Plate I

[(Large-size)]

Fig. 1. Coast of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan

Sandstone hills shaded, small islands black. Coastline double, the outer line being the edge of the fringing reef. The thin lines enclosing roughly oval or elongated areas at sea are the barrier reefs. Figures on sea represent depths in fathoms.

DESERT AND WATER GARDENS
OF THE RED SEA

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
London: FETTER LANE, E.C.
C. F. CLAY, Manager

Edinburgh: 100, PRINCES STREET
London: WILLIAM WESLEY & SON, 28, ESSEX STREET, STRAND
Berlin: A. ASHER AND CO.
Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS
New York: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Bombay and Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd.

All rights reserved

Plate III

Fig. 3. A sandstorm seen from among the Barrier Reefs

DESERT AND WATER GARDENS
OF THE
RED SEA

BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THE NATIVES AND THE
SHORE FORMATIONS OF THE COAST

BY

CYRIL CROSSLAND
M.A. Cantab., B.Sc. Lond., F.L.S., F.Z.S.
Marine Biologist to the Sudan Government

Cambridge:
at the University Press
1913

Cambridge:
PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

TO MY WIFE

TO WHOSE BRAVE ENDURANCE OF A LARGE SHARE OF MY EXILE IS OWING MUCH OF WHATEVER I HAVE ACHIEVED, OR OF WHAT SUCCESS MAY YET BE MINE

PREFACE

IT is my fortune to know intimately a portion of the Red Sea coast, that between 18° N. and 22° N. on the western side. This must be one of the least known coastlines of the world. Until 1905, the Admiralty Chart shewed an area of 25 square miles of reef, which the surveys run for the approaches to the new town of Port Sudan have proved to be non-existent. Though a considerable distance north of this point has now been accurately surveyed, practically no details of the great barrier system of reefs leading up to the Rawaya Peninsula, or of the land inside the coastline, have yet been mapped.

As I shall shew later, certain features of the maritime plain are of the greatest interest, but they have only been hurriedly examined by Mr Dunn, one of the Sudan Government geologists; and no survey of the country has yet been made.

The explanation is not to be found in any laxity in either the Admiralty or the Sudan Government surveyors. Considering that the country is an absolutely unproductive desert, traversed only by a sparse population of nomads, that no steamer passes within miles of the outermost reefs, that the native vessels sail by perhaps at the rate of one a month, the existing chart is a monument to the greatness of the Admiralty’s conception of taking the whole world for its province, even the most useless desert coasts.

Perhaps the fact that this country, though so near to Europe, is only artificially made habitable at all, may add interest to my account; but besides the description of things and peoples more or less unique and peculiar to this country, I have aimed at giving information of general interest. For instance, in treating of the coral reefs I describe features of the barrier system which may be unique in the world, but I have combined with the description of this special point a general account of coral animals and the reefs which they build. This may recall and complete the interesting conversations I have had on such subjects with friends both at home and in those places where the very streets and houses were once parts of coral reefs.

Biologists have one way of justifying their existence which has to some extent been neglected. Their reply to the eternal question “What good is it? where does the money come in?” should be, in some cases, that of the artist. Just as there are those to whom the love of beauty in pictures, sculpture and architecture is one of the things in life they would least wish to lose, to whom the existence of professional artists is more than justified, so there are many outside the ranks of professional biologists, to whom the romance of the beginnings of life, and of strange lowly forms of being, might become an absorbing interest, an enrichment of life in which money does not necessarily “come in” at all.

This is an interest especially accessible to the exiles of the coral seas, where ordinary amusements are so restricted that their repetition produces a sense of loneliness and monotony scarcely conceivable by the man of normal surroundings. For these among my friends I have written, beginning from the beginning and omitting as not pertinent to the questions they ask me, many points vital to the science of animal anatomy, but not essential to their understanding perfectly such questions as, “What is the coral organism? How does it build up these rocks?”

These questions are my own special province, I deal with them as an expert though writing so briefly, but in the rest of the book I have made no attempt at writing a treatise on anthropology or a guide book to the Sudan coast, but only to present what is to me beautiful, interesting or amusing in the places and people as I see them. What I describe I write of with all the accuracy of which my words are capable; so far as it goes, all is strictly true. But alas, no one has yet written of the beauty of this desert coast as it should be written. Could I describe one half the beauty of the memory pictures I owe to this country, I should be a poet, whereas I am only a man of facts.

I wonder much at the neglect of this route through the Red Sea by those who make extended journeys on the Nile. From Atbara a perfectly comfortable train journey carries one swiftly through desert and mountains to either Port Sudan or Suakin. I trust that I have written clearly enough to prove that a few days on this coast is time well spent.

Finally, this route to Khartum and Uganda is a quicker and cheaper one than that by the Nile.

Prof. J. Stanley Gardiner’s reading and criticism of what follows is but one of many kindnesses, and is especially valuable in the case of the chapters on corals and reefs, of which our knowledge has been so greatly added to by Prof. Gardiner’s researches.

CYRIL CROSSLAND.

Windermere,
September 1912.

POSTSCRIPT TO PREFACE

ON reading my book for the press I find that it has a moral, a thing never intended! It is that real romance and beauty are to be found in things as they are, so that the man of science, popularly supposed to be hardened by “materialistic” pursuits, has opportunities for a truer worship than has the sentimentalist who bows before idols of his own imagination.

I tender my thanks to the Council of the Linnean Society who have permitted the reproduction of most of the illustrations of Chapter IX and some of those of Chapter VIII from my papers in their Journal, vol. xxxi, in which the account of Red Sea Structure was originally published for Scientific readers, and to Messrs Murray and the Challenger Society for the use of two diagrams from their Science of the Sea. The beautiful photograph of a Suakin mosque is by my friend W. H. Lake, Esq.

CYRIL CROSSLAND.

Dongonab, Red Sea.
Sept. 1913.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, ETC.

ERRATA

PART I

CHAPTER I
THE SUDAN COAST

In thinking of an unknown place it is inevitable that some image should rise in the mind and recur until it is finally shattered by the revelation of its almost total falsity which a visit to that country brings about. My own imaginings, based on what I had seen in passing through the Red Sea on my way to Zanzibar, were fantastically unreal. I saw blue mountain tops like jagged teeth appearing over the horizon at sunset, and combining these with what I had seen of the reefs and islands of the Gulf of Suez and Bab-el-Mandeb, it came as a shock, some years later, to find that the essential of life on the coast is the great maritime plain, the mountains remaining in the distance, still inaccessible for me.

My first actual sight of the country was typical of the cloudy weather which sometimes occurs in winter. Our little steamer was entering the great gap in the barrier reefs five miles out to sea, directly opposite to what is now the harbour of Port Sudan. Then it was only “Mersa Shêkh Barûd[1],” a saint’s tomb forming the only work of man for many miles. Grey sea and sky, blue mountains, faintly visible beyond the great dull plain, greeted me; later, the little tomb, built on a knoll of yellow coral rock at the entrance of the inlet, a mark for sailors, gleamed white out of all this greyness. Coming nearer still, one saw that the shore is composed of a low level line of yellowish cliffs, about six feet high, undermined below by the constant wash of the waves and sloping inwards at their summits. The shore is separated from the blue-black water by a broad band of green shallows, its outer edge defined by a thin white line of breakers. This is the edge of the fringing reef, which is practically uniform and continuous through the length of both shores of the Red Sea. We were sailing in a channel of fairly deep water partially protected from the waves of the open sea by the barrier reefs. These are a series of shoals and surface reefs, extending parallel to the shore, at a distance of one to five miles out to sea.

This, my first view of the country, may be taken as typical of the whole coast, variations in its uniformity being few. The weather that day was rather exceptional, for often in winter there is all the incomparable sparkle of sunshine and crisp breeze of Egypt, and the mountains, in this wonderful air, come nearer. There are days when I have seen distinctly all the light and shade of their precipices 80 miles away. I leave to your imagination the clearness, almost brilliance, of the great mountains seen at only 15 miles on such days as these. Even so they do not lose their dignity of form and distance, while revealing their vast precipices and terrible ravines, all bare rock, no vegetation, or even soil, to soften their outlines. Truly they are a “great and terrible wilderness.” So too is the plain, vast and uniform, all open to the sky—neither the few acacia bushes[2], nor the sparse tufts of apparently dead and almost woody grass serving to render it soft and pleasant to the eye, nor to cover its grey sand and gravel from scorching in the rays of the sun. Great and terrible, a naked savage land, every feature typifying thirst and starvation, so it became to me during my first visit. I was glad indeed to leave, half hoping I should never return.

In absence savagery and poverty faded, and I found myself picturing the mountains at sunrise, ruddy clear, the peacock blue of the deep sea with white waves, the light blues, greens, yellows, and browns of the coral reefs and the submarine gardens they shelter, and so back again to the mountains at evening, veiled now in the tender blues and purples of our hills at home, but behind them sunsets of indescribable magnificence. To memory came back that great plain, its openness, its sense of freedom wild as the sea itself, which indeed once gave it birth. I thought of how after a little winter rain there comes the spring; the sand is dotted with little flowers, weeds elsewhere perhaps, here brave conquerors of the desert; the shallow watercourses are full of grass. The acacia bushes become a tender green with a moss-like growth of tiny curling leaves giving out the sweetest of scents, recalling our larches at home. Later they are covered with flowers, like little balls of scented down on slender stalks.

Two of those transiently appearing plants, amongst the commonest of all, have special claims. One, the little “forget-me-not” of the desert, is loved individually for its pure white flowers, the other, for its effects when growing in mass. This latter has a peculiar form, a network of branches springing from a central stem, spread out horizontally over the sand, bearing cylindrical bright green leaves and tiny yellow flowers. The whole plant is of great delicacy, and would be unnoticed by the non-botanical observer but that it is sometimes so abundant as to carpet the ground like a bright green moss, which later is golden from the abundance of its tiny flowers. At the approach of summer, the heat of which has an effect like a touch of frost in England, its leaves take on splendid autumn tints. Once I landed on an islet circled with the low grey-green bushes always present on sand islands, within which I found a display of colour the beauty of which will enrich my store of memory pictures for the rest of my life. The principal scheme was a golden carpet of these tiny, almost microscopic flowers merging into a bright and tender green, and on to all kinds of orange browns and reds. Here and there another of the plants of this peculiar salt-loving flora gave patches of wonderful deep crimson. These vivid colours were thrown up by the dull grey green of the encircling bushy plants, which remain the same all the year round, and by clumps of a “grass[3]” which is of a deep glossy green colour like that of rushes, the whole being in a shallow depression in the dull yellow coral rock. All the transient beauty of changing bracken, moss, and heather was here, but with a wonderful quality of translucence under that blazing sun. As a background to all this imagine the bluest of blue seas and mountains seen over the water, and the picture is complete.

The only really conspicuous flower of the coast lands is a Pancratium, a bulb-plant with pure white delicately scented flowers about the size and something of the shape of the British wild daffodil. Unfortunately, this is rather rare, but after all size is but one quality out of many, and certainly not one essential to beauty or interest. An Abutilon is found in dry stream beds.

