Title: Wanderings in Three Continents
Author: Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Language: English
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WANDERINGS IN

THREE CONTINENTS



[Frontispiece:

Allen & Co. Ph. Sc.

Richard F. Burton

الحاج عباده
]



WANDERINGS IN

THREE CONTINENTS



BY THE LATE

CAPTAIN SIR RICHARD F. BURTON, K.C.M.G.


EDITED, WITH A PREFACE, BY W. H. WILKINS, M.A., F.S.A. EDITOR OF THE
BURTON MSS. AND AUTHOR OF “THE ROMANCE OF ISABEL LADY BURTON,” ETC.


WITH A PHOTOGRAVURE PORTRAIT AND

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. D. MᶜCORMICK



[Illustration:  Printer’s Logo]



London: HUTCHINSON & CO

Paternoster Row [Illustration: small graphics]    1901



CONTENTS


                                     PAGE

PREFACE                               vii


EL MEDINAH AND MECCAH                   1

   I――THE VISITATION OF EL MEDINAH      3

  II――THE PILGRIMAGE TO MECCAH         35


A RIDE TO HARAR                        71


TO THE HEART OF AFRICA                 99

   I――THE JOURNEY                     101

  II――THE LAKE REGIONS                127


THE CITY OF THE MORMONS               147

   I――THE JOURNEY                     149

  II――THE CITY AND ITS PROPHET        172


A MISSION TO DAHOMÉ                   197


A TRIP UP THE CONGO                   225


THE INTERIOR OF BRAZIL                259


THROUGH SYRIA TO PALMYRA              283



PREFACE


Burton was a many-sided man. The following volume of posthumous essays
reveals him in the aspect in which he was best known to the world――as
a traveller and explorer. It will add comparatively little to the
knowledge of the Burton student; to the general reader it will contain
much that is new, for though Burton wrote and published many bulky
volumes of travel in years gone by, none of them assumed a popular
form, and it may be doubted if any, save his “Pilgrimage to Meccah and
El Medinah,” reached the outer circle of the great reading public.
Most of his books are now out of copyright, many are out of print, and
few are easily obtainable. This volume, therefore, will supply a need,
in that it gives in a popular form a consensus of his most important
travels in three continents. It will also, I hope, remind his
countrymen of the achievements of this remarkable man, and bring home
to many a deeper sense of what we have lost in him. This was the view
taken by Lady Burton, who had hoped to incorporate these essays in her
memorial edition of “The Labours and Wisdom of Sir Richard Burton,” a
work cut short by her death. Upon me, therefore, has devolved the task
of editing them and preparing them for publication. They form the
second volume of the Burton MSS. which have been published since Lady
Burton’s death, and I am the more encouraged to give them to the world
by the success which attended the previous volume, “The Jew, the
Gypsy, and El Islam.” The reception of this book, though published
under obvious difficulties, and eight years after the author’s death,
showed that the interest in the great traveller’s work was in no
degree abated.

The essays that follow were all prepared by Burton himself, and most
of them were read by him in the form of lectures before sundry
geographical and scientific societies at different times. For
instance, the description of his expeditions to El Medinah, Meccah,
Harar, and Dahomé were delivered by him as a course of four lectures
before the Emperor and Empress of Brazil at Rio in 1866. The account
of his Central African expedition was read, I believe, at Bath, the
one on Damascus and Palmyra at Edinburgh, the one on the Mormons in
London. I have deleted the local and topical allusions, which arose
from the circumstances under which they were delivered; I have filled
in a word or two where the notes were too sketchy; but that is all.
Otherwise, the manuscript is reproduced exactly as it left the
author’s hands. In his own words, simply and unaffectedly, Burton here
gives an epitome of his principal travels in three continents.

In this condensed form the essays necessarily lose something. On the
other hand, they gain much. Careful and accurate as all Burton’s books
of travel were, his passion for detail sometimes led him into
tediousness. He crammed his notebooks so full that he had occasionally
a difficulty in digesting the large mass of information he had
acquired. He was addicted to excessive annotation. For instance, in
his book on the Mormons, the large text occupied on some pages only
three lines, the rest of the page being broken up by closely printed
notes, extracts from Mormon books and sermons, which can only be
considered as superfluous. Extraneous matter of this kind has been
omitted here, and the result is a clear gain to the narrative.

The book covers the period from 1853 to 1870, the most active years of
Burton’s active life. It opens most fitly with an account of his
pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah. This famous expedition was the
turning-point of Burton’s career; in a sense it may be said to have
been the beginning of it. Though he had already shown much promise and
some performance, and was known to many in India as a linguist,
soldier, writer, and man of unusual ability, he was yet unknown to the
greater world outside. But after his pilgrimage to Meccah his fame
became world-wide and enduring. I say this in no spirit of
exaggeration. When all that Burton wrote and wrought has passed away
into that limbo of forgetfulness which awaits the labours of even the
most distinguished among us, this at least will be remembered to his
honour, that he was the first Englishman to penetrate to the Holy of
Holies at Meccah. I write the first Englishman advisedly. Burckhardt,
a Swiss explorer, had gone part of the way before him, and since his
day one or two have the made the pilgrimage, but, though it was a
sufficiently difficult task when they performed it, it was much more
difficult when Burton did it in 1853. He was not a man to do things by
halves. He made the pilgrimage thoroughly, living absolutely the life
of the Moslems, wearing their clothes, eating their food, joining in
their prayers, sacrifices, and ritual, and speaking their language; he
did all this, carrying his life in his hand, for one false step, one
prayer unsaid, one trifling item of the shibboleth omitted, and the
dog of an infidel who had dared to profane the sanctuary of the
Prophet would have been found out, and his bones would have whitened
the desert sand. Not that Burton went to profane the tomb of the
Prophet. Far from it. From his early manhood he had been a sympathetic
student of the higher aspects of El Islam. He had come to see that in
it, above and beyond all the corruptions and abuses which clung around
the Saving Faith, there existed an occult force which had made it a
power among men. Not only in his achievement, but in the way he did
it, Burton manifested those great qualities which have made the
English race what it is; he showed tenacity, pluck, and strength of
purpose, and, withal, he accomplished his purpose unobtrusively. None
knew until he came back how great a task he had achieved.

