
ART AND ARTISTS IN SPAIN.
The accomplishments brought back by our grandfathers from the Continent to grace the drawing-rooms of May Fair, or enliven the solitudes of Yorkshire, were a favourite subject for satirists, some "sixty years since." Admitting the descriptions to be correct, it must be remembered that the grand tour had become at once monotonous and deleterious,—from Calais to Paris, from Paris to Geneva, from Geneva to Milan, from Milan to Florence, thence to Rome, and thence to Naples, the English "my lord," with his bear-leader, was conducted with regularity, if not with speed; and the same course of sights and society was prescribed for, and taken by, generation after generation of Oxonians and Cantabs. Then, again, the Middle Ages, with their countless graceful vestiges, their magnificent architecture, which even archaic Evelyn thought and called "barbarous," their chivalrous customs, religious observances, rude yet picturesque arts, and fanciful literature, were literally blotted out from the note-book of the English tourist. Whatever was classical or modern, that was worthy of regard; but whatever belonged to "Europe's middle night," that the descendants of Saxon thanes or Norman knights disdained even to look at. Even had there been no Pyrenees to cross, or no Bay of Biscay to encounter, so Gothic a country as Spain was not likely to attract to its dusky sierras, frequent monasteries, and mediæval towns, the fine gentlemen and Mohawks of those enlightened days; nor need we be surprised that the natural beauties of that romantic land—its weird mountains, primæval forests, and fertile plains, fragrant with orange groves, and bright with flowers of every hue, unknown to English gardens—remained unexplored by the countrymen of Gray and Goldsmith, who have put on record their marked disapprobation of Nature in her wildest and most sublime mood. Thus, then, it was that, with rare exceptions, the pleasant land of Spain was a sealed book to Englishmen, until the Great Captain rivalled and eclipsed the feats and triumphs of the Black Prince in every province of the Peninsula, and enabled guardsmen and hussars to admire the treasures of Spanish art in many a church and convent unspoiled by French rapacity. Nor may we deny our obligations to Gallic plunderers. Many a noble picture that now delights the eyes of thousands, exalts and purifies the taste of youthful painters, and sends, on the purple wings of European fame, the name of its Castilian, or Valencian, or Andalusian creator down the stream of time, but for Soult or Sebastiani, might still have continued to waste its sweetness on desert air. Thenceforward, in spite of brigands and captain-generals, rival constitutions and contending princes, have adventurous Englishmen been found to delight in rambling, like Inglis, in the footsteps of Don Quixote,—emulating the deeds of Peterborough, like Ranelagh and Henningsen, or throwing themselves into the actual life, and studying the historic manners of Spain, like Carnarvon and Ford. Still, though soldier and statesman, philosopher and littérateur, had put forth their best powers in writing of the country that so worthily interested them, a void was ever left for some new comer to fill; and right well, in his three handsome, elaborate, and most agreeable volumes, has Mr Stirling filled that void. Not one of the goodly band of Spanish painters now lacks a "sacred poet" to inscribe his name in the temple of fame. With indefatigable research, most discriminating taste, and happiest success, has Mr Stirling pursued and completed his pleasant labour of love, and presented to the world "Annals of the Artists of Spain" worthy—can we say more?—of recording the triumphs of El Mudo and El Greco, Murillo and Velasquez.[16]