The existence of perennial, herbaceous vegetation, remaining green after the winter vegetation has shrivelled, in a country where there may be no rain at all for four years[4], a land of scorching sun and hot winds alternating with steamy damp days, where the wells are so salt that ordinary plants die at once when watered from them, where sand-laden gales may cut one’s face and grind the surface of glass, is a wonderful display of the power of adaptation to the most adverse conditions, a magnificent success in the struggle for existence. We have the development of a special flora, a selection of plants from many distinct families, which has acquired the ability to live in the salt sands and in crannies of bare rocks by the sea. The commonest of these are two plants which have special beauties. One, Statice plumbaginoides, grows generally on bare coral rock, and has large flower-heads of a beautiful pink colour, like sprays of heather contrasting with its dark green leaves. The other, Suaeda volkensii, which grows only in sand, has nothing that looks like leaf or flower, but seems to consist of branched rows of translucent green beads. The special beauty of this plant, apart from its shewing green life on such inhospitable sand, is the wonderful tints it takes on at certain times. Every autumn longer spikes appear, which become of brilliant translucent orange or crimson, like the changes of leaves in northern woods. It is a case where the colour is due to the flower bracts, the flowers themselves being inconspicuous.

A few pictures, of summer calm and storm, and my foundations for a visual impression of the country are laid. Just south of Suakin is an area of (approximately) 100 square miles consisting of a labyrinth of coral reefs with winding passages of deep water, and here and there open pools. Slowly my vessel picks its way through the wholly uncharted and unbeaconed maze. There is, indeed, no immediate necessity for aids to navigation, for the breeze, fresh but not strong, ripples the water so that the reefs shew among the blue-green of the deeper channels as clearly as the white squares of a chess board. They are all beautiful shades of green as the water over them is more or less shallow, merging into yellow where a sand-bank approaches the surface, and richest brown where beds of living corals grow. Ahead is the outer reef, an unbroken line of foam separating these calm waters and lighter tints from the deep blue, the colour of a peacock’s neck, of the open wave-tossed sea. Landwards are the mountains, faint and hazy in the heat. The coastal plain is invisible under the horizon; despite our shallow waveless water and the presence of reefs, we are far out at sea.

Two or three native boats, painted dark red, add a finishing touch to the colour scheme. They are anchored in these landless harbours, while their crews are scattered in canoes, mere black specks, searching for the pearl shell oysters which occur here at rare intervals.

My storm picture (see [frontispiece]) has a similar reef harbour for its foreground, but we are only five miles out at sea on the barrier system, north of Port Sudan. To-day the reefs are barely visible, for with us it is almost a dead calm. All those colours of shoaling sand and coral beds are only visible when the water is rippled. A few stones, mere specks here and there above the glassy surface alone shew the presence of a reef on which no swell is breaking.

Calm is thus more dangerous to a steamer than storm, for should she approach the reef areas before picking up the beacons and lighthouse that mark the entrances to Port Sudan and Suakin, she runs great risk of striking an invisible reef. Sailing vessels are safe, as whenever they are under way the water is rippled and the reefs easily seen.

But landwards peace gives way to storm. The mountains are purple, inky clouds with lurid white edges blot out the blue. The sea is black with wind, white puffs of spindrift rise, drive over the water and disappear again. Some native vessels, which last night may have anchored in land-locked harbours some miles astern of us, are racing before the north wind, only daring to shew a corner of their great lateen main-sails, while we have not wind enough to find our way out of the reef-labyrinth in which we anchored for the night. Later arises a dun-coloured cloud in the north—a dust-storm. Rapidly this bears down upon us, increasing in size as it comes, till it reaches towards the zenith, blotting out the storm clouds, mountains, and plain with a pall as dense as a curtain. For those in the cloud the wind is burning hot[5]; the fine dust covers the face, cakes the eyelashes and even the teeth. One’s face is made sore with the impact of the coarser particles; sight is as impossible as in the densest London fog. One must lower one’s sails and trust there are no reefs within the distance the vessel may drift before the storm blows itself out. After the dust may come a furious squall of rain.

Here, where rain is so visibly the coming of life to the earth, it is fitly heralded by the full majesty of vast cloud mountains with snowy summits, from whose dark bases issue continuous lightnings and thunder. In such weather heavy squalls may be expected from any quarter, causing much anxiety to sailors used to the regular winds of the Red Sea. One cloud mass may grow until the sky is covered, mountains hidden in a black veil of rain, a furious wind hiding the shore by a great brown cloud of dust. Before the squall reaches the vessel sail is reduced to a mere corner of the great triangle usually spread, amid much excited shouting. Lightning and thunder become almost continuous and the sea is lashed white with rain and spray. It is as cold and dark as night, and impossible to see more than a few yards ahead, all idea of entering harbour is given up and a look-out is kept downwards in case the vessel may pass over a shoal (which would be visible five fathoms down, in the clear water) on which she could anchor till the storm passed off. Suddenly a tiny rift appears in the cloud mass ahead; a mountain top becomes visible through the rain, then the masts of a vessel in harbour. In five minutes we may have passed from darkness, storm, and anxious peering through rain, to the bright sunshine and calm of a summer sea.

Could the love of beauty, the artist’s sense of colour, find any object in this bare land, dead yellow rock and sands bordering a waste of sea? What is there to replace the infinite variety of colour, of ferny rock, heathery moors and sedgy pools of the desert places of our own land? At times the lover of beauty, even of colour, can be fully satisfied, for the sun alone can throw over this emptiness a glory like that of the golden streets and jewelled gates of the prophet’s vision. The sea becomes one splendid turquoise, the coral rock more beautiful than gold, the mountains, mere heaps of dead rock though they are, savage and repellent, change to great tender masses of lovely colour, ruddy violets and pinks, luminous as though they had some source of light within themselves and shared in the joy they give to the solitary beholder; changing as the sun sinks to deeper colder shades, announcing the benediction of a perfect night. Vessels entering harbour, their crews returning home after a week at sea, become fairy craft, each sail like the rare pink pearls found within the rosy edge of certain shells.

To visit sunset land is but a dream of children, happiness is nearer than the sunset clouds. That gold has been thrown about our feet, over the common stones and bitter waters, and we have gathered spiritual wealth. The kingdom of heaven is within us and the vision of Patmos realised.

One thing necessary to the happiness of a nature-lover the desert can never supply. One needs some sight of luxuriant, riotous life, some equivalent for the rapid growth of grass and trees, that overflowing of life that in other lands causes every vacant inch of soil to bear some weed or flower.

The satisfaction of this desire is easily found in the Red Sea, not above it. At present the love of the sea gardens is an esoteric pleasure, some day we hope it may become as universal as the love of wild nature inland. Corals to take the place of plants, fishes and lower animals of all kinds, beautiful, bizarre, useful and poisonous, making gardens of teeming life under water, where the very worms are often beautiful as flowers. In the harbours where the water is stagnant, but clearer than any British sea, besides corals are weeds of all kinds and shapes, among which swim numbers of little fish of comical form, quaintly tame and gorgeously coloured. The biologist knows, however, that these strangely coloured weeds, brown, grey, green, violet, red and yellow, are mostly animals like the corals, some are sponges, some, like clusters of brown or grey daisies, a kind of cousin of the coral polyps. That large feathery flower, white, yellow, or reddish brown, will vanish like a flash if touched. It is nothing more nor less than the head of a worm, not much like the slow-moving senseless earthworm, but one which builds a house for its protection among crannies of the stones, into which it can withdraw its plumed head, sensitive to even a passing shadow.

The multitude of forms assumed by the corals, their frequently gorgeous colours, equal anything to be seen in a land garden. These grow in greatest luxuriance outside the harbour where the water is of astonishing clarity. It is owing to the vigour of their growth that the edge of the reef is nearly a vertical wall, so that looking down strange beautiful shapes are seen one below another, weird fish entering and leaving their lairs under the coral tangle, till in the pure blue depths the forms of coral and fish become indistinct and pass into the haze of water 60 feet or more deep.

The portion of the coast I have described is typical of the whole. The mountains may be lower or higher, the plain is narrower in the south, broader in the north, and the sea is varied with a few islands about Rawaya and islets of coral rock or sand form the Suakin Archipelago. These sand cays, if always above highest water-level, are peculiar in bearing quite a dense border of low-growing woody plants, at a level immediately above high tide. The rocky islets are almost entirely bare, yellow in colour, surrounded by cliffs like those described at Shêkh Barûd (Port Sudan), and generally level-topped.

In the thousand miles of this side of the Red Sea coast below Suez there are but two towns, Kossêr, in Egypt, now decayed to a mere village, and Suakin. The new town, Port Sudan, the building of which only began in 1905, is, as the name implies, merely the end of the railway communicating with the real Sudan, “the country of the blacks” far over the mountains, by the Nile. It has no significance as a part of this country; the Briton came, took over the bare desert round the wonderful natural harbour of Shêkh Barûd and built there a perfectly modern town, quay walls that the largest ships may lie alongside, electric cranes for their cargoes, and electric light for the town, a grand opening railway bridge over the harbour and every modern need of a great port and terminus. No longer is the tomb the only mark for sailors; one of the finest lighthouses in the world stands on Sanganeb Reef, and the harbour itself is complete with all necessary lights and beacons, the entrance being naturally as safe and easy as if it had been planned by Providence as a harbour for big steamers[6].

The Romance of Modern Power did attempt to live with that of the Eastern beauty of a desert metropolis in old Suakin, but the site was too cramped and Suakin is now left much as it was before the railway linked it with the Nile and made it, for a brief season, a station on a great thoroughfare.

Owing to the existence of the barrier reefs the approach to Suakin is down a 30-mile passage parallel to the coast, and from two to five miles wide. The shore becomes very low, and the fringing-reef wider than near Port Sudan, so that the distinction between sea and shore would be almost untraceable but for the presence of those salt-loving plants which grow everywhere along high water-mark. Suakin is situated two miles inland, at the head of the inlet which forms its harbour, yet so low is the land that its houses appear over the horizon as though standing in the sea. A cluster of tall houses becomes distinct later over the starboard bow and finally, when the town is nearly abeam, a channel in the shore reef, hitherto invisible, opens out and, instead of a harbour we enter a narrow winding natural canal of deep water, passing

Fig. 4. Plan of Suakin

for a mile through the shallow water on the reefs, its course marked by the contrast between its deep blue and the varying pearly tints of the reef shallows. The regularity of the canal

Fig. 5. Suakin. The Customs House and Government buildings
(C on plan)

is astonishing when one remembers that it is purely natural, and not a river but an inlet of the sea. Then the reefs are replaced by low-lying land of yellow coral rock. We pass the tombs of shêkhs, cubical or domed, each with its set of tattered flags which are presented at intervals by the pious. Before us the harbour expands slightly and the canal forks; an island thus formed bears a solid mass of tall and graceful white houses, beneath which, to the right, cluster the short sloping masts of native vessels; beyond all, over the sunlit plain, the mountains. I know no other town which can compare with Suakin in the fair white dignity which it shews to one approaching. It is the realisation of one’s romantic image of an Arabian desert town. No higher praise could be given than by saying that this fair view of Suakin may replace and enlarge the image of our romantic dreams, and yet I give this praise deliberately, careless of contradiction.