It was the same with all that Burton undertook. He did his work
thoroughly, and he did it without any beating of drums or blaring of
trumpets. “Deeds, not words,” was his rule; “Honour, not honours,” his
motto. His expedition to Harar the following year was almost as
arduous as his pilgrimage to Meccah. No European had ever before
passed the gates of the city in Somaliland. But Burton passed them,
and stayed in Harar some days. Again, his long and dangerous
expedition into Central Africa, which occupied nearly three years,
showed in a marvellous manner his resource, his courage, and his
powers of endurance. On the unfortunate controversy which afterwards
arose between himself and Speke it is not necessary to enter here; but
this much, at least, may be said. In the discovery of Lake Tanganyika
Burton was the pioneer; his was the brain which planned and commanded
the expedition, and carried it through to a successful issue. It was
he who first achieved with inadequate means and insufficient escort
what Livingstone, Cameron, Speke, Grant, Baker, and Stanley achieved
later.

Of the remaining essays there is little to be said. Burton’s
description of the Mormons in Great Salt Lake City printed here is, I
think, very much better than his bulky book on the same subject, “The
City of the Saints.” In the larger work Burton ventured on prophecy,
always unsafe, and predicted a great future for Mormondom and
polygamy, a prediction which has not so far been verified by events.
On the other hand, this account of his mission to Dahomé certainly
loses by excessive condensation. “The Trip up the Congo” and “The
Interior of Brazil” are lightning sketches of expeditions which
involved much preparation and trouble to carry them through. “Palmyra”
is a formal survey rather than an account of an expedition. It is
interesting, as it marks an epoch in (one had almost written, the end
of) Burton’s active life. In 1870 he was suddenly recalled from
Damascus by Lord Granville, and his career was broken.

After his appointment to the post of Consul at Trieste he went on some
expeditions, notably to Midian, but they were tame indeed compared
with those to Meccah, Harar, and Central Africa. At Trieste the
eagle’s wings were clipped, and the man who had great energy and
ability, a knowledge of more than a score of languages, and an
unrivalled experience of Eastern life and literature, was suffered to
drag out eighteen years in the obscurity of a second-rate seaport
town. True, it was not all lost time, for ample leisure was given him
at Trieste for his literary labours. If he had been thrown in a more
active sphere, his great masterpiece, “Alf Laylah Wa Laylah” (“The
Arabian Nights”) might never have seen the light.

But when all is said and done, the most fruitful years of Burton’s
career, the richest in promise and performance, were those that began
with the pilgrimage to Meccah and ended with his recall from Damascus.
They were the very heart of his life: they are the years covered by
this book.

                                                  W. H. WILKINS.
     _October 1901._



_EL MEDINAH AND MECCAH_

1853



I

_THE VISITATION OF EL MEDINAH_


The Moslem’s pilgrimage is a familiar word to the Christian’s ear, yet
how few are acquainted with the nature or the signification of the
rite! Unto the present day, learned men――even those who make a
pretence to some knowledge of the East――still confound Meccah, the
birthplace, with El Medinah, the burial-place, of Mohammed, the Arab
law-giver. “The Prophet’s tomb at Meccah” is a mistake which even the
best-informed of our journals do not disdain to make.

Before, however, entering upon the journey which procured for me the
title “haji,” it is necessary for me to dispose of a few preliminaries
which must savour of the personal. The first question that suggests
itself is, “What course of study enabled an Englishman to pass
unsuspected through the Moslem’s exclusive and jealously guarded Holy
Land?”

I must premise that in the matter of assuming an Oriental nationality,
Nature was somewhat propitious to me. Golden locks and blue eyes,
however _per se_ desirable, would have been sad obstacles to progress
in swarthy Arabia. And to what Nature had begun, art contributed by
long years of laborious occupation.

Finding Oxford, with its Greek and Latin, its mysteries of δε and γαρ,
and its theology and mathematics, exceedingly monotonous, I shipped
myself for India and entered life in the 18th Sepoy Regiment of the
Bombay Presidency. With sundry intervals of travel, my career between
1843 and 1849 was spent in Scinde. This newly conquered province was
very Mohammedan, and the conquerors were compelled, during the work of
organisation, to see more of the conquered than is usual in England’s
East Indian possession. Sir Charles Napier, of gallant memory, our
Governor and Commander-in-Chief, honoured me with a staff appointment,
and humoured my whim by allowing me to wander about the new land as a
canal engineer employed upon its intricate canal system. My days and
nights were thus spent among the people, and within five years I was
enabled to pass examinations in six Eastern languages.

In 1849 (March 30th-September 5th) an obstinate rheumatic ophthalmia,
the result of overwork, sent me back to Europe, where nearly three
years were passed before I was pronounced cured. Then, thoroughly
tired of civilisation and living “dully sluggardised at home,” and
pining for the breath of the desert and the music of the date-palm, I
volunteered in the autumn of 1852 to explore the great waste of
Eastern and Central Arabia――that huge white blot which still disgraces
our best maps. But the Court of Directors of the then Honourable East
India Company, with their mild and amiable chairman, after
deliberation, stoutly refused. They saw in me only another victim,
like Stoddard Connolly and the brave brothers Wyburd, rushing on his
own destruction and leaving behind him friends and family to trouble
with their requisitions the peace and quiet of the India House.

