Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898

by Various

I arrived in Cairo on a sweltering day in July, and found four colleagues, who had been waiting for a week the Sirdar's permission to proceed to the front, still waiting. Luckily, the day after my arrival a telegram came from headquarters, saying that "we might proceed as far as Assouan and their await further orders." This, anyhow, was a move in the right direction; so we at once started. It was rather a bustle for me to get things ready, for Sunday blocked the way and little could be done, even on that day, in Cairo. I procured a servant, a horse and two cases of stores, for the cry was "nothing to be had up country in the shape of food; hardly sufficient sustenance to keep the flies alive." My colleagues, who had the start of me, were able to procure many luxuries—a case of cloudy ammonia for their toilet, and one of chartreuse, komel and benedictine to make their after dinner coffee palatable, and some plum pudding, if Christmas should still find them on the warpath, were a few of the many items that made up the trousseau of these up-to-date war correspondents, though at least one of them had been wedded to the life for many years. Unfortunately I had no time to procure these luxuries, and I had to proceed ammonialess and puddingless to the seat of war. My comrades were quite right. Why not do yourself well if you can? One of them even went in for the luxury of having three shooting irons, two revolvers and a double-barrel slug pistol, so that when either of the weapons got hot while he was holding Baggara horsemen at bay, there was always one cooling, ready to hand. He also, which I believe is a phenomenal record with any campaigner, took with him thirteen pairs of riding breeches, a half dozen razors and an ice machine. Even our commander-in-chief, when campaigning, denies himself more than two shirts and never travels with ice machines. But the thirteen pairs impressed me considerably. Why thirteen, more than fifteen, or any other number? I came to the conclusion that my colleague must certainly be a member of that mystic body the "Thirteen Club," and as he had to bring in the odd number somewhere to keep the club fresh in his memory, he occasionally sat upon it.

I found, after all, there was some wisdom in his eccentricity, for, when riding the camel, mounted on the rough saddle of the country, I often wished that I had my friend's forethought, and I should have been glad to have supplemented mine with his odd number. No doubt my colleague's idea in having such a variety of nether garments was to use them respectively, on a similar principle to the revolvers, when he rode in hot haste with his vivid account of the latest battle to the telegraph office.

But, unfortunately, this recent campaign did not, after all, necessitate these elaborate preparations, for there were no dervishes for us to shoot at or descriptions of bloody battles to be telegraphed. At all events, the cloudy ammonia and the thirteen breeches, with the assistance of a silken sash—a different color for each day of the week—made the brightest and smartest looking little man in camp. However, when I reflect on this new style of war correspondent, who, I forgot to mention, also carried with him two tents, a couple of beds, sundry chairs and tables, a silver-mounted dressing case, two baths, and a gross of toothpicks, and I think of the severe simplicity of the old style of campaigning when a famous correspondent who is still on the warpath, and who always sees the fighting if there be any, on one arduous campaign took with him the modest outfit of a tooth brush and a cake of carbolic soap, I joyfully feel that with the younger generation our profession is keeping pace with the luxury of the times.

FROM BERBER TO SUAKIM.

Toward the end of the campaign four colleaguesMessrs. Knight, Gwynne, Scudamore, Maud—and myself, took this opportunity of traversing a country very little known to the outside world, and a route which no European had followed for fourteen years, from Berber to Suakim. Moreover, there was a spice of adventure about it; there was an uncertainty regarding an altogether peaceful time on the way—a contingency which always appeals strongly to Englishmen of a roving and adventurous disposition. Only quite recently raids organized by the apparently irrepressible Osman Digna had been successfully carried out a few miles north and south of Berber. At the moment General Hunter, with two battalions of troops, was marching along the banks of the River Atbara to hunt for Osman and his followers, but there was much speculation as to whether five-and-twenty dervish raiders were still this side of the river, and drawing their water from the wells on the Suakim road.

I was hardly prepared for this journey—one, probably, of twelve days—for my campaigning outfit, which I was compelled to leave on board my nugger on the Nile, had not yet arrived in Berber. Unfortunately, I could not wait for the gear, as the Sirdar insisted on our departure at once, for the road would be certainly insecure directly General Hunter returned from covering our right flank on the Atbara. I had no clothes but what I stood up in, and I had been more or less standing up in them without change for the last two weeks.

Our caravan of nineteen camels, with two young ones, quite babies, following their mothers, and a couple of donkeys, about seven in the evening of the 30th of October quitted the mud-baked town of Berber, sleeping in the light of a new moon, and silently moved across the desert toward the Eastern Star. Next morning at the Morabeh Well, six miles from Berber, our camels having filled themselves up with water, and our numerous girbas, or water skins, being charged with the precious liquid—till they looked as if they were about to burst—our loads were packed and we started on a journey of fifty-two miles before the next water could be reached.

We made quite a formidable show trailing over the desert. Probably it would have been more impressive if our two donkeys had restrained their ambition, and kept in the rear instead of leading the van. But animals mostly have their own way in these parts, and asses are no exception to this rule. The two baby camels commenced "grousing" with their elders directly we halted or made a fresh advance; they probably had an inkling of what was in store for them. After all, the world must seem a hard and unsympathetic place when, having only known it for two or three weeks, you are compelled to make a journey of 240 miles to keep up with your commissariat. One of these babies was only in its eighteenth day. In spite of its tender youth the little beast trotted by the side of its mother, refreshing itself whenever we came to a halt with a pull from her teats, and, to the astonishment of all, arrived in Suakim safe and sound after twelve days' marching.

To the uninitiated regarding the "grousing" of camels, I should explain that it is a peculiar noise which comes from their long funnel necks early or late, and for what reason it is difficult to tell. Sometimes the sound is not unlike the bray of an ass, occasionally it reaches the dignity of the roar of a lion with the bleating of a goat thrown in, then as quickly changes to the solemnity of a church organ. It is altogether so strange a sound that nothing but a phonograph could convey any adequate idea of it. It is a thing to be heard. No pen can properly describe it. After a long march, and when you are preparing to relieve the brute of his load, he begins to grouse. When he is about to start in the morning he grouses. If you hit him, he grouses; if you pat his neck gently, he grouses; if you offer him something to eat, he grouses; and if you twist his tail, he makes the same extraordinary noise. The camel evidently has not a large vocabulary, and he is compelled to express all his various sensations in this simple manner.

The first part of our journey was monotonous enough, miles and miles of weary sandy plains, with alternate stretches of agabas or stony deserts, scored with shallow depressions, where torrential rains had recently soaked into the sand, leaving a glassy, clay-like surface, which had flaked or cracked into huge fissures under the heat of the fierce sun. And at every few hundred yards we came to patches of coarse camel grass, which had evidently cropped up on the coming of the rain, and, by its present aspect, seemed to feel very sorry that it had been induced to put in an appearance, for its sustenance was now fast passing into vapor, and its green young life was rapidly dying out as the sun scorched the tender shoots to the roots. But camels thrive on this parched-up grass, and our brutes nibbled at it whenever one slackened the head-rope.