Suakin is indeed a long way from being a city of palaces, as its residents know full well. There are no cathedral mosques, no citadel like that of Cairo. The buildings which made our view of fairyland include quite prosaic offices of the Bank, Quarantine, Eastern Telegraph, the Government House and the Customs. The rest are private houses occupied by very ordinary persons, Arab merchants and so on. All are either Arab buildings slightly adapted to their modern uses, or built by Arab architects in their own style. I suppose Suakin owes its fascination largely to its site. The houses appear so high and graceful, rising as they do directly from the water’s edge or from land only a foot or two above that level. Then the two branches of the harbour enclose it and render its boundary definite and compact, no straggling into dingy suburbs, on this side at least, and yet no hiding of the true town behind walls. Frankly, complete and self-contained, calmly the town faces the never-ruffled waters of its harbour, and looks over the great plain towards mountains and sea. Jedda, by comparison, is a finer and larger town, with more of architectural beauty, and also purely Arabian, but it is on the open shore, so lacking the ordered approach, the definiteness of site of Suakin, lying in its arms of the sea.

Plate IV

Fig. 6. A Suakin Mosque
(Photo by W. H. Lake, Esq.)

We do not expect much noise of traffic in the city of our fairyland, nor much display in the public buildings of our desert city. True this ancient and religious city is full of white-washed mosques, and of domes over the tombs of shêkhs, but their minarets are often no higher than the surrounding houses, and marble pillars give place to painted wood, but the minarets, short and free from carving and other ornament though they be, are quaintly graceful; they are neither Turkish nor Egyptian, but purely Arabian in design ([Plate IV])[7]. One would not wish to alter the stern yet peacegiving simplicity of the places where generations of men of the desert and sea have prayed, for the more ornate buildings of richer lands.

Well do I remember waking at sunrise after a night spent under the stars on a flat house-roof, to a scene of beauty that does much to reconcile me to the monotony and loneliness of exile in Suakin, and help me to bear the terrible heat of summer days. Sunrise over the sea, a great blaze of gold following the pearly pinks which made the sky like the inside of a lovely shell. Houses and mosques purest white, no stain shewing in that fresh light. Over the grey plain I cannot tell whether what I see is mere gravel or a layer of grey morning mist, from which rise the deep red foot-hills, and beyond are the high mountains in perfect clearness, first purple then ruddy, all detail visible, yet with no loss of aerial perspective. From the harbour below come the voices of sailors, “Al-lah, Al-lah” is the word distinct among the babel as they call upon God and His Prophet for help in the task in hand. But one who has come in from a sojourn of weeks in the desert rests his eye with infinite pleasure on a spot in the near distance, the oasis of Shâta, where, just beyond the embankment between two of the forts which were built to keep Suakin from the dervishes, the tops of green trees nestle. One promises oneself a walk out there to the trees and gardens in the afternoon, when it is not cool indeed, but still a little cooler. Meanwhile though the sun has risen not half an hour it is scorching already, and one must seek shelter from it and prepare for the day’s work.

A history of Suakin would be worth reading, but it remains mostly unwritten; though since the times of Gordon it might be extracted from reports and newspapers. Gordon was once Governor-General of the Red Sea, and the “Mudiria,” or Government House of Suakin, was his official headquarters. Traces of the railway begun for his relief in Khartûm, but never finished, the outlying forts once attacked by dervish fanatics, are within easy reach, and the nearer ones for the defence of the Shâta Wells and the town itself are close at hand. Even the rifle trenches, the barbed wire entanglements and such temporary defences, though nothing has been done for their preservation, are still present to shew how near, in Suakin, we are to those famous fights.

Plate V

Fig. 7. Suakin. The causeway and town gate (A on plan)

Fig. 8. Suakin. One of Kitchener’s forts (B on plan)

Fig. 9. Sunset on the Red Sea

Plate VI

Fig. 10. A young man of the Amarar
(Note absence of sewn clothing)

CHAPTER II
SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS

Note. My account of the natives is based on my dealings with the people at a point about a hundred miles north of Port Sudan, on the boundary between the tribes of Bisharia and Amarar, but it would apply to those of the south in most essentials.

Nationalities

Three perfectly distinct nationalities have representatives on this coast[8]. Besides the natives proper there are true Arabs from the other side of the Red Sea, and negroes, who are slaves or the descendants of slaves brought over the mountains from the upper Nile valley.

The true natives are called, and call themselves, Arabs, and many of them speak Arabic. For all that they are no more Arabs than they are Europeans, being of Hamitic not of Semitic race, allied to the ancient Egyptians and far less mingled with Arab blood than are the so-called “Arabs” of Modern Egypt[9].

This western shore being altogether too poor a country for the evolution of real sea-going vessels, and the Arabs of the eastern side being one of the first of the sailor and exploring nations of the world, it is no wonder that all the traffic of the Red Sea is carried out by Arabs, and that Arabs are to be found in every village of the coast. Besides the sailors they supply the shop-keepers, merchants and skilled artisans, and nowadays many come over to work as labourers in Port Sudan. The two types, Hamitic natives and Semitic Arabs, can therefore be seen together and contrasted very easily. (Compare Figs. 11, 12 and 13 on [Plate VII] and [Fig. 10.]) Apart from dress the following important physical differences are obvious at first sight. The West Coast man is generally the taller, much darker in colour, and with smaller features, especially a smaller and straighter nose. He is as often “good looking” as is the Arab, and that perhaps, is the most generally appreciable difference between him and the negro. In contrast with the Arab his hair is a “fuzzy” mop not jet black[10] nor merely curly. His beard[11] is scantier, though to both it is the most precious of personal beauties. Mentally, though many are very intelligent, he is the inferior of the Arab who has occupied all the skilled trades in the country, but he is the superior again of the negro. It is however debateable whether this effect may not be partly due to the civilisation of a more populous and richer country having brought out the capabilities of those Arabs who possess any.

Plate VII

Fig. 11. An Arabian Sea captain

Fig. 12. An old man of the Bisharin

Fig. 13. A negro ex-slave

I have had closer personal acquaintance, than is generally possible to an Englishman, with more than fifty natives, and know the character and capabilities of each individual among them. Some are intelligent, some stupid, varying extremely, just as much as a corresponding number of English labourers. On the whole I should think too that they vary between much the same limits. Our chief sailor, an Arab, is not far ahead of the best of the natives, and Arabs I have met are often as stupid as the less intelligent of the latter.

The negroes are quite distinct. To begin with they are black, not merely chocolate brown, with a blackness that hardly admits of shades, and differ from the other races in all the well-known negro characteristics, such as shape of nose and lips, poor development of calf, and the curious way the hair grows in little patches.

We thus have every possible shade of colour between yellow and densest black. The Arab merchant or teacher, who rarely exposes himself to the sun, is hardly dark enough to be called brown, but his poorer brethren become darker, those who labour much in the sun being as dark as the lighter Hamites. These vary down to the darkest chocolate, and then we have the negroes. I well remember my introduction to three new sailors who had been engaged for me in Port Sudan. There appeared a huge negro, coal black, a giant with a gentle voice, and on either side of him a little yellow Arab, like two canary birds hand in hand with a crow.

Socially, the negroes come lowest in the scale; even if slaves no longer, they are treated as complete outsiders in all affairs, and in general with a kindly contempt. I notice for instance that when the villagers go fishing two by two in their canoes negroes pair off together, never Hamite and negro in one canoe. At the same time the headman of a larger sailing vessel always wishes to include a few negroes in his crew, their honesty and tractability, combined with great strength, being qualities which counterbalance dislike to close contact with them in a cramped space.

Intermarriage between Hamite and negro must be rare, as I have met no case[12]. If the village contains no negro women, the male negro must remain unmarried, and no regular marriage between a Hamite man and a black woman has come under my observation, though this union is the more likely to occur. Exceptional men from among them have always risen at intervals, and the British rule, in giving a greater equality of opportunity to all races, will cause more negroes to come to the front. There is some intermingling between the two first races, as Arab sailors are not different from others in liking to have a wife in every port, but it is not at all extensive. The Arabs form no permanent settlement on the coast, the sailor classes at least rarely or never bringing over their women, and the merchants save money to end their days at home. Labourers and sailors will only contract for limited periods; they are soon homesick and go off with their savings for so long as the latter will last. Of the Arabs in my employ only one has settled down and taken a wife on this side. While the native sailor is always in debt and scarcely able to live on his wages (whether £2 a month or £3, it is all the same in many cases) I was astonished at one Arab who kept coming to me and handing over money for safe keeping until I had £5 or so besides what other savings he had. Having accumulated this fortune he gave me a month’s notice and went off to his own country, returning and saving when that was spent. One of my men who was getting the magnificent wages of £4 a month brought his old father-in-law over, but the suggestion that he should also bring his wife and settle down in the house I promised to build for him was met simply by the regretful statement, “It is not our custom to bring our women over the sea.” He has so lost the best job he is likely to find in the Red Sea, for soon after he declared he could no longer stand being away from his own people and returned home.

In my village at least there is a strong prejudice against such marriages, and the above is the reason. Among less than a hundred families I know of two cases where a daughter has married an Arab and been left with a young family to support, with her father’s and brothers’ assistance. Naturally that makes the Arab distinctly unpopular as a son-in-law.

The negroes, being a minority and, though permanent residents, not natives of the country, I have less to say of them and so dispose of them first.

I have already referred to their comparatively industrious and frugal habits, and to their subordination. These qualities are less romantic than are the desert restlessness and blood feuds of the Hamites, but they endear them to the administrator, whether of justice or of work.

In manner some are undignified, just “jolly niggers,” but others have as good a bearing as any Arab.

They have all been slaves, some to within a year or two, their histories demonstrating the efficacy of the government’s repression of slave dealing, even within the country, and in the second and third of the cases I give, the proof is striking.

Several have very similar stories. They remember little of their capture, in remote provinces of the Sudan, as all were then boys of ten or twelve at most. One remembers that his father was killed. Four practically began life in Jedda, where they were first set to tend camels, then sent with the pearling fleet up and down the coast, even as far as Aden and Jibûti, in French Somaliland. At this time several formed friendships which induced them to foregather in my village when they were free.

After years in the pearling fleet, three were sold in Suakin to “Arabs” of the Atbara district, many miles inland, over the mountains and desert, towards Berber. A fourth reached the same tribe by a more adventurous way. Peacefully tending camels for his master near Handûb, in the Red Sea hills, in ignorance of the vicinity of war, he suddenly found himself in the midst of battle[13], and, after receiving a stray bullet through the leg, was carried off by Osman Digna’s dervishes in their flight to Tokar.

After the capture of Tokar in 1891, this being the conclusion of the war on the Red Sea coast, he was sold to pearlers from Masawa, finally, at Suakin, to the tribe from the Atbara.

