Chapter XV

“As sultry breezes blown o’er poppy fields,

Or as meanders Lethe’s sleepy stream,

So dreaming music comes in fainting notes,

And brings forgetfulness—that god-like joy.”

* * * * *

EL FASHER.

A blind sentinel. — Invitation to the palace. — Description of our quarters there. — Population. — The painted chamber. — Hassan Pacha. — Curaçoa and concert.

EL FASHER, or Tendelty, stands on the western bank of the Wady Tendelty, in an angle formed by the junction of the latter with the far more considerable Wady el Kho. The Tendelty partakes more of the character of an inlet than of an independent wady, and has no current of its own; it is filled, during the rains, by the overflow from the Kho, and a dam constructed near the point of junction retains the water for a considerable time; the wells which supply the town are all sunk in its bed. The town consists almost entirely of “tuckles,” and of box-shaped straw sheds, similar to those described at Karnac. On the eastern side of the Tendelty, stands the palace of the late Sultan; a group of mud huts, and a few “tuckles,” surrounded by a mud wall about twenty feet high. In the neighbourhood of the palace are several mud huts formerly occupied by the officials and nobles of the court, and all of the poorest and meanest possible description. On the town side, directly opposite the palace, the Egyptians have constructed a square fort with bank and trench; one gun is posted on each angle to command the town, and four sentries march up and down the top of the bank; one on each side of the square.

On our arrival, we passed the palace on our left, and, crossing over to the town, not without considerable danger of tumbling down some of the numerous wells, which are scattered about in every direction in the wady, we halted the caravan near the fort and commenced, amidst the growling of the camels, to unload, and prepared to pitch the tents. These suspicious proceedings on our part were, however, not unobserved; the sentry pacing about on the bank saw us, and was evidently sorely puzzled in his mind. He came to a dead stop in the middle of his march, and grounded his “Remington”; then as a mariner on the pier at Ramsgate lifts his hand to his eyes and gazes over the ocean to see if a ship be in sight, so he raised his hand to his tarboosh to shelter his eyes from the sun, and gazed at us earnestly, anxiously and long. We were only a hundred yards off, and the truth at length dawned upon him; it was a caravan, and its people were pitching their tents. His mind was made up at once, action was taken, and the garrison was alarmed. By the time the tents were all pitched and the beds made, a file of soldiers, headed by an officer, came into our camp with orders that we must move, as our presence there might afford cover for an attack on the fort from the town.

In the nature of things it is impossible to imagine that such a request could be heard by Mohommed Effendi, lieutenant of the troops, without producing material effect on the equanimity of the mind of that irascible little gentleman. He went raving mad on the spot. Had he not been restrained, I am thoroughly persuaded that he would, there and then, have torn the officer and whole file of soldiers into little bits. That poor officer was pale with dread; panic was about to seize his men which, spreading to the garrison, might have had disastrous results, and left us helpless and unprotected in the heart of Darfoor, where we might have fallen victims to our policy of aggression and imperialism. We saw the danger, and peremptorily told Mohommed Effendi to shut up. We asked the officer into our tent, and gave him a cup of coffee as a restorative. By slow, but perceptible degrees, from deadly pale to sickly yellow, from sickly yellow to whitey-brown, his face assumed its normal hue, a smile of relief parted his lips, and he placed between them one of our Hamburg cigars. We now inquired what the matter was, and what all the row was about?

“Orders had been issued that no tents were to be pitched within a certain distance of the fort, and he had come to our camp to tell us so.”

This seemed to us reasonable enough, but we asked him why intimation was not sent to us before the tents were all pitched?

“The vigilant sentry on the bank had been staring at us for at least half-an-hour, leaning on his rifle, with his hand over his eyes sheltering them from the sun; why not have let us know at once?”

“That soldier was nearly blind with ophthalmia.”

“Then why not send him into our camp? There was a ‘hakeem’ with us who would be glad to treat him.”