What remained to me but to prove that what might imperil others was to
me safe? Supplied with the sinews of travel by the Royal Geographical
Society, curious to see what men are mostly content to hear of
only――namely, Moslem inner life in a purely Mohammedan land――and
longing to set foot within the mysterious Meccah which no vacation
tourist had ever yet measured, sketched, photographed, and described,
I resolved, _coûte qu’il coûte_, to make the attempt in my old
character of a dervish. The safest as well as the most interesting
time would be during the pilgrimage season.

The Moslem’s hajj, or pilgrimage, means, I must premise, “aspiration,”
and expresses man’s conviction that he is but a wayfarer on earth
wending towards a nobler world. This explains the general belief of
the men in sandaled shoon that the greater their hardships, the sorer
to travel the road to Jordan, the higher will be their reward in
heaven. The pilgrim is urged by the voice of his soul――“O thou,
toiling so fiercely for worldly pleasure and for transitory profit,
wilt thou endure nothing to win a more lasting boon?” Hence it is that
pilgrimage is common to all ancient faiths. The Sabæans, or old
Arabians, visited the Pyramids as the sepulchres of Seth and his son
Sabi, the founder of their sect. The classical philosophers wandered
through the Valley of the Nile. The Jews annually went up to
Jerusalem. The Tartar Buddhists still journey to distant Lamaserais,
and the Hindus to Egypt, to Tibet, to Gaya, on the Ganges, and to the
inhospitable Caucasus. The spirit of pilgrimage animated mediæval
Europe, and a learned Jesuit traveller considers the processions of
the Roman Catholic Church modern vestiges of the olden rite.

El Islam――meaning the covenant in virtue of which men earn eternal
life by good works in this world――requires of all its votaries daily
ablution and prayer, almsgiving on certain occasions, one month’s
yearly fast, and at least one pilgrimage to the House of Allah at
Meccah and the mountain of Ararat. This first, and often the single,
visit is called Hajjat el Islam, or pilgrimage of being a Moslem, and
all those subsequently performed are regarded as works of
supererogation. The rite, however, is incumbent only upon those who
possess a sufficiency of health or wealth. El Islam is a creed
remarkable for common sense.

The journey to El Medinah is not called hajj, but ziyarat, meaning a
ceremonial visitation. Thus the difference between worship due to the
Creator and homage rendered to the creature is steadily placed and
kept before the Moslem’s eyes. Some sects――the Wahhabi, or Arabian
Puritans, for instance――even condemn as impious all intercessions
between man and his Maker, especially the prayers at the Prophet’s
grave. The mass, however, of the Mohammedan Church, if such expression
be applicable to a system which repudiates an ecclesiastical body,
considers this visitation a “practice of the faith, and the most
effectual way of drawing near to Allah through the Prophet Mohammed.”

The Moslem’s literature has many a thick volume upon the minutiæ of
pilgrimage and visitation. All four Sumni, or orthodox schools――viz.,
Hunafi, Shafli, Maliki, and Hanbali――differ in unimportant points one
with the other. Usually pilgrims, especially those performing the rite
for the first time, begin with Meccah and end with El Medinah. But
there is no positive command on the subject. In these days pilgrims
from the north countries――Egypt and Syria, Damascus and Bagdad――pass
through the Prophet’s burial-place going to and coming from Meccah,
making a visitation each time. Voyagers from the south――as East
Africa, India, and Java――must often deny themselves, on account of
danger and expense, the spiritual advantages of prayer at Mohammed’s
tomb.

I have often been asked if the pilgrim receives any written proof that
he has performed his pilgrimage. Formerly the Sherif (descendant of
Hasan), or Prince, of Meccah gave a certificate to those who could
afford it, and early in the present century the names of all who paid
the fee were registered by a scribe. All that has passed. But the
ceremonies are so complicated and the localities so peculiar that no
book can thoroughly teach them. The pretended pilgrim would readily be
detected after a short cross-questioning of the real Simon Pure. As
facilities of travel increase, and the rite becomes more popular, no
pilgrim, unless he comes from the edge of the Moslem world, cares to
bind on the green turban which his grandfather affected. Few also
style themselves haji, unless for an especial reason――as an evidence
of reformed life, for instance, or a sign of being a serious person.

Some also have inquired if I was not the first “Christian” who ever
visited the Moslem’s Holy Land. The learned Gibbon asserted――“Our
notions of Meccah must be drawn from the Arabians. As no unbeliever is
permitted to enter the city, our travellers are silent.”[1] But Haji
Yunus (Ludovico di Bartema) performed the pilgrimage in A.D. 1503;
Joseph Pitts, of Exeter, in 1680, Ali Bey el Abbasi (the Catalonian
Badia) in 1807, Haji Mohammed (Giovanni Finati, of Ferrara) in 1811,
and the excellent Swiss traveller Burckhardt in 1814, all passed
safely through the Hejaz, or Holy Land. I mention those only who have
written upon the subject. Those who have not must be far more
numerous. In fact, any man may become a haji by prefacing his
pilgrimage with a solemn and public profession of faith before the
Kazi in Cairo or Damascus; or, simpler still, by applying through his
Consulate to be put under the protection of the Amir el Haji, or
Commander of the Pilgrim Caravan.

If I did anything new, it was this――my pilgrimage was performed as by
one of the people. El Islam theoretically encourages, but practically
despises and distrusts, the burma, or renegade. Such a convert is
allowed to see as little as possible, and is ever suspected of being a
spy. He is carefully watched night and day, and in troublous times he
finds it difficult to travel between Meccah and El Medinah. Far be it
from me to disparage the labours of my predecessors. But Bartema
travelled as a Mameluke in the days when Mamelukes were Christian
slaves, Pitts was a captive carried to the pilgrimage by his Algerine
master, Badia’s political position was known to all the authorities,
Finati was an Albanian soldier, and Burckhardt revealed himself to the
old Pacha Mohammed Ali.