Two others, who had been born in the service of one master in the above-mentioned district, are here. One explained his presence, across hundreds of miles of desert and the Red Sea mountains, by stating that he had heard that his “brother” was doing well in Suakin. There was no romantic desert flight, he took the train near Berber, with his master’s concurrence, possibly with his assistance also. His owner had said simply, “I have all the slaves I can manage, go or stay as you like.” Such a permission, given freely to two slaves of the most valuable kind, about thirty years old, of powerful physique, intelligent, docile and industrious, is emphatic evidence of the impossibility of sale nowadays. If a secret sale could have been effected, the sacrifice would have been too great, even for an old man anxious to lay up treasure in Heaven.

It is strange enough to find in this tiny village on the edge of the world, men from Darfur and the sources of the Nile, but we have even a Swahili from Zanzibar. Old Mabrûk’s life has been far from that of the “Blessed One” his name signifies. He was kidnapped when a boy of ten or twelve, in the days of old Sultan Bargash, away from the island of plenty, to spend the rest of his days on desert coasts. The old ruse, of offering him some coppers to carry a parcel aboard a sambûk, started him on the journey from which he never returned. He found himself with “two hundred” others beating up desert coasts for “seven months[14],” through the Gate of Tears into the Red Sea, to Hodêda, and thence to Jedda. There they were thrust into a tiny house by the sea (here Mabrûk indicated my bookshelf as approximately the size of the house!) and sold a few at a time at night.

Plate VIII

Fig. 14. Old Mabrûk, from Zanzibar

Fig. 15. Hamitic woman
Two cotton shawls form her complete dress

After a year in Jedda he was sent in a sambûk loaded with camels to Suakin, where he obtained his liberty, he scarcely knows how. He was employed aboard a sambûk used by Government to convey money and stores to its employés at the three coast villages, and in the course of time his son was with him as his fellow-sailor. One night, while in fancied security in a desert harbour, they were set upon by “forty” Arabians, who took them, the Government money, stores, and all, to Jedda. Here he was a slave again, working at collecting fodder in a state of semi-starvation. Two others of the crew had escaped in the night; the rest, including his son, were taken inland and he never saw them again. His skipper, being a freeman, a Hamite not a negro, was not enslaved, but was an exile, until an acquaintance from this side found him and took him home to Suakin. The portrait of this veteran is shewn on [Plate X].

After three months came his great adventure, his crossing the whole Red Sea in a stolen canoe, a mere dug-out about fifteen feet long by a little over two broad. This feat is part of one of the stories of Saint Flea ([page 37]) and seemed legendary until Mabrûk appeared, a man who had done it in actual life, and whose canoe is in sight from my window.

Like the saint he had no store of food and but little water; it was dead calm, and only those who have been exposed to the Red Sea sun can appreciate the wonder of his endurance, in paddling for eight days, and of his good fortune in landing at the only village in three hundred miles of coast. The present Governor of the Red Sea Province, being on a tour of inspection, revived the half dead man with wine, food, and water, and sent him on to Suakin, where the “Pasha” gave him three months’ pay and offered him work on another sambûk. He was tired of the sea, and preferred to wander up the coast in his stolen canoe, gaining a precarious living by fishing.

The old man’s misfortunes have left him some humour yet, he chuckles delightedly at the idea of his secure and honourable possession of the stolen canoe, forgetting the suffering with which he paid for it, and how near he was to death by thirst, or more mercifully, by the waves of the sea.

Another, who was skipper of a coasting vessel until he went blind lately, and whose portrait is on [Plate VII], was stolen in Kordofan when a boy, and taken to Cairo, where shopping with the cook is all the hard labour he remembers. Then his master, in pious mood, gave him his paper of freedom, “for the sake of our Lord.” This happened at Suez, which led the freedman to the life on merchant and pearling sambûks which he has followed since, and which has thrice taken him as far as Basra on the Euphrates.

It was at Aden he heard that money was to be had in vast quantities by labourers, in the making of the new town of Port Sudan, and there he was engaged for me as ordinary sailor by the Arabian skipper of my little schooner, who once had been his cabin boy or midshipman, or whatever the equivalent may be aboard a sambûk!

From what I gather, this is the first time he has spent more than a year in one place, or had a hut he could call his own, though his beard is going grey.

After a few years’ service in my vessels he went blind, and is reduced to living on charity, for once well deserved. Even this was not his only trouble, for the Hamites wished to take away his baby son, to be brought up as a slave, denying his paternity. This may, we hope, be prevented.

Having placed our man among the other nationalities in the country, we want to know what he is like to meet and to deal with, how he spends his time and gets his living, what he thinks about, and how this reacts upon his actions, in short, what kind of a man he is.

Plate IX

Fig. 16. An elderly Bishari

I may say at once, that my experience has quite shaken my belief (if I ever held it) in the usual notion that:

“East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.”

The great mysteries of the East are the mysteries of all humanity, and as you may scratch the Russian and find a Tartar, so you may scratch an “Eastern” and find,—just a man, much like the rest of us.

When we meet our friend we generally see a tall, well-made man, light in build but strong and active, often good-looking, with a pleasant and self-respecting expression. He may rise as we pass, to shew respect, but offers no salutation unless his superior should salute first. If we speak to him he will address us respectfully, yet as an equal, first shaking hands as he would to one of his own nation. If he is not a very poor man, or engaged in manual labour, he is probably much more gracefully dressed than we are, in the folds of yards of calico looped about his person, leaving arms and neck free. True his hair, a great fuzzy mop, plastered with mutton fat, looks a trifle ridiculous and even unclean, but Burton e.g. has, after experience, much to say in favour of a free use of grease in a tropical climate. Or he may wear a turban, which appears more dignified to European eyes, being more familiar.

He displays his freedom, his membership of a desert community, not only by his self-reliant look, but by his always carrying arms. As we meet him, his camel has been tethered[15] before the shop where he is obtaining provisions, and his sword, shield, or spear given into the merchant’s keeping, our mountaineer retaining only a dagger, stuck into a loose heavy leather belt, or having its sheath bound round his arm, just above the elbow. The former dagger is generally a curved blade nine inches or so long, the latter a small broad dagger with a plain round handle. The sheaths are very ornamental, bearing embossed patterns and strips of green leather among the brown.

Neither is he anything but proud of the evidences of his religion and superstitions. There may be a circular patch of dust in the middle of his forehead, where he touched the ground, bowing in prayer, and his amulets, paper charms wrapped up in little square leather cases worn as a necklace, or, more often, tied round the arm immediately above the elbow, and his string of prayer beads, are his principal ornaments. He may wear a ring or two, on his fingers, and a narrow band round his arm, both of silver, while a thin curved skewer, of hard wood or ibex horn, thrust through his hair, completes his adornment.

In conversation we find him generally intelligent, rarely surly or ill-behaved. Having self-respect himself he appreciates and returns politeness, and is not so foolish as to interpret it as weakness. In travelling through the desert any dusty old man will expect you to give a friendly greeting, and the news, and smile upon you as a friend. Unfortunately the language is rather a stumbling-block, as many natives are not fluent in Arabic, and few British know the Hamitic speech. However, for a friendly salutation Arabic (or perhaps any language!) will suffice anywhere.

An introduction to a woman is not so easily arranged. Though the women are only partially secluded, and are not veiled, even if one knows the husband, sons, and brothers of a family quite well, the women shew a distinct reserve. One knows their character largely through complaints brought by their husbands, for not only does the British lord of a desert village become their father in name, but he is dragged at intervals into the consideration of intimate family concerns. Also in no country can “Cherchez la femme” be a better motto for investigating any dispute. They appear in the background of every lawsuit and complaint, even if it at first seems to concern men alone, and when men would let a doubtful claim go by, it is the women who insist on their rights, as keenly on fancied as on real, and send their men before the magistrate.

Plate X

Fig. 17. A veteran seaman

Fig. 18. Hair dressed with mutton fat weeks ago

Fig. 19. Three daggers and an amulet

Fig. 20. Woman’s hand with stalked rings, etc.

In person they are rather slight, and well made like the men. In accordance with their more sheltered life they are lighter in colour, and their dress and ornaments are altogether different, for instance the hair is plaited into a number of tight little tails, and the fat which is rubbed in is mixed with soot. It is nearly long enough to reach their shoulders, and is decorated with strings of beads and thin plates of gold. Sometimes these are in quite good taste, in other cases the effect is merely barbaric. Though the men dress in white only (a white which speedily becomes the general tint of the desert), the women practically always wear coloured cotton stuff. Dark blue with a red and yellow border is common, but the fashion now in my village is for a red stuff with yellow threads interwoven. Two pieces make the complete outfit, one being tied round the waist reaches the feet, the other is laid shawl fashion about the shoulders, and, in the case of married women, over the head as well. The women are not veiled, but on meeting a white man they generally draw part of their garment over their mouths.

Their ornaments consist of strings of beads round neck and waist, silver rings for fingers and ankles, and, if possible, gold (or gilt) ornaments for nose and ears.

I give illustrations of some of the ornaments on [Plate X]; note the curious ring, stalked to display its stone, which may be mere coloured glass or such a stone as cornelian. The nose ring must be a trying discomfort. It is often my fate to administer medicine, and, before drinking, the nose ring must be pushed aside, and held so, I suppose, whenever anything is put to the mouth. The ankles bear large scars made by the friction of the rings when they were first worn.

They are just as good-looking and intelligent as their husbands, and young women and girls are often very pretty, the former in spite of their nose rings. But the circumstances of their lives often give the older women a hard expression, though I know of old women living in the most abject poverty who remain models of genial good-nature.

The fact that the northern[16] and southern tribes, otherwise of similar customs and beliefs, differ altogether in such a fundamental matter as female morality, is instructive. In the south a girl who became pregnant illegitimately would run a great risk of death at the hands of her relatives, in the north it would be easily condoned. Not only so, but a woman is the more valued by her husband if she gives proof of her attractiveness to other men, even by adultery; he has no resentment against his wife, his honour being satisfied by an attack with his dagger on the first meeting with his rival.

The explanation that suggests itself is that the lesser rainfall of the north, making the country able to support but a sparse population, necessitates a greater restriction of the natural increase than in the more habitable south. In the northern deserts war is unknown, pestilence cannot flame from end to end of so scattered a people, and local famines can be more or less avoided by nomads, the men of whom are so inured to hard fare as to be able to travel for days on dry uncooked “dûra” corn alone. Hence the postponement of marriage which, combined with oriental licence, brings about the result with equal certainty, and greater misery, than do that awful trinity, War, Pestilence, and Famine.

The women may easily excuse themselves to the western critic by asking why they should be faithful to a contract in the making of which they had no voice, and sexual immorality cannot here be condemned as a sin against the race as it is in the West.

In spite of the use of weapons, in private or in tribal quarrels, examples of which I describe later, I consider no really lawless or unintelligent race could have built up, and maintained, the administration they have, under the circumstances of desert life. They are elaborately subdivided into tribes and family groups under Shêkhs[17], of superior and subordinate ranks, whose decisions they respect as a rule. The Government has found the system workable, and on the whole confines its attention to perfecting and supplementing it where necessary. Cases brought before a magistrate are often, after hearing, referred back to a Shêkh, whose decision is, if necessary, backed up by the Civil Power. No Englishman need carry any arms in living in or passing through their country, and, at least in the north, he need have no fear of theft. They are perfectly contented with the Government and respect all its agents, pay their taxes and obey the decisions of either magistrates or their own Shêkhs. They have a lively recollection of the Mahdist General, Osman Digna, and their gratitude for, and jubilation over his downfall is still expressed in ordinary conversation. I had polite enquiries for him the other day, with remarks on the impoverishment of the country which he caused. I fear my sailor was disappointed to hear that he was not yet dead. Osman Digna’s men, “fuzzies” though they were, were either foreigners brought into the country and living upon its already poor inhabitants, or conscripts taken more or less by force. In any case there was very little fighting so far north as my station.

