As for some years a marked diminution had taken place in the number of elephants inhabiting the valley of the White Nile, the ivory traders had gradually pushed forward into the lands watered by the Gazelle and the Djur. This was a virgin region, a mine hitherto unworked, and accordingly, in order to profit to the full by its resources, a chain of stations was established, each in charge of a vakeel, or manager. Every November these were visited by the traders, who carried off in their boats the accumulated ivory, and sometimes added to their cargo of elephants' tusks the unfortunate negroes who had served them as guides and hunters. As time went on, they extended their operations, armed the tribes one against the other, encouraged them in their destructive feuds, and in this way consolidated their nefarious tyranny.
By one of these infamous traffickers in flesh and blood our travellers were grossly plundered. At his urgent request, Miss Tinné and her companions advanced to Bongo, where he exercised authority. A royal welcome was accorded them. Their arrival was announced by volleys of musketry, and Biselli (such was the name of the vakeel) met them at the entrance to the village, and conducted them to a really spacious and convenient residence, where they were immediately served with sherbet, coffee, and other refreshing drinks. His lavish hospitality embraced everybody; not only the travellers but their attendants. The abrek, the drink of the country, was freely circulated among the people, and distributed even to the porters.
Biselli, it was soon discovered, owned almost everything in the village, and lorded it over the entire neighbourhood. Alexina requested him to sell her some corn and oxen; he replied, in what seemed the spirit of a true gentleman, that for twenty-four hours he was her host, that consequently he had abdicated his position as a trader, and could think of nothing but giving her an honourable reception. Far from diminishing, his prodigality increased; and his European guests felt almost humiliated at being the objects of so boundless a hospitality.
But on the following day he dropped his mask. Miss Tinné wished to hire, for the accommodation of her people, a small zeribah, or camp, containing two tents; and Biselli named thirty dollars as the rent, but when Miss Tinné's servants began to store the baggage, he suddenly raised his demand to two hundred. This attempt at extortion was promptly and firmly refused; he then reduced the charge to forty dollars, which was paid. Soon afterwards the caravan was in need of dourra, and recourse was had to Biselli. The knave, presuming on their necessity, charged forty times more than the price of dourra at Khartûm, and on every other article he put in like manner a tax of forty or fifty per cent. He was no longer the generous host, but had resumed his natural character as an unprincipled trader.
The fever continued its attacks after their arrival at Bongo, and, to the great sorrow of Alexina, carried off her mother. Dr. Heughlin and several of the men fell ill of it, and a general feeling of depression pervaded the encampment. Dr. Heughlin relates how, after the death of Madame Tinné, he went daily from the zeribah to Alexina's own residence, situated at a considerable distance, to inquire after her health, and console her in her affliction. To drag himself to and fro was all he could do; and frequently his strength failed him on the way, so that he had to sit down and rest. Sometimes he did not reach home till midnight, and at other times was seized on the road with an attack of fever. A Dutch girl, Alexina's maid-servant, was often almost mad with home-sickness, lamenting her unhappy fate to die so young, so lonely, and so far from home.
Eventually Miss Tinné found herself compelled to abandon her scheme of penetrating into the land of the Nyam-Nyam, and carrying with her the bodies of Madame Tinné and her maid, who had also fallen a victim to the pestilence, she returned to Khartûm, after an absence of a year and a half. In the interval, her aunt, the Baroness van Capellan, had died (May, 1864). Alexina, to recover from the shock of so many misfortunes, retired to a village a short distance from Khartûm, and gave herself up to solitude and silence. When she had recruited her physical and mental energies, she returned to Cairo.
There she took up her residence on a splendid scale. She furnished her villa in the Oriental style; would have none but Arabs and negroes to wait upon her, and, finally, she adopted the Arab dress. For four years she continued to be a foremost figure in the semi-European, semi-Asiatic society of Cairo; but her roving and adventurous spirit was not quenched, her love of new things and new places was not checked. The arrival of some vast caravans from the Sahara while she was on a yachting voyage at Tripoli, fired her imagination anew with visions of African discovery. She resolved upon an expedition which in boldness of enterprise and romantic interest should exceed all previous adventures; proposing to travel from Tripoli to the capital of Fezzan, thence to Kuka in Bornu, and, westward, by way of Wadai, Darfur, and Kordofan, to the Nile. To carry out this plan she would have to cross the country of the Towaregs, the treacherous "pirates of the Desert," the cruellest and falsest, and at the same time the bravest and handsomest, of the African tribes; and she provided herself, therefore, with a strong escort, consisting of three Europeans and forty-seven Arabs, well armed. On the 29th of January, 1869, she set out from Tripoli, and on the 1st of March arrived at Sokna, in Fezzan. There she engaged the services of a Towareg chief, Ik-nu-ken, to whom she had been recommended, and agreed with him to attend her as far as Ghat; but at the last moment he was unable to fulfil his engagement, and Miss Tinné accepted the proffered assistance of two other chiefs, who professed to have been sent by him for that purpose; it is known, however, that this statement was wholly fictitious, and intended to beguile, as it did beguile, Miss Tinné into a false security.
A few days after her departure from Sokna, these men, who had arranged to murder and rob their unsuspecting patroness, continued to excite a quarrel among the camel drivers; and when Miss Tinné quitted her tent to ascertain the cause, one of them shot her with a rifle bullet, wounding her to death. Not one of her escort—her three European attendants being also massacred—offered her any assistance, and she was left to linger for four-and-twenty hours in mortal agony at the door of her tent (August 1st). It is pleasant to know, however, that justice eventually overtook her murderers, who were captured in the interior, brought to Tripoli, tried, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.[17]
Such was the unhappy termination of Miss Tinné's career—a career in which much was promised and something performed, but in which, it must be owned, the performance was not equal to the promise. But let us be gentle in our criticism, for may not this be said, all too truly, of our own lives? Who is it that realizes his own ideal?