As regards the danger of pilgrimage in the case of the non-Moslem,
little beyond the somewhat extensive chapter of accidents is to be
apprehended by one conversant with Moslem prayers and formulæ, manners
and customs, and who possesses a sufficient guarantee of orthodoxy. It
is, however, absolutely indispensable to be a Mohammedan in externals.
Neither the Koran nor the Sultan enjoins the killing of Hebrew or
Christian intruders; nevertheless, in 1860, a Jew, who refused to
repeat the Creed, was crucified by the Meccan populace, and in the
event of a pilgrim declaring himself to be an infidel the authorities
would be powerless to protect him.

The question of _Cui bono?_――of what good I did to others or to myself
by the adventure――is not so easily answered. My account of El Medinah
is somewhat fuller than that of Burckhardt, whose health was breaking
when he visited it. And our caravan’s route between the Holy Cities
was not the beaten track along the Red Sea, but the little-known
eastern or desert road. Some critics certainly twitted me with having
“turned Turk”; one might turn worse things. For the rest, man is ever
most tempted by the useless and the impossible.

To appear in character upon the scene of action many precautions were
necessary. Egypt in those days was a land of passports and policemen;
the _haute-police_ was not inferior to that of any European country.
By the advice of a brother-officer, Captain Grindley, I assumed the
Eastern dress at my lodgings in London, and my friend accompanied me
as interpreter to Southampton. On April 4th, 1853, a certain Shaykh
Abdullah (to wit, myself) left home in the P. & O. Company’s steamer
_Bengal_, and before the end of the fortnight landed at Alexandria. It
was not exactly pleasant for the said personage to speak broken
English the whole way, and rigorously to refuse himself the pleasure
of addressing the other sex; but under the circumstances it was
necessary.

Fortunately, on board the _Bengal_ was John Larking, a well-known
Alexandrian. He was in my secret, and I was received in his house,
where he gave me a little detached pavilion and treated me as a
munshi, or language-master. My profession among the people was that of
a doctor. The Egyptians are a medico-ridden race; all are more or less
unhealthy, and they could not look upon my phials and pill-boxes
without yearning for their contents. An Indian doctor was a novelty to
them; Franks they despised; but how resist a man who had come so far,
from east and west? Men, women, and children besieged my door, by
which means I could see the people face to face, especially that
portion of which Europeans as a rule know only the worst. Even learned
Alexandrians, after witnessing some of my experiments in mesmerism and
the magic mirror, opined that the stranger was a manner of holy man
gifted with preternatural powers. An old man sent to offer me his
daughter in marriage――my sanctity compelled me to decline the
honour――and a middle-aged lady offered me a hundred piastres (nearly
one pound sterling) to stay at Alexandria and superintend the
restoration of her blind left eye.

After a month pleasantly spent in the little garden of roses, jasmine,
and oleanders, I made in early June a move towards Cairo. The first
thing was to procure a passport; I had neglected, through ignorance,
to bring one from England. It was not without difficulty, involving
much unclean dressing and expenditure of horrible English, that I
obtained from H.B.M.’s Consul at Alexandria a certificate declaring me
to be an Indo-British subject named Abdullah, by profession a doctor,
and, to judge from frequent blanks in the document, not distinguished
by any remarkable conformation of eyes, nose, or cheek. This paper,
duly countersigned by the zabit, or police magistrate, would carry me
anywhere within the Egyptian frontier.

At Alexandria also I provided a few necessaries for the pilgrimage:
item――a change or two of clothing; a substantial leather money belt to
carry my gold in; a little cotton bag for silver and small change,
kept ready for use in the breast pocket; a zemzimiyah, or water-bag of
goatskin; a huge cotton umbrella of Cairene make, brightly yellow,
like an overgrown marigold; a coarse Persian rug, which acted as bed,
table, chair, and oratory; a pea-green box, with red and yellow
flowers, capable of standing falls from a camel twice a day, and
therefore well fitted for a medicine chest; and, lastly, the only
peculiar article――viz., the shroud, without which no one sets out _en
route_ to Meccah. This _memento mori_ is a piece of cotton six feet
long by five broad. It is useful, for instance, when a man is
dangerously sick or wounded; the caravan, of course, cannot wait, and
to loiter behind is destruction. The patient, therefore, is
ceremonially washed, wrapped up in his kafan, partly covered with
sand, and left to his fate. It is hard to think of such an end without
horror; the torturing thirst of a wound, the sun heating the brain to
madness, and, worst of all――for they do not wait for death――the
attacks of the jackal, the vulture, and the ravens of the wilds. This
shroud was duly sprinkled, as is the custom, with the holy water of
the Zemzem well at Meccah. It later came to a bad end amongst the
villainous Somal in Eastern Africa.

Equipped in a dervish’s frock, I took leave of my kind host and set
out, a third-class passenger, upon a steamer facetiously known as the
_Little Asthmatic_. In those days the rail had not invaded Egypt. We
had an unpleasant journey up the Mahmadiyah Canal and the Nile, which
is connected by it with Alexandria. The usual time was thirty hours.
We took three mortal days and nights. We were nearly wrecked at the
then unfinished Barage, we saw nothing of the Pyramids but their tops,
and it was with a real feeling of satisfaction that we moored
alongside of the old tumble-down suburb, Bulak.