Arms, though but rarely used, are regarded as indispensable, and no native goes a mile or two away from the towns unarmed. A leather belt, generally a very broad heavy affair, ornamented with patterns cut into it, carries the typical curved knife or “khangar[18]”; or a straight dagger may be carried in a sheath which is tied round the arm immediately above the elbow. One of these together with a very hard heavy stick, slightly curved, and not used as a walking-stick, is the ordinary man’s equipment, but if he goes on a journey he takes as well a round leather shield and long sword or a spear. If afoot he carries the former on his back, the sword under his arm like an umbrella. Perhaps the fact that he does not carry them after the style of the hero of romance only emphasises the fact that they are carried as a matter of sober business. The wounds that I have dealt with have been mere flesh wounds and apparently had been inflicted with the curved khangar, which seems beautifully adapted to give showy wounds without going so deep as to endanger life. In two cases, the jugular or carotid had been aimed at, but missed, though the great angular gash resulting was a sufficiently disgusting sight. Almost all the natives one meets have great scars and the reasons they give for them are generally “only a little talk,” but of course women are concerned with most. Trivial private quarrels have a way of becoming inter-tribal in our neighbourhood, as we are on the boundary between the Bisharia and Amarar. For instance two of the more serious cases which have come about during my residence here arose as follows:

A man drawing water for his camels fell into the well and another laughed at him. Unfortunately the two men were of different tribes and a fight resulted, one man was knocked senseless by a blow given end-on by one of their thick and heavy sticks, and two more were badly cut about with knives. The former was expected to die at any moment, and his death would confer on his relatives the right and duty of killing the murderer, or, failing him, his next of kin. They declared their intention, as soon as the man should die, of coming for two of my employés, who were related to the murderer but who had been at work with me during the fight, so I was appealed to. I proposed to send the threatened men away by boat, but to pass the reefs by night was a difficulty. All the head boat men declared it impossible and declined the risk except one, the younger and more adventurous, who took them through and has gloried in the feat since.

Plate XI

Fig. 21. Our postman, starting for his hundred mile ride, armed with sword and shield

There was some danger of a general fight between the two tribes, but a third and impartial set came down from the hills to keep the peace. Next day came requests that we should dress the wounds. So, my wife accompanying me, we rode out to a tent among the trees, in the dark depths of which we found two savage half-witted looking men stolidly sitting sniffing onion and spices with which their noses were plugged to prevent them inhaling any possible odour of their wounds. Each had three or four cuts about six or eight inches long and one to two deep. I tried more or less to close up the edges of the cuts in one man’s back, which would have caused great pain to a white man; if I hurt this one at all he only shewed it by laughing. We were far from laughter in that dark and smelling tent and glad to get under way again. We were then led to the house of the dying man and found a tent among the acacia bushes surrounded by a semicircle of men sitting silently to await what might befall, every man fully armed with swords, daggers and spears, apparently ready to wreak vengeance the moment the victim should die. We found the man sitting in the middle of the tent, a roughly circular hole in his forehead exposing the pulsating brain. We could do nothing for him; it would have been no use suggesting sending him to Port Sudan hospital, though that might have saved his life. Of course the man was completely unconscious, his sitting up was explained by the fact that he remained in any position in which he might be placed. It was more than a week before he died and meanwhile the murderer had gone into the country of another tribe. For the present he is safe, but should he return without the blood money his life is forfeit. It is usual for a murderer to collect say £10 from the charitable, the payment of which to the next of kin to the murdered man may be the condition of peace between them. One imagines him on his tramp repeating, “I am a poor man and having committed a murder, a most worthy object of your charity. Give me a little towards the blood money.” It seems an easy way of settling for a murder, but five to ten years’ exile as a beggar in another tribe must be a very serious thing for these family-loving people. It is at any rate less barbarous than that horror of civilisation, penal servitude for life. It is one of those cases where the ends of justice are well served by the Government’s policy of leaving, under supervision, whatever of administration can justly be left to the natural rulers of these wanderers among inaccessible mountains.

In this particular case I hear the avengers are implacable, no mediation will induce them to accept blood money, they must have the murderer’s life.

Another quarrel arose from a debt of one shilling only, the debtor refusing to pay. The creditor came to complain to me when I was busy in my office and I put him off awhile. He came again and said something about somebody striking him. I said I would see about it directly. Five minutes later on going out I found four men sitting on the sand each in a little pool of blood, and a crowd waving sticks coming up from the village. The first thing was to meet the crowd and make my men take possession of all the sticks and knives and throw them into my store, but such was the excitement that some would part with their stick to no one but myself. This done I spent two hours bandaging the wounds of those four men. I suppose there would be sixteen cuts altogether. None made the smallest sign of pain. One, a boy of about eighteen, who had lost a good deal of blood through the severing of a vein, looked rather sleepy. We hope soon to be too civilised for these scenes and nowadays the carrying of knives in the village, except in the case of men actually coming in from or starting out upon a journey, is being punished by the confiscation of the knife, and fighting otherwise discouraged.

Just as their system of Government is patriarchal, so also the junior members of their community treat each other with a consideration and good nature one would be glad to see more of, among blood-brothers in other lands. They work together with invariable good humour, an extra man never shirking his share of work, but often insisting that his turn at the oar, e.g., is due before his fellow is willing to give it up. Heavy labour is accompanied by song and invocations of God and the Prophet, and work in a big, noisy crowd, is one of the pleasures of life. I remember once when timber was being unloaded from a sambûk, work continued after hours, but a suitable song being started, and extra men being put on, turned the whole thing into a game; as each man threw down his load he dashed back along the pier at a dancing run, to receive another plank with the eagerness a child shews over sweets. There is nothing very inspiriting in the songs as a rule, mere vain repetitions such as:

Who Moses was I have not discovered, except that it is not the prophet but another of that name.

was sung at about six o’clock in the morning!

This makes them extremely pleasant to work with, and though among a number of employés disputes necessarily occur, and slackness has to be rebuked, I do not feel that I should get more work from members of a “superior” race, and I doubt whether I should be able to be on the same friendly footing with them. In intelligence they vary widely, just as do members of any other nationality or any class, and while some are only at the level of European labourers and factory hands, others could be trained to become good rough carpenters and blacksmiths, while a man capable of managing a boat well, through all the chances and intricacies of a ten days’ voyage, and able to preserve discipline among his crew, shews skill and intelligence of no mean order.

From what has been said so far, one would imagine social conditions to be almost Utopian, but just as the Mohammedan religion is admirable from one aspect, and a degradation from another, so the patriarchal system, which breeds self-reliance with subordination, tribal patriotism and consideration for fellows, also produces a strength of public opinion, which, coupled with the absence of privacy inseparable from life in small communities of overcrowded and unfenced tents, becomes a grinding ever present tyranny. The action of any more clear-sighted man who should arise among them would thus be instantly and automatically extinguished, superstition is stereotyped, a man’s life is hedged in with restrictions, which are absurd because the meanings they have had are now utterly forgotten[19]. There is nothing more unfortunate than the great idea many British express, of the wonderful knowledge the “Arabs” possess, which is held to transcend all that mere western methods can ever discover. Put to the test, by a careful examination of the working of their own particular interests, say camel breeding and pearl fishing, this wonderful science all falls down to rule of thumb, coupled with that sublime assurance in making unfounded assertions which is the prerogative of the very ignorant. A year or two’s acquaintance with either industry will put a careful observer into possession of more knowledge than has been accumulated from hoary ages of rule of thumb and the lazy theorising which is the parent of all superstition.

Again, the fearful loss caused by the absence of love, with its concomitant immorality and suffering, is largely due to the levelling down which results from the tyranny of public opinion. The partnership of man and woman which, in our ideal, is closer than any other, is impossible under their conditions of life, which make privacy and individuality so difficult, and men are not the more eager to marry, where that involves coming even further under the fetters of custom, and the giving of all the wife’s relatives, as well as those of blood, a voice in their private affairs.

One symptom of this state of things is the fact that a married woman is often more loyal to her brothers than to her husband, and it is a common complaint that she is supporting able-bodied brothers in idleness, on her husband’s earnings, without his leave and, so far as possible, without his knowledge.

I believe that in this all powerful patriarchal rule we touch upon a cause of much of the difference, for good or evil, between East and West, the stagnation of the East generally as well as the all powerful solidarity of Japan.

Of the Mohammedan religion the same may be said. It is attractive to most of those who approach it with any sympathy, to whom a religion for men, the ideal of proud yet ready submission to Almighty God, set forth by a ritual hardly surpassed in dignity by any, must appeal strongly. Yet here again is the tyranny of dead customs, the awful, blinding influence of Bibliolatry. Everything that was knowable was spoken to the Prophet by the messenger of God Himself, and to add to, or subtract from that knowledge, is sin. The customs and ideas of a provincial town, in the middle of desert Arabia, thus become unalterable laws for all the world, and those who will not acknowledge this are infidels, damned to the wrath of God.

In this atmosphere all advance in knowledge, all testing of theories by experiment, is mere foolishness, and though the infidel, whom the mysterious will of God has placed over them, may be their Friend and Father when all is well, let but some trifling incident pit his knowledge against theirs, and he will find that he is no longer the light shining in a dark place that he fondly imagined, but a mere ignorant meddler in matters that are too high for him; his poor “savage” children are the elect, the possessors of light and infallible guidance, he is in the darkness, groping among the beggarly elements, and occupying himself with ridiculous trifles. Very annoying indeed, and very trying to the temper of His Excellency, the British Magistrate, is it to have this fact rubbed in by personal experience, but it has a fine educative value. Even when he comes home, and studies the social problems of Britain, he will soon meet and be thwarted by members of his own nation who have all the essential characteristics of the typical Eastern, though clothed in different ideas, and will find that East and West not only meet, but inextricably intermingle.

In theory the often ridiculous miracle stories of Mohammedanism are non-essentials, in practice they impress the average believer far more than do the high religious moral ideals which are set forth with, and by, them. We must guard against thinking that our dark friends’ morality and actions are much influenced by his formal religion, it is only the general tendency, falling in as it does with his social ideas, which has any influence.

CHAPTER III
RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES AND SUPERSTITIONS

The forms of religion are inextricably interwoven with every event of the people’s lives. As the sailors pull at a heavy rope there are cries upon God and the Prophet for help, and as the rope begins to give to the strain, the long-drawn “Pray,” “Pray,” “Oh, God, Oh Prophet” gives place to a quicker chant, “God gives it, God gives it.” To the enquiry “Are you well?” the reply is “Praise be to God”; and if two travellers meet and one asks the other “Where are you going?” he receives the reply “To the Gate of Bountiful God,” after which the real errand may be discussed.