The bright smile on the face of the warrior grew brighter still; it seemed we were again to be saved by our all powerful medicine man.

“He would go and see what could be done.”

During his absence a message came from the palace begging us to take up our quarters there while we were in El Fasher. This we decided at once to do, and leaving orders for the tents to be struck, we walked over, and never saw the officer again or heard what decision was come to in the fort.

The message had come from Colonel Mason, an American officer, attached to the staff at Cairo, who had accompanied, with Colonel Purdey, another American officer, the Egyptian army of occupation; the latter officer was away in Wadai, and it was not our pleasure to meet him. Colonel Mason was an old friend whom more than one member of our expedition, including myself, had known in Cairo and on the Nile in 1871-72. The meeting was a joyous—almost a rapturous one. It is pleasant to meet an old friend in a weary land remote from home. There are a thousand questions to ask—a thousand to answer; adventures to listen to—adventures to tell, many friends to inquire after, and many inquiries after friends to reply to. After a time our friend offered to show us the beauties of the palace, and to find quarters for us. Two of the houses, or rooms, one on each side of the main entrance, had been fitted up by Colonels Mason and Purdey for their own use; the height of the walls had been increased by timber-work, and covered with matting; the mud floor had been boarded with Norway pine planks, which had found their way through England to Cairo, thence by river and desert to Khartoom, and finally on the backs of camels through Khordofân to El Fasher where, on arrival, they had probably cost the Egyptian taxpayer about five pounds a yard run. The next room on the left, in which a large table had been rudely constructed was the dining-room, and at the back of an adjacent yard was the kitchen with grates, &c. already fixed. All these improvements had, of course, been made since the arrival of the Egyptians. Further to the back, in a court by itself, a one-roomed house with a doorway, and no window or light-hole, was assigned to me. This room, I was told, had been the chief dwelling of the chief wife of the late Sultan; it was as well built as any house in the group; the walls were thick, and the roof was formed by entire trees laid across, thickly interlaced with straw, and utterly impervious to sun and rain. The floor was hard and clean, and in the darkest corner was a mud elevation on which I placed my camp bedstead. Colonel Mason, in introducing me to these comfortable quarters, expressed for me his profound regret that the former occupant was no longer there. I appreciated his kindness and his politeness, but could not conscientiously confess to any participation in the regret.

Our camp furniture had now arrived, and soon the apartment assumed quite a comfortable appearance. The bath was placed in the centre of the room, filled with water cool and fresh from the wells. While enjoying its luxuries, and reading letters and papers from England, eight weeks old, but whose news was as delightful and fresh to me as the water, the lieutenant of engineers gave a grunt in the doorway, in lieu of knocking at the door, and came in to impart such information concerning the population of El Fasher, as he had been able to glean in the last hour or two:—

Natives, 1,700.

Es Sâyadeeyeh, 300.

Es Sâbah, 250.

El Melhah, 400.

Total population, 55,000.

The study of numbers with the mazes of addition, multiplication, &c., has always afforded me much delight from my youth up even till now; here, however, was a simple sum in addition which caused me more perplexity and bewilderment than any example in the first four rules which had previously come under my notice. I added up, in my bath, the natives with the three Arab tribes of settlers, but was utterly unable to make the amount agree with what the late Mr. Joseph Hume used to call the “tottle of the whole.” I added it up again, first forwards and backwards, then backwards and forwards, and finally laid it down to await Mohommed Effendi’s explanation, and looked at the walls of my chamber.

They were decorated, or disfigured; four colours were used in the process, brick red, yellow ochre, black, and white; weird cabalistic shapes, a black circle with a red patch in the centre, a white square with a yellow patch in the centre, a straightish line in red over them both, a red triangle, three waved lines in black, yellow and red; a crooked line, then a square, then a triangle, then a circle, then more lines, then all slightly varied over again; no taste, no beauty, no symmetry, only grim, barbaric hideousness; a savage, angering, geometrical, party-coloured nightmare. Like this my room was painted on four walls from roof to ground. Furawee art!