My dervishhood was perfectly successful. I happened by chance to touch
the elbow of an Anglo-Indian officer, and he publicly and forcibly
condemned my organs of vision. And I made an acquaintance and a friend
on board. The former was a shawl and cotton merchant, Meyan Khudabaksh
Namdar, of Lahore, who, as the caravanserais were full of pilgrims,
lodged me at his house for a fortnight. The conversations that passed
between us were published two years later in 1855.[2] They clearly
pointed to the mutiny which occurred two years afterwards, and this,
together with my frankness about the Suez Canal,[3] did not tend to
make me a favourite with the then effete Government of India.

My friend was a Turkish trader, named Haji Wali-el-din. He was then a
man about forty-five, of middle stature, with a large round head
closely shaven, a bull neck, limbs sturdy as a Saxon’s, a thin red
beard, and handsome features beaming benevolence. A curious dry humour
he had, delighting in “quizzing,” but in so quiet, quaint, and solemn
a way that before you knew him you could scarce divine his drift. He
presently found for me rooms next his own at the wakalah, or
caravanserai, called Jemeliyah, in the Greek quarter, and I tried to
repay his kindness by counselling him in an unpleasant Consular suit.

When we lived under the same roof, the haji and I became inseparable.
We walked together and dined together, and spent the evening at a
mosque or other place of public pastime. Sometimes we sat among the
dervishes; but they are a dangerous race, travelled and inquisitive.
Meanwhile I continued to practise my profession――the medical――and
devoted myself several hours a day to study in the Azhar Mosque,
sitting under the learned Shaykh Mohammed Ali Attar. The better to
study the “humours,” I also became a grocer and druggist, and my
little shop, a mere hole in the wall, was a perfect gem of Nilotic
groceries. But although I sold my wares under cost price to fair
customers, my chief clients were small boys and girls, who came,
halfpence in hand, to buy sugar and pepper; so one day, determining to
sink the thirty shillings which my stock in trade had stood me, I
locked the wooden shutter that defended my establishment and made it
over to my shaykh.

The haji and I fasted together during the month of Ramazan. That year
it fell in the torrid June, and it always makes the Moslem unhealthy
and unamiable. At the end preparations were to be made for departure
Meccah-wards, and the event was hastened by a convivial _séance_ with
a bacchanalian captain of Albanians, which made the gossips of the
quarter wonder what manner of an Indian doctor had got amongst them.

I was fortunate enough, however, to hire the services of Shaykh Nur, a
quiet East Indian, whose black skin made society suppose him to be my
slave. Never suspecting my nationality till after my return from
Meccah, he behaved honestly enough; but when absolved by pilgrimage
from his past sins, Haji Nur began to rob me so boldly that we were
compelled to part. I also made acquaintance with certain sons of the
Holy Cities――seven men from El Medinah and Meccah――who, after a
begging-trip to Constantinople, were returning to their homes. Having
doctored them and lent them some trifling sums, I was invited by
Shaykh Hamid El Shamman to stay with him at El Medinah, and by the boy
Mohammed El Basyuni to lodge at his mother’s house in Meccah.

They enabled me to collect proper stores for the journey. These
consisted of tea, coffee, loaf sugar, biscuits, oil, vinegar, tobacco,
lanterns, cooking-pots, and a small bell-shaped tent costing twelve
shillings. The provisions were placed in a kafas, or hamper, of palm
sticks, my drugs and dress in a sahharah, or wooden box measuring some
three and a half feet each way, covered with cowskin, and the lid
fitting into the top. And finally, not wishing to travel by the vans
then allotted to the overland passengers, I hired two dromedaries and
their attendant Bedouins, who for the sum of ten shillings each agreed
to carry me across the desert between Cairo and Suez.

At last, after abundant trouble, all was ready. At 3 p.m., July 1st,
1853, my friend Haji Wali embraced me heartily, and so did my poor old
shaykh, who, despite his decrepitude and my objections, insisted upon
accompanying me to the city gate. I will not deny having felt a
tightening of the heart as their honest faces and forms faded in the
distance. All the bystanders ejaculated, “Allah bless thee, Y’all Hajj
(O pilgrim!), and restore thee to thy family and thy friends.”

We rode hard over the stretch of rock and hard clay which has since
yielded to that monumental work, the Suez Canal. There was no _ennui_
upon the road: to the traveller there was an interest in the
wilderness――

     Where love is liberty and Nature law――

unknown to Cape seas and Alpine glaciers and even the boundless
prairie. I felt as if looking once more upon the face of a friend, and
my two Bedouins――though the old traveller described their forefathers
as “folke full of all evylle condiciouns”――were excellent company. At
midnight we halted for a little rest near the Central Station, and
after dark on the next evening I passed through the tumble-down
gateway of Suez and found a shelter in the Wakalah Tirjis――the George
Inn. My Meccan and Medinah friends were already installed there, and
the boy Mohammed El Basyuni had joined me on the road.

It was not so easy to embark at Suez. In those days the greater body
of pilgrims marched round the head of the Red Sea. Steamers were rare,
and in the spirit of protection the Bey, or Governor, had orders to
obstruct us till near the end of the season. Most Egyptian high
officials sent their boats laden with pious passengers up the Nile,
whence they returned freighted with corn. They naturally did their
best to force upon us the delays and discomforts of what is called the
Kussayr (Cosseir) line. And as those who travelled by the land route
spent their money fifteen days longer in Egyptian territory than they
would have done if allowed to embark at Suez, the Bey assisted them in
the former and obstructed them in the latter case.

We were delayed in the George Inn four mortal days and nights amidst
all the plagues of Egypt. At last we found a sambuk, or small-decked
vessel, about to start, and for seven dollars each we took places upon
the poop, the only possible part in the dreadful summer months. The
_Silk El Zahab_, or _Golden Thread_, was probably a lineal descendant
from the ships of Solomon harboured in Ezion Geber. It was about fifty
tons burden, and we found ninety-seven, instead of sixty, the proper
number of passengers. The farce of a quarter-deck ten feet by eight
accommodated eighteen of us, and our companions were Magribis, men
from North-Western Africa――the most quarrelsome and vicious of
pilgrims.