Just as “Inshaallah,” literally meaning “If God wills,” is really to be translated by a plain “Perhaps,” so this habitual use of the phraseology and ordinances of religion, instead of indicating a living ever present influence, is here, as everywhere, the mark of easy formalism[20].

Only in the higher peoples, and quite recently in history, is moral perfection regarded as essential to religious preeminence, and so we find that, in general, a popular saint is venerated for his miracle working, and his moral worth, if any, is totally forgotten. But I wish to insist that this disregard of the holy man’s morality is not a distinction of “savage” or “semi-heathen” men, but, shocking though it be, is common to all the lower moralities, of Europe or elsewhere, in the Middle Ages or the present time. I should explain also that until about seven years ago, when the first Arab shop-keeper settled in our village, the inhabitants did not know their prayers, the calls of the Muezzin or the performance of the worship known as “Mûled” described below. They called themselves Mohammedan, but knew nothing, and my friend the doctor says that the reply to his consolation to patients, “Well, you won’t have this pain in Paradise,” is often, “Who knows if there is a Paradise?”

On a sandy islet in the bay near my station, a spot of almost dreadful loneliness, is a shêkh’s tomb of the simpler kind. The grave itself is surrounded by stones set on edge and the large white shells of Tridacna, and by a sort of hedge of sticks, the longer at the head, which the pious decorate with rags[21]. A second enclosure of stones includes this and the remains of other graves, and the whole area is kept perfectly clean and sprinkled with pure white sand from the beach. The short broken sticks and decayed rags are not thrown away, but carefully taken down and laid aside.

One is naturally interested to enquire who the Shêkh was in life, and what qualities are considered as meriting so much posthumous honour, and conferring the power of intercession with God. Strange to say, no one knows anything excepting that his name was Sad, the prevailing idea seeming to be that, since his usefulness and power began after his burial, there is no reason to be interested in who he was, and what he did, in life. Even after death but one miracle is vaguely recorded, viz. that a certain man attempted to steal some pearl shells which had been deposited at the grave, and so placed under the Shêkh’s charge. The thief was punished by the loss of his hand, but whether by paralysis, or through the agency of a shark when he was diving, my informants neither knew nor cared. “It was something of that sort” was all they would say. And yet I believe that the dead Shêkhs are more thought of as practical help in time of trouble than either God or the Prophet.

Plate XII

Fig. 22. Prayer at the grave of Holy Island

Fig. 23. Note the shaven band over top of head distinctive of little boys; aristocrat on left wears a shirt and strings of amulets, the middle one only a loin cloth and one lucky white stone

The once lonely tomb of Shêkh Barûd, whose name was in those days given to the harbour which is now Port Sudan, was mentioned in Chapter I. The name literally interpreted is “Old Man Flea,” but it has no contemptuous significance to the pious. It was indeed a title of honour, for the old man so felt the sanctity of all life that he would not kill the most degraded of insects. His story is that of a poor pilgrim using all possible shifts to reach Mecca, and in the end succeeding. There are two accounts of his return. In the one he was compelled to trust himself to the sea journey of 180 miles alone in a tiny canoe. The sea spared him and he reached land where his tomb now stands, dying or dead of thirst. At any rate he was dead when found, and, being recognised as one who had perished on the pilgrimage, was buried as a shêkh. It is said that in memory of the manner of his death, sailors passing the spot pour a little fresh water into the sea. But, as a matter of fact, the custom is a general one, and all shêkhs’ tombs are thus honoured. It is a fine example indeed of a persistent, widespread, and very ancient observance, probably less bound up with Moslem and old Christian theology than Omar Khayyam’s well-known lines:

“And not a drop that from our cups we throw

For Earth to drink of but may steal below

To quench the fire of anguish in some eye

There hidden—far beneath and long ago.”

(See note by Aldis Wright in “Golden Treasury Edition.”)

Personally I think my sailors are actuated by some quite vague sacrificial idea.

The second, and more correct, story places his death at Jedda, while on the pilgrimage. As those who die in the performance of this sacred duty earn very special merit, he was honoured by burial in a wooden coffin. During the ceremonies so violent a storm arose that the mourners left the coffin on the sea-shore. Next morning it was found that a sudden rise of the sea had borne away the saint, and later the coffin was found floated ashore at the entrance to a harbour on the other side of the sea[22]. When found it was recognised as the remains of a holy man, and buried in a stone tomb on high ground at the harbour entrance; which harbour was renamed after him, Mersa Shêkh Barûd. The harbour was then completely desert, and this tomb, the size of a very small room, was the only stone building, except two small police stations, between Suakin and Egypt! Once a conspicuous mark for sailors (the Government for this reason keeping it brightly whitewashed), it is now quite inconspicuous under the towering electric cranes and coal transporters of the modern seaport, of which it is the only object more than five years old.

The sites of the tombs of these Holy Men of a sailor people are always well and appropriately chosen, generally on high ground at a harbour entrance. One I know, where the land is too low to give an impressive site, is built on the outermost point of the shore reef, hardly dry ground at lowest water level. That of our Holy Island has been mentioned; that of Shêkh Dabadib is by a well, and is also a conspicuous mark on a coast otherwise featureless, even for the Red Sea.

Mohammedanism here meets Ancestor Worship and involves the sanctity of the head of a reigning house. This tomb is none the less sacred for being new, antiquity and miraculous power are not always necessary to reverence; The Shêkh buried here is known to men still living, and his relatives are prominent people hereabouts. The photograph shews the building, which contains the tomb, with a prayer-space marked off outside, the Mecca-ward niche of which is decorated with flags. Here is also an almost perfectly spherical piece of granite, a natural boulder, black with libations of butter. One of my sailors is seen addressing this, hoping thereby to complete the prayers already made at the grave within.

Plate XIII

Fig. 24. A prophet that had honour in his own country

Fig. 25. A mediaeval tomb, now neglected

The building of even so simple a tomb must have been a great expense so far from civilisation. Masons were brought from Suakin to trim the coral blocks, taken living from the sea, of which the walls are built.

The other photograph on this plate shews one of a series of little towers which are found here and there near the foot of the mountains, the finding of which, in the midst of a desert devoid of all buildings, is almost startlingly unexpected. They also are Moslem graves, but are not now regarded with reverence. Built long ago in the Middle Ages they are relics of the old trade route from the ancient kingdom of Axum, to the now vanished seaport of Aydeb which may some day be discovered in the ruins of “Old Suakin” or Berenice.

Another way of honouring the saints is by the killing of sheep at their graves, especially on feast days. The flesh is eaten of course—after being distributed to all who care to take it.

I suppose as a safeguard against idolatry the posture of prayer at a tomb is entirely different from those prescribed for prayer to God. There are no bowings, or kneelings with the forehead touching the ground. The petitioner stands throughout, holding the palms of his hands as though they were an open book from which he read, and at the end of his prayer passing them over his face. The idea symbolised is that during the prayer his heart is open to receive the blessing, and at the close his action sets forth his faith that a blessing has been received, and applied to his person.

Whenever in the desert men encamp for any length of time, a place is set apart for prayer, and marked off by stones set on edge. It is a semicircle or half oval, the apex of which is in the direction of Mecca, to which all the Moslems of the world turn to pray. The space within is kept clean as holy ground, and no one may step within the stones without first removing his sandals and washing, with water if by a well or the sea, otherwise with sand, as though entering a mosque.

The third type of religious exercise is the “zikr” or “remembrance,” here called the “mûled[23]” or “Birthday,” this name being given because the main part of the ceremonial is the reading of a long poem, composed by a shêkh of this country, describing the birth and life of Mohammed.

As in Egypt, religious recitation takes the place of a dinner party or evening entertainment. The material apparatus required are, first and foremost, lamps and candles, the more that can be borrowed the better; secondly, some carpets and sheets of matting to lay in a circle on the ground for the guests to sit upon. Minor matters are tea (coffee is more rarely used in our village) and incense.

Imagine the Eastern starlight relieving the soft purple darkness, a gentle moving air, cool after the heated storm winds of the day. The only light visible in the whole village is that placed before the reader, a brilliant little circle shewing up the principal guests in their white robes and turbans, the holy book and the smoking censer. One by one the guests appear out of the darkness, the droning chant of the reader taking no heed of their comings. Some, in new white robes and turbaned heads, or those to whom age gives dignity independently of wealth, seat themselves in the light near the reader; others, shaggy haired and wild faced herdsmen from the hills, in dust coloured calico, remain half seen on the farther side of the circle. No woman or girl is visible, but they may gather at a little distance and raise their curious whistling trill, their joy cry, at intervals. The little boys of the village, of the age at which church going and sitting still generally were especially abhorrent to ourselves, are much in evidence, and certainly do not come for the tea, of which they may not be invited to partake.

The service contains real religious feeling, and besides the birth and life of Mohammed there is recited a long prayer, the droning of which is broken by the mournful chanting of responses, of which of course “La Allah ill’ Allah” is one. Nothing could be more expressive of submission to the hardness of desert life, or so impress upon the listener remembrance of his exile from his fellows in the cheerful striving with life of the younger nations, than these people’s singing, whether it be done for pleasure or as a religious service. The whole thing is full of Eastern poetic licence, e.g. blessings are called down upon each detail of the Prophet’s body separately. At the point where his actual birth is announced all stand awhile. Only one sentence is really objectionable to a Christian, where all the older prophets extol Mohammed, Jesus is made to repeat the words of John, “I am not worthy to unloose his shoe latchet.”

After about an hour’s reading all rise and join hands in a circle, chanting “La Allah ill’ Allah,” “There is no god but God,” emphasising the words with deep bowings, or by stamping the feet in unison; after some repetitions the time quickens, and the sentence is shortened to “La Allah”; even these words are finally abbreviated to a grunt as the bowings and stampings degenerate into mere furious exertion. Another sentence repeated in the same way is “Hû hay kayâm,” “He is the Life, the Almighty,” with an emphasis on the pronoun, Hû, that excludes all sharers in His attributes. In the same way this sentence is shortened down to “Hu” alone, delivered with a deep gasp, so that at a little distance the sound of worship may be mistaken for the barking of dogs. At intervals one of the more excitable men enters and dances round inside the ring, urging the congregation to still greater rapidity and energy of sound and movement. When the men are tired they resume their seats, tea is handed round again, and more incense thrown on the charcoal, which is kept burning for the purpose. The reader resumes his recitation awhile until the spirit moves the congregation to rise, bow and repeat the formula “HE is the Life, the Almighty,” as before.

The borderline between religion and superstition is of course very indefinite, and the belief in evil spirits and witchcraft is as strong as that in the intercession of dead saints. It is of no use to point out that such ideas are inconsistent with that of the Unity and Omnipotence of God, and only force can give weight to the consideration that loud drumming close to the head of a sick person, while certain to do harm, is unlikely to drive away the evil spirit which is the cause of the disease, or that a man suffering from heart disease is more likely to kill himself than drive out the evil spirit, by the violent exertions of a Mûled dance.