Having finished my bathing, and toileted myself to my satisfaction, I sought Mohommed Effendi and the explanation. The 55,000 related to the province of El Fasher, which included villages distant twenty or thirty miles in every direction, and which is in area about as large as our county of Devonshire. All subsequent inquiries have failed to alter materially the lieutenant’s statistics; some accounts make the population of the town as high as three thousand, but the majority and the best agree more nearly with his two thousand six hundred and fifty.

I was just sitting down to comfortably converse with my newly-discovered old friend, when a message came to the palace begging us to come and dine with Hassan Pasha, governor of Darfoor since the departure of Ismael Pacha Ayoob. To go was not pleasant, to refuse was not polite, so away we all marched. Hassan Pacha lived close to the fort, in a well- built house recently constructed; he received us in his audience room, which was furnished with a deal table and chairs in the European style. Dinner was not ready, but on the table were several green and yellow glass decanters, containing curaçoa, “Mousseline des Alpes,” and other liqueurs of which we were requested to partake.

The Korân forbids the use of wine, but enlightened and thirsty Mohommedans do not consider that the prohibition necessarily extends to spirits, and much less to curaçoa, “Mousseline des Alpes,” and Angostura bitters, which are, of course, not mentioned in that sacred book at all.

Hassan Pacha at once commenced the usual inquiries concerning the state of our healths, and that of our relations. This lasted about an hour, at the expiration of which time he had arrived at our remote and problematical cousins, when two soldiers entered to lay the cloth, and to place round the three-pronged iron forks, black-handled knives, and blue willow-pattern cracked soup-plates, reserved for the use of European guests. All this done, and a plate of bay salt and a pot of black pepper placed on the table, a fine sheep, roasted whole, emitting a grateful odour not surpassed by that which emanates from the grating of any London eating-house, was carried in on a large tray by four stalwart soldiers, who walked slowly, and mutually and kindly advised each other as they proceeded to be very careful what they were about. The Pacha took his place, and begged us to take ours; carving knife or fork there was none, and each helped himself to the part he liked best with his own black handled knife and three-pronged iron fork.

Here we were in the desert, two thousand miles distant from Cairo and civilisation, and, with the exception of so much of the latter commodity as sat at the table and mangled the sheep, no civilisation anywhere nearer. Probably the last thing we should have thought of as likely to be near to afford us delight and surprise was a first-class band of music. I have used the words “delight” and “surprise,” but not these or any other two words can mean the feeling with which I listened spelled to the strains of the overture of Verdi’s latest opera, _Aïda_, which the military band commenced to play just outside the door of the Pacha’s house. I had seen the opera before in Cairo, and have seen it since in Naples and in London, but not all the rich magnificence of San Carlo, or “Her Majesty’s,” and not the lustrous eyes and glorious song of Patti, produced anything like the sublimity of that music in the desert in the middle of barbarism, where other music there was none but droning boys, squeaking pipes, and monotonous tom-toms. The overture finished, we heartily thanked the Pacha for his thoughtfulness;—the kind old man was evidently pleased with our pleasure.

The sheep being finished with, the four soldiers made their appearance, and, as before, advising each other to be very careful, lifted the tray and remains bodily over our heads. Another tray was brought containing a mass of “duchn,” which, having been boiled in a sheep-skin, nearly retained the form of a sheep; a large bowl of brown sugar was emptied by one of the soldiers over the pudding, and iron spoons were served round to each of us. The duchn, in consistency and taste, was like blanc mange, but not having been flavoured with any essence, was not palatable, even with the brown sugar.

New music and more liqueurs, and “God save the Queen” brought the evening to a close, and we walked over to the palace, pleased with the Pasha and with his curaçoa and concert; and, notwithstanding the dream- inspiring memories of boiled “duchn” and music, and the staring talismanic horrors on the walls of my chamber, I slept dreamlessly, superbly and well.

[Decoration]