We sailed on July 6th, and, as in an Irish packet of the olden time,
the first preliminary to “shaking down” was a general fight. The rais
(captain) naturally landed and left us to settle the matter, which
ended in many a head being broken. I played my poor part in the
_mêlée_ by pushing down a heavy jar of water upon the swarm of
assailants. At last the Magribis, failing to dislodge us from the
poop, made peace, and finding we were sons of the Holy Cities, became
as civil as their unkindly natures permitted. We spent twelve days,
instead of the normal five, in beating down the five hundred and fifty
direct miles between Suez and Yambu.

Every second day we managed to land and stretch our limbs. The
mornings and evenings were mild and balmy, whilst the days were
terrible. We felt as if a few more degrees of heat would be fatal to
us. The celebrated coral reefs of the Red Sea, whence some authors
derive its name, appeared like meadows of brilliant flowers resembling
those of earth, only far brighter and more beautiful. The sunsets were
magnificent; the zodiacal light, or after-glow, was a study; and the
cold rays of the moon, falling upon a wilderness of white clay and
pinnacle, suggested a wintry day in England.

[Illustration: THE FIGHT ON THE _SILK EL ZAHAB_.     [_See Page 18._]

At last, after slowly working up a narrow creek leading to the Yambu
harbour, on July 17th we sprang into a shore-boat, and felt new life
when bidding eternal adieu and “sweet bad luck” to the _Golden
Thread_, which seemed determined to wreck itself about once per diem.

Yambu, the port of El Medinah, lies S.S.W. of, and a little over a
hundred and thirty miles from, its city. The road was infamous――rocky,
often waterless, alternately fiery and freezing, and infested with the
Beni Harb, a villainous tribe of hill Bedouins. Their chief was one
Saad, a brigand of the first water. He was described as a little brown
man, contemptible in appearance but remarkable for courage and for a
ready wit, which saved him from the poison and pistol of his enemies.
Some called him the friend of the poor, and all knew him to be the foe
of the rich.

There was nothing to see at Yambu, where, however, we enjoyed the
hammam and the drinking-water, which appeared deliciously sweet after
the briny supplies of Suez. By dint of abundant bargaining we hired
camels at the moderate rate of three dollars each――half in ready
money, the rest to be paid after arrival. I also bought a shugduf, or
rude litter carrying two, and I chose the boy Mohammed as my
companion. The journey is usually done in five days. We took eight,
and we considered ourselves lucky fellows.

On the evening of the next day (July 18th) we set out with all the
gravity of men putting our heads into the lion’s jaws. The moon rose
fair and clear as we emerged from the shadowy streets. When we
launched into the desert, the sweet, crisp air delightfully contrasted
with the close, offensive atmosphere of the town.

My companions all, as Arabs will do on such occasions, forgot to think
of their precious boxes full of the plunder of Constantinople, and
began to sing. We travelled till three o’clock in the morning (these
people insist upon setting out in the afternoon and passing the night
in travelling). And the Prophet informs us that the “calamities of
earth,” meaning scorpions, serpents, and wild beasts, are least
dangerous during the dark hours.

After a pleasant sleep in the wilderness, we joined for the next day’s
march a caravan of grain carriers, about two hundred camels escorted
by seven Turkish Bashi Buzuk, or Irregular Cavalry. They confirmed the
report that the Bedouins were “out,” and declared that Saad, the Old
Man of the Mountain, had threatened to cut every throat venturing into
his passes. That night the robbers gave us a mild taste of their
quality, but soon ran away. The third march lay over an iron land and
under a sky of brass to a long straggling village called, from its
ruddy look, El Hamra (the Red); it is the middle station between Yambu
and El Medinah. The fourth stage placed us on the Sultan’s high-road
leading from Meccah to the Prophet’s burial-place, and we joined a
company of pious persons bound on visitation.

The Bedouins, hearing that we had an escort of two hundred troopers,
manned a gorge and would not let us advance till the armed men
retired. The fifth and sixth days were forced halts at a vile place
called Bir Abbas, where we could hear the distant dropping of the
musketry, a sign that the troops and the hill-men were settling some
little dispute. Again my companions were in cold perspirations about
their treasures, and passed the most of their time in sulking and
quarrelling.

About sunset on July 23rd, three or four caravans assembled at Bir
Abbas, forming one large body for better defence against the dreaded
Bedouins. We set out at 11 p.m., travelling without halting through
the night, and at early dawn we found ourselves in an ill-famed narrow
known as Shuab El Haji, or the Pilgrim’s Pass. The boldest looked
apprehensive as we approached it. Presently, from the precipitous
cliff on our left, thin puffs of blue smoke rose in the sultry morning
air, and afterwards the sharp cracks of the hill-men’s matchlocks were
echoed by the rocks on the right. A number of Bedouins could be seen
swarming like hornets up the steeper slopes, carrying huge weapons and
“spoiling for a fight.” They took up comfortable positions on the
cut-throat embankment and began practising upon us from behind their
breastworks of piled stones with perfect convenience to themselves. We
had nothing to do but to blaze away as much powder and to veil
ourselves in as dense a smoke as possible. The result was that we lost
twelve men, besides camels and other beasts of burden. My companions
seemed to consider this questionable affair a most gallant exploit.

The next night (July 24th) was severe. The path lay up rocky hill and
down stony vale. A tripping and stumbling dromedary had been
substituted for my better animal, and the consequences may be
imagined.