The wearing of amulets is, perhaps, the superstition most akin to religion, and one at least that has had its origin in intelligent respect for written wisdom. Every man wears them in numbers, and children have a few, mingled with other lucky objects, however insufficient their clothing. In the commonest form the paper is enclosed in a neat little leather case, a little over an inch square by half an inch deep, which may be slung round the neck with the prayer beads, by a string of twisted leather, or attached to a cord, of the same material, which passes round the arm just above the elbow. In some cases a man may wear up to twenty of these packets, partly as ornaments, partly as defence against each and all of the ills of life.

The contents are various, since, trusting to the ignorance of the purchaser, the charm-writer may put down the first thing that comes into his head, perhaps even lewd poetry, or the name of God written in various fantastic ways. Some charm-writers are quite illiterate, and their works are mere childish scribblings. A friend enquired of one of the better Shêkhs whether he had any faith himself in what he wrote, the reply being merely, “The Arabs like them so I write them.” I suppose the corollary, “and I like the money they pay for them,” may be taken for granted.

I was talking of amulets to one of my sailors. “The paper in this,” he said, indicating a dingy silver case hung by a bit of string round his neck, “was worth four pounds.” (This is two months’ pay.) “When I was in Suakin I went to a shêkh there as I was ill. He was a great Fakir, a great Shêkh, and his tomb is now in the middle of the bazaar. He told me he had a very good paper by him, and if I wore it for twelve days, I should, if it pleased God, become well. The price of this paper was four pounds, but I said, ‘I have only ten shillings.’ ‘Never mind,’ said he, ‘give me the rest if my words come true.’ And after twelve days I got better. He was no liar.” I was anxious to know whether the balance of the four pounds had been actually paid over or not, but my diplomatic questions were met by an impenetrable reserve, and the conversation was deflected into theology. “The Fakir does not say ‘you must get better’ after so many days, but only ‘if it is God’s will’.”

The common way of dissolving the ink of the writing in water and drinking it as medicine, is practised here. Sometimes the fakir may instruct the patient to burn a piece of it each day on a censer, enclosing the smoke in his clothes and so fumigating himself with it. My clerk called on a sailor who was ill, or thought he was. The cause of illness was presumed to be the issue against him of a bad writing by some malicious person unknown, so the obvious cure was to get a counterblast written by someone friendly to the bewitched sufferer. Do not imagine the romance of oriental wizardry, or of mediaeval alchemists with patriarchal beards! Superstition is, in reality, most dingily matter-of-fact. The good fairy who wrote the counterblast is a fat, waddling, little man, with tiny screwed-up eyes in a face expressing only good-natured commonplaceness, as completely as his figure expresses laziness and love of food. He is in fact as much like a grocer as an eastern magician, but he is a good little man too, and has undertaken the work of village schoolmaster, and teaches the boys the correct bowings and postures of prayer, without any remuneration.

Customs, possibly peculiar to this people, and not held by the Arabs of the other side of the sea, for instance, are connected with milking. A woman may not milk a sheep or goat, only men may perform this duty. Further, a man having milked an animal may not drink until some other man, no matter whom, has first taken three sips. So strong is this idea that the phrase “He milks and drinks” is a term of abuse. One would think the origin of the custom to be the unwritten laws of hospitality, but if so, the present generation have no knowledge of any such derivation. “It is just the custom” is all they can say.

I remember meeting a little boy and his sister, who for this purpose had carried milk two miles or more, to the only house besides their father’s then on the peninsula of Rawaya. What the thirsty father would have done if they had returned after finding no male at home I do not know. By chance one was ashore, the others having gone fishing.

Belief in the evil eye is universal here, as in the world at large, and the common sign which is supposed to afford protection against it, the figure of a hand with fingers outspread, is trusted in here also. This belief in the evil eye has prevented my obtaining more than one portrait of a woman, even the photograph of a woman’s hand and rings, etc. ([opp. page 24]) being obtained with much difficulty. The lady stood within a little window, placed low down in the side of her house, so as to be quite satisfied that her head could not be “seen” by the camera’s wicked glass eye. The reason given was that photography was an offence against their modesty, but I am sure the evil eye superstition had more to do with their reluctance.

The common idea that a pearl is due to the hardening of dew, to obtain which the oyster comes to the surface of the sea at night, was suggested to me by an Arab dealer, but a purely native idea is that abundance of rain in the winter will result in the appearance of many young oysters next summer. Because to themselves every drop of the scanty rainfall is precious beyond everything, they sympathetically imagine it must be of value to the oysters. However, this point, like the former on the formation of pearls, needs no great study of oyster habits to refute. As practically all oysters live under at least six feet of sea water, and are anchored firmly to the bottom, neither dew nor showers of rain can reach them, much less have any effect whatever upon them. Also the breeding season is summer, not winter.

The porpoise[24] is known as “Abu Salâma” or “Father of Safety,” its useful habit, in days of long ago, being supposed to be the conveyance to shore of shipwrecked sailors. But one day, according to tradition, a porpoise rescued a negro, who, as soon as he reached shore, most ungratefully put a knife into poor Abu Salâma. Since that day shipwrecked mariners have had to shift for themselves. (Note how the blame is put on to the subject race. Prof. D’Arcy Thomson[25] gives a similar superstition regarding another kind of dolphin at Rio de Janeiro, where it is said to bring home the bodies of drowned sailors, and to defend swimmers against another genus which is dangerous to man.)

No one will destroy a cat or drown young kittens. This is not merely misplaced compassion or respect for life in general, as they bury[26] superfluous puppies without any qualm. Perhaps it is a relic of the ancient Egyptians’ reverence for these animals. I tried to point out the inhumanity of allowing cats to multiply unchecked, and found that the avoidance of causing suffering to the cat had little, if anything, to do with the matter. “If they die of starvation it does not matter, but we must not kill them.” The consequence is that every town and village swarms with miserable half-starved cats.

I was once staying in a house where the balcony, on which we dined, overhung the sea at a height of perhaps 30 feet. A miserable cat, which had adopted the house as her residence, came and made herself a nuisance by the usual feline methods. One of the guests rose, caught, and threw her over the balcony into the sea. It seemed rather callous, but obviously such an animal’s destruction lessens the amount of misery in the world. I could hardly believe my eyes two days later, when that same cat walked on to the verandah. It appears that the process, which I had thought necessarily fatal, was repeated on this cat at recurring intervals, the dose being only sufficiently powerful to take effect for two or three days, after which she was as actively disagreeable as ever, and it had to be repeated.

Talking of cats there are not less than seven names for this one beast in Arabic! I wish I had taken down the complete list as my informant gave it, but one of the two I know is a good instance of onomatopœia, or instinctive naming from sounds associated with the object. The Arabic gutt is obviously the same as cat, and may be the same word by actual derivation, but the Red Sea word is “Biss,” which, the Arab not being able to pronounce the letter P, is the same as “Puss.” It is hard to believe that this should actually pass through Egypt to finally be used in England as a merely “pet” name. It must have arisen independently in the two countries.

Once travelling on the desert east coast of Zanzibar island and sleeping in the open, I awakened in the night to find an eclipse of the moon in progress (1901 was the year). I expected my boat boys to be alarmed at the phenomenon, especially as they were some of the original inhabitants of the island, not mingled with Arab blood. But they took it very calmly, saying something to the effect that “The English know all about that!” In my Red Sea village in 1909, it was quite different. On going out in the morning my clerk asked me whether I had been disturbed by the natives’ efforts to save the moon’s life, or, as he put it, Had I heard the eclipse? It appears that directly the shadow touched the moon everyone was aroused and a beating of tin cans commenced, with loud prayers that God would not allow the moon to be destroyed.

One of the origins of superstition is false reasoning from observed fact. When a native has a wound or open sore he is careful to keep his nose plugged with rag, or to sniff continually at aromatic substances, as he believes the smell of a wound will cause fever and mortification. The observation that if a wound smells, the patient is likely to be in a bad way, is sound enough, but the inference that the smell, or any smell, e.g. women’s scents, causes the fever is superstition. I am informed that this idea is very widespread. I fear my applications of iodoform, than which nothing can have a more persistent smell, will convince the natives that we share their belief in the efficacy of “drowning,” rather than preventing, the odour of decay.

Somewhat similar was the native treatment of a man who fell from the roof of a house we were building. He was lying senseless when I arrived, his nostrils carefully plugged with onion! Probably the smell of onion, like that of ammonia, may be useful in fainting, but far more important is free access of air, and that they treated as a matter of no account at all.

The great remedy for everything is the application of a red-hot nail. Hence many of the scars which otherwise might be taken for the results of fighting.

One of my men, being in great pain from stricture, I gave the maximum dose of opium for his relief. On returning to see the effect he answered, “Yes, I have had no pain since they burned me.” My little tabloids were despised as too trifling a remedy for such serious ill; burning had been considered a more sensible treatment, and the relief afforded by a full dose of opium attributed to it. “Perhaps it was the English medicine that relieved your pain?” I suggested. “The English medicine is good, but I have had no pain since they burned me,” he repeated. Great is Faith! How many cures may have resulted from the faith excited by a red-hot nail, without the aid of opium! At the same time English medicines are highly valued, especially those which have a prompt and visible effect, and there is no fear of their being too nasty. I gave a baby girl, about a year old, a dose of castor oil. She smiled and licked her lips; perhaps it was no more unpleasant than native butter.

One of our camels fell lame. My clerk thought it had stepped on a thorn, but the native opinion was that it had smelled the dung of a hyaena.

A bundle of the knuckle bones of a sheep are hung up in the tent with the object of assisting the healthy growth of the baby, and dog’s teeth are tied round its neck to insure the regular succession of its own.

The cure for a headache is a string bound tightly round the head, and amulets are generally included.

My junior clerk having been stung by a scorpion, was induced by the severe pain, in the absence of other help, to trust to native ministrations. His head (which has abundant curly hair) they did with butter anoint, even with the malodorous “samin,” and gave him copiously of the same to drink. The root of a certain tree was bound round his wrist and an amulet round his elbow. I do not know which of these four remedies effected the cure; a good drink of “samin” would certainly have an effect in the right direction.

The Exhibit at Shepherd’s Bush of “charms” and magical objects, recently in use in England, indicates a mental level no whit higher than that of my brown people. And yet with what contempt would these English wearers of amulets and dried mole’s feet have regarded the “heathen niggers.” And can we say much more for the large numbers of half-educated people who do not like to spill the salt, and generally bow to the new moon, because “there might be something in it,” who refuse to believe what is strange to them, no matter what the evidence, though believing many things on no true evidence at all?

Religion and superstition having occupied so much of our attention, I seem to lack a sense of proportion in devoting but a short space to the more real matter of morality. Brevity is, however, excused by the fact that all description of men’s ways of life is necessarily an exposition of their moral state.

These northern tribes, isolated in the deserts, possess the primitive, yet most advanced, virtue of strict honesty. During the winter, when rain has fallen upon certain favoured spots and most of the population has migrated to them, one frequently comes across small trees bearing bundles of matting, boards, and sticks, the materials of a tent-house. The owner has left the country for the time the grazing will last, and, not wishing to take all his house with him, merely puts the materials out of the reach of the goats, secure in finding them untouched, not even borrowed, on his return two or three months later; this too in a country where even a bit of old sacking is a thing of value.