The sun had nearly risen before I shook off the lethargic effects of
such a march. All around me were hurrying their beasts, regardless of
rough ground, and not a soul spoke a word to his neighbour. “Are there
robbers in sight?” was the natural question. “No,” responded the boy
Mohammed. “They are walking with their eyes; they will presently sight
their homes.”

Half an hour afterwards we came to a huge mudarrij, or flight of
steps, roughly cut in a line of black scoriaceous basalt. Arrived at
the top, we passed through a lane of dark lava with steep banks on
both sides, and in a few minutes a full view of the Holy City suddenly
opened upon us. It was like a vision in “The Arabian Nights.” We
halted our camels as if by word of command. All dismounted, in
imitation of the pious of old, and sat down, jaded and hungry as we
were, to feast our eyes on the “country of date-trees” which looked so
passing fair after the “salt stony land.” As we looked eastward the
sun rose out of the horizon of blue and pink hill, the frontier of
Nejd staining the spacious plains with gold and purple. The site of El
Medinah is in the western edge of the highlands which form the plateau
of Central Arabia. On the left side, or north, was a tall grim pile of
porphyritic rock, the celebrated Mount Ohod, with a clump of verdure
and a dome or two nestling at its base. Round a whitewashed fortalice
founded upon a rock clustered a walled city, irregularly oval, with
tall minarets enclosing a conspicuous green dome. To the west and
south lay a large suburb and long lines of brilliant vegetation
piercing the tawny levels. I now understood the full value of a phrase
in the Moslem ritual――“And when the pilgrim’s eyes shall fall upon the
trees of El Medinah, let him raise his voice and bless the Prophet
with the choicest blessings.”

In all the panorama before us nothing was more striking, after the
desolation through which we had passed, than the gardens and orchards
about the town. My companions obeyed the command with the most
poetical exclamations, bidding the Prophet “live for ever whilst the
west wind bloweth gently over the hills of Nejd and the lightning
flasheth bright in the firmament of El Hejaz.”

We then remounted and hurried through the Bab El Ambari, the gate of
the western suburb. Crowded by relatives and friends, we passed down a
broad, dusty street, pretty well supplied with ruins, into an open
space called Barr El Manakhah, or “place where camels are made to
kneel.” Straight forward a line leads directly into the Bab El Misri,
the Egyptian gate of the city. But we turned off to the right, and
after advancing a few yards we found ourselves at the entrance of our
friend Shaykh Hamid’s house. He had preceded us to prepare for our
reception.

No delay is allowed in the ziyarat, or visitation of the haram, or
holy place, which received the mortal remains of the Arab Prophet. We
were barely allowed to breakfast, to perform the religious ablution,
and to change our travel-soiled garments. We then mounted asses,
passed through the Egyptian, or western, gate, and suddenly came upon
the mosque. It is choked up with ignoble buildings, and as we entered
the “Dove of Mercy” I was not impressed by the spectacle.

The site of the Prophet’s mosque――Masjid el Nabashi, as it is
called――was originally a graveyard shaded by date-trees. The first
walls were of adobe, or unbaked brick, and the recently felled
palm-trunks were made into pillars for the leaf-thatched roof. The
present building, which is almost four centuries old, is of cut stone,
forming an oblong of four hundred and twenty feet by three hundred and
forty feet. In the centre is a spacious uncovered area containing the
Garden of Our Lady Fatimah――a railed plot of ground bearing a
lote-tree and a dozen palms. At the south-east angle of this
enclosure, under a wooden roof with columns, is the Prophet’s Well,
whose water is hard and brackish. Near it meets the City Academy,
where in the cool mornings and evenings the young idea is taught to
shout rather than to shoot.

Around the court are four riwaks, or porches, not unlike the cloisters
of a monastery; they are arched to the front, backed by the wall and
supported inside by pillars of different shape and material varying
from dirty plaster to fine porphyry. When I made my visitation, the
northern porch was being rebuilt; it was to be called after Abd El
Majid, the then reigning Sultan, and it promised to be the most
splendid. The main colonnade, however, the sanctum containing all that
is venerable in the building, embraces the whole length of the
southern short wall, and is deeper than the other three by nearly
treble the number of columns. It is also paved with handsome slabs of
white marble and marquetry work, here and there covered with coarse
matting and above this by unclean carpets, well worn by faithful feet.

To understand the tomb a few preliminary remarks are necessary.
Mohammed, it must be remembered, died in the eleventh year of his
mission and the sixty-third of his age, corresponding with A.D. 623.
He was accustomed to say, “In whatsoever spot a prophet departs this
life, there also should he be buried.” Accordingly his successor
ordered the grave to be dug in the house of the young widow Ayisha,
who lived close to the original mosque. After her husband’s burial she
occupied an adjoining room partitioned off from the tomb at which men
were accustomed to pray. Another saying of the Prophet’s forbade tombs
to be erected in mosques; it therefore became necessary so to contrive
that the revered spot should be in, and yet not in, the place of
worship.

Accordingly they built a detached tower in the south-eastern corner of
the mosque, and called it the hujrah, or chamber. It is from fifty to
fifty-five feet square, with a passage all round, and it extends from
floor to roof, where it is capped by the green dome which strikes the
eyes on approaching the city. The external material of the closet,
which also serves to protect the remains from infidels and
schismatics, is metal filagree painted a vivid grey green, relieved by
the brightly gilt or burnished brass-work forming the long and
graceful Arabic characters. On the south side, for greater honour, the
railing is plated over in parts with silver, and letters of the same
metal are interlaced with it.

Entering by the western Door of Safety, we paced slowly towards the
tomb down a line of wall about the height of a man, and called the
“illustrious fronting.” The barrier is painted with arabesques and
pierced with small doors. There are two niches richly worked with
various coloured marble, and near them is a pulpit, a graceful
collection of slender columns, elegant tracery, and inscriptions
admirably carved. Arrived at the western small door in the dwarf wall,
we entered the famous spot called El Ranzah (the “Garden”), after a
saying of Mohammed: “Between my grave and my pulpit is a garden of the
gardens of Paradise.” On the north and west sides it is not divided
from the rest of the porch, to the south rises the dwarf wall, and
eastward it is bounded by the west end of the filagree tower
containing the tomb.