CHAPTER IV
THE DAILY LIFE OF THE PEOPLE

At first sight, the country seems to be one from which no human being could extract the barest subsistence. The usual explanation, that the natives live by stealing, did not help me to an understanding, as that is no more an economic possibility than the story of the two old women who lived by taking in each other’s washing. The fact is, the Sudan sheep, goats and camels, have a marvellous tenacity of life, and on their sufferings the native exists. I once had acquaintance with a British donkey to whom corn was given on a piece of stiff brown paper, to prevent waste. When the corn was done, the donkey proceeded to eat the brown paper before going to his desert of thistles. What luxury a diet of brown paper and thistles would be to a Sudan goat! After nibbling dry sticks all day in the desert, they come and eat resinous shavings from my workshops, or pick up single grains of corn from the sand where our camels have been fed, shewing that a day’s feeding leaves them ravenous beyond all the British donkey’s idea of hunger.

My particular village is richer than most places on the coast in possessing a few square miles of scattered acacias which bear a few little leaves when all else fails. There are some salt woody plants too (Arabic, hamid = sour) and some low trees (“Asal” or “adlîb”) which are a vivid green all the year round, the latter of which, however, all animals, except camels, refuse.

The goats spend much of their day on their hind-legs, supporting themselves with their fore-legs on the lower branches of the acacias while reaching as high as their necks will stretch to nibble the little leaves from among the inch-long and needle-sharp thorns. I have even seen goats standing with all four feet on boughs several feet above the ground. This is a fairly uncomfortable way of living, indeed I should think the most diligent browsing, and the most callous disregard of the contact of lips and tongue with thorns, would scarcely keep a healthy goat’s stomach full. But it is better than the alternative, the hurried pacing with short stops just long enough to eat the single blades of dry grass, which is the only food should the locusts come down and clear every leaf off the acacias. I speak glibly of single blades of dry grass, but I am far too optimistic in my terms. A scrap of woody salt herb, or a bit of grass-stick, something like slender bamboo, is all that is visible to the human eye. For some months they graze on hope, air and dust, and are given a very minute ration of “dûra” corn on their return home in the afternoon. (This dûra, Sorghum vulgare, is called darri seed at home, and is used only for fowls I believe.) Why is the camel the only type of endurance? Surely the goat is his equal? As for drinking, goats are not watered oftener than camels, and in both cases water too salt and filthy for human beings is good enough for them.

Plate XIV

Figs. 26 and 27. Water carriers. Three to five full skins are slung over a wooden saddle, the odd one balanced on the top

In the winter and spring, if it rain, things are better; a little thin grass appears, single blades which last only a week or two, and the grey-brown tufts of sticks, which are the remains of last year’s grass hummocks, put forth scanty leaves and long wiry stems, a little less dry than those they spring from. The sour “hamid” becomes brilliant and luxuriant, and the acacias more leafy than usual. The beds of the torrents, which contain water only for a short time immediately after rain, become in some places almost full of grass, though at the best there is always much more sand and gravel than vegetation to be seen, except in the most favoured spots.

A large number of annuals of the clover tribe appear in some places, for instance in the valleys of the raised coral ground of Rawaya peninsula; in consequence, after it has rained, there is a small exodus from our village, and boats are employed to convey families, tents and animals across the bay, to stay there so long as the water supply will last.

It is astonishing that the acacias and “hamid” can struggle through the climatic conditions and the incessant persecution of the animals. Think of their young trees wholly at the mercy of the famishing goats, who every year eat even the hamid nearly to bare sticks. The women again beat the trees to obtain the leaves which are out of reach of the animals, and collect particularly the flowers and green seed pods in this way. Somehow the acacia still struggles on, producing leaves and flowers even after a rainless winter. The hamid seems to be able to live on dew, for it puts forth new shoots and becomes green in the spring independently of rain.

Very few natives are so tied down to any village as to be dependent on a local rainfall. If rain is seen to fall for an hour or so in any direction for several days in succession, they have only to make a bundle of their tent and cooking-pot and be off to the favoured spot. Even beyond the limits of their tribal districts the whole desert is home; there are no fixtures in it other than the wells. Inland there are no permanent villages; indeed, in the north country, it is rare to see more than two or three tents together. Even in the fixed villages of the coast and the considerable suburbs of Suakin about Shâta, the majority of the habitations are tents, and most of their owners are there only for part of the year to buy corn until the rain comes again[27].

Every year my men have leave to go, one or two at a time, to visit their relatives. A hundred miles’ journey to search for persons whose whereabouts he knows extremely vaguely, and who are continually moving, is nothing to the native, even though he may do all, or nearly all, afoot. Only once has a man come back to report that he had tramped all his three weeks’ leave away without coming across those he sought. Not family affection only prompts these visits, though I believe that feeling is strong in most cases. They desire to drink milk, as they put it, rightly believing that a diet of rice and dûra needs the addition of milk for a month or two in the year if health is to be preserved. This is especially the case with the men in my employ who are often either those who possess few animals or who have made over their flocks to relatives.

This desert is a great camel-breeding area. For travel or military purposes the camel bred in Egypt and fed on juicy clover is obviously useless, so, every spring, representatives of the Coast Guards and Slavery Repression Department come down from Egypt to buy. As a good camel is worth £12 to £18 the man who has a couple to sell is sure of enough money for himself and his family to live on for a year. The milk of the females is a source of food.

An article made in considerable quantities in the country is butter, so called, or samin to give it its native name. It is a whitish liquid with a powerful cheesy smell, repulsive to the European. The native regards it as one of the necessities of life; I have known sailors leaving for a week’s voyage to turn up next day with “we forgot our samin” as their excuse for returning. This is, to their minds, as good a reason as if they had forgotten the rice, the water, and the matches as well[28].

The nomads’ tents are illustrated opposite the next page. Externally they are made of palm-leaf matting[29], in colour as well as in shape suggesting haycocks. The sheets of this material are stretched over long, bent sticks and fastened together with wooden skewers. The doorway of the tent is on the less steeply-sloping side and though only two or three feet high is partly curtained with a piece of sacking or other cloth. They are invariably built with their backs to the north, that is, against the prevailing wind. This is the case even in the summer, when to be out of the wind is torture to the European. If the wind changes to the south, the door is closed up and the wall propped up a little on the north side. In all, except the poorest, the house is divided into two parts, even though the whole space is generally only about 10 feet square. The larger division is formed by the erection of a kind of second tent of goat’s hair cloth within that of matting. This is entirely closed in by a curtain from the low space by the doorway where the cooking is done, and where visitors sit on their heels.

The inner compartment is really a sort of four-poster family bed, the bed and bedding consisting of some boards arranged as a flooring a few inches above the ground, on which is spread a mat made of the split midribs of palm-leaves placed parallel to each other and tied together with thin strips of leather. This is known as the “serîr,” a word which in Egypt denotes a bedstead. For bedding there is perhaps a hard leather pillow, or a piece of rough log will serve this purpose. I have seen odd ends of squared poles thrown away from some carpenter’s shop used thus, for sharp angles in the pillow are not regarded by men whose idea of comfort is a plank bed minus blankets.

If a regular bedstead be part of the furniture of a town house, it is an “angarîb” made of cords stretched over a frame. This, if large and well made, is very comfortable, judged even by European standards.

Of the other objects to be seen in the house the most conspicuous is the master’s shield, with dagger belt and sword, and the most essential is a large water jar. To one of the upright sticks supporting the tent are hung various utensils containing the family larder, e.g., the bowls and skins of milk (which is generally sour and evil smelling). The milk bowls are curious, being either closely woven, water-tight baskets of palm-leaf, gourds[30], or bottles hollowed out of solid blocks of hard wood. Some of these latter are great works of art, being perfectly round and nearly as thin as porcelain vessels, though cut out of a dark red wood entirely by the unaided hand. The practical advantages of enamelled iron ware appeal to the natives; the brass cooking pots of antique design, such as shewn in [Fig. 50] on Plate XXIII, and the fellows of which may be seen at Pompeii, are being replaced by this prosaic material. For cups, empty meat tins, cleaned and the edges straightened, are most commonly used if an European lives near. A stock of samin butter may be kept in a four-gallon paraffin tin.

Plate XV

Fig. 28. Tents on the edge of Yemêna Oasis

Of all the kindly fruits of the earth the onion is the greatest boon to us desert dwellers. Its portability and keeping qualities enable it to arrive fresh and wholesome even at this end-of-the-world village, and after weeks of rice and dûra diet the value of a dish flavoured with onions is immense. It is the only vegetable ever used, water-melons being the only fruit, and those but rarely seen even in the winter.

Smoking is rather rare, chewing universal. Pipes or “hubble-bubbles” I have not seen except in the hands of Egyptians or Arabians, the tobacco being burnt by natives in the end of a piece of sheep’s marrow-bone, or as cigarettes. All love to chew a kind of brown snuff which seems to be a great solace during work and in the intervals of pearl diving.

Tea is taken after every meal and oftener. A half-pint teapot suffices for half a dozen men as it is sipped, saturated with sugar, from tiny glass tumblers. Its flavour, poor to begin with, is utterly spoiled by the brackish water and of course by the excess of sugar.

Coffee is not so much used in our village, though in the South I was told by a resident Egyptian official, “These people do not complain if they have no food. They are used to that, but if they have no coffee they become as though mad.” Coffee is made in the following manner:—Glowing charcoal is placed in a thick wooden bowl (a) of [Fig. 31], the “beans[31]” laid upon it, and the whole shaken occasionally to keep the charcoal alight and yet prevent burning. When roasted, the berries are pounded in a wooden mortar (b) with a stone pestle (c). The wooden case and its cover (d), like the rest, is cut out of solid wood and contains the fragile earthenware coffee pot. The coffee is boiled in this until it froths up, when the pot is removed until it subsides, when it is replaced on the fire and removed until it has frothed up three times. After it has been allowed to settle for a minute or two it is ready to sip[32].

Incense is used, not only during religious performances, but also for scenting the clothes and body. The man or woman desiring this luxury squats over a smouldering censer, which he covers with the clothes he is wearing, so that all the smoke is collected within them.

Some form of citron oil is used very extensively as a scent, indeed so much so that the odour of it seems characteristic of natives. Possibly some of its favour is due to its usefulness in keeping off mosquitoes.

Except for the liberal anointing of the hair with mutton fat, the natives are very cleanly in their persons, and quite free from vermin. The sailor population is so much in the sea as well as on it that they could hardly be dirty; but I believe all natives will wash when they can. Inland, I am informed, things are very different, but there the preciousness of water is an all sufficient excuse. It is one recognised by their religion, which permits dry sand to be used for water in the ablutions necessary before prayer in the desert.

Plate XVI

Fig. 29. Goats feeding on thorn bushes

Fig. 30. Milk bowls, plaited and wooden, gourd and baskets

Fig. 31. A coffee set, and some women’s rings

Plate XVII

Fig. 32. Arabian sword dance