The “Garden” is the most elaborate part of the mosque. It is a space
of about eighty feet in length tawdrily decorated to resemble
vegetation: the carpets are flowered, and the pediments of columns are
cased with bright green tiles, and the shafts are adorned with gaudy
and unnatural growths in arabesques. It is further disfigured by
handsome branched candelabra of cut crystal, the work, I believe, of
an English house. Its peculiar background, the filagree tower, looks
more picturesque near than at a distance, where it suggests the idea
of a gigantic birdcage. The one really fine feature of the scene is
the light cast by the window of stained glass in the southern wall.
Thus little can be said in praise of the “Garden” by day. But at night
the eye, dazzled by oil lamps suspended from the roof, by huge wax
candles, and by minor illuminations, whilst crowds of visitors in the
brightest attire, with the richest and noblest of the citizens, sit in
congregation to hear services, becomes far less critical.

Entering the “Garden” we fronted towards Meccah, prayed, recited two
chapters of the Koran, and gave alms to the poor in gratitude to Allah
for making it our fate to visit so holy a spot. Then we repaired to
the southern front of the chamber, where there are three dwarf
windows, apertures half a foot square, and placed at eye’s height from
the ground. The westernmost is supposed to be opposite to the face of
Mohammed, who lies on the right side, facing, as is still the Moslem
custom, the House of Allah at Meccah. The central hill is that of
Abubaki, the first Caliph, whose head is just behind the Prophet’s
shoulder. The easternmost window is that of Omar, the second Caliph,
who holds the same position with respect to Abubaki. In the same
chamber, but decorously divided by a wall from the male tenants,
reposes the Lady Fatimah, Mohammed’s favourite daughter. Osman, the
fourth Caliph, was not buried after his assassination near his
predecessors, but there is a vacant space for Isa bin Maryam when he
shall return.

We stood opposite these three windows, successively, beginning with
that of the Prophet, recited the blessings, which we were directed to
pronounce “with awe and fear and love.” The ritual is very
complicated, and the stranger must engage a guide technically called a
muzawwir, or visitation-maker. He is always a son of the Holy City,
and Shaykh Hamid was mine. Many a piercing eye was upon me: the people
probably supposed that I was an Ajemi or Persian, and these heretics
have often attempted to defile the tombs of the two Caliphs.

When the prayers were at an end, I was allowed to look through the
Prophet’s window. After straining my eyes for a time, the oil lamps
shedding but a dim light, I saw a narrow passage leading round the
chamber. The inner wall is variously represented to be made of stone
planking or unbaked bricks. One sees nothing but thin coverings, a
curtain of handsome silk and cotton brocade, green, with long white
letters worked into it. Upon the hangings were three inscriptions in
characters of gold, informing readers that behind there lie Allah’s
Prophet and the two first Caliphs. The exact place of Mohammed’s tomb
is, moreover, distinguished by a large pearl rosary and a peculiar
ornament, the celebrated Kankab el Durri, or constellation of pearls;
it is suspended breast high to the curtain. This is described to be a
“brilliant star set in diamonds and pearls” placed in the dark that
man’s eye may be able to endure its splendours; the vulgar believe it
to be a “jewel of the jewels of Paradise.” To me it suggested the
round glassy stoppers used for the humbler sort of decanters, but then
I think the same of the Koh-i-Nur.

I must allude to the vulgar story of Mohammed’s steel coffin suspended
in mid-air between two magnets. The myth has won a world-wide
reputation, yet Arabia has never heard of it. Travellers explain it in
two ways. Niebuhr supposes it to have risen from the rude ground-plan
drawings sold to strangers, and mistaken by them for elevations.
William Banks believes that the work popularly described as hanging
unsupported in the mosque of Omar at Jerusalem was confounded with the
Prophet’s tomb at El Medinah by Christians, who until very lately
could not have seen either of these Moslem shrines.

A book which I published upon the subject of my pilgrimage gives in
detail my reason for believing that the site of Mohammed’s sepulture
is doubtful as that of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.[4] They are,
briefly, these four: From the earliest days the shape of the Prophet’s
tomb has never been generally known in El Islam. The accounts of the
grave given by the learned are discrepant. The guardianship of the
spot was long in the hands of schismatics (the Beni Husayu). And
lastly, I cannot but look upon the tale of the blinding light which
surrounds the Prophet’s tomb, current for ages past, and still
universally believed upon the authority of attendant eunuchs who must
know its falsehood as a priestly glory intended to conceal a defect.

To that book also I must refer my readers for a full description of
the minor holy places at El Medinah. They are about fifty in number,
and of these about a dozen are generally visited. The principal of
these are, first, El Bakia (the Country of the Saints), to the east of
the city; on the last day some seventy thousand, others say a hundred
thousand, holy men with faces like moons shall arise from it; the
second is the Apostle’s mosque at Kubas, the first temple built in El
Islam; and the third is a visitation to the tomb of Mohammed’s
paternal uncle, Hamzeh, the “Lord of Martyrs,” who was slain fighting
for the faith in A.D. 625.

A few observations concerning the little-known capital of the Northern
Hejaz may not be unacceptable.

Medinah El Nahi (the City of the Prophet) is usually called by
Moslems, for brevity, El Medinah, or the City by Excellence. It lies
between the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth degrees of north latitude,
corresponding therefore with Central Mexico; and being high raised
above the sea, it may be called a _tierra temprada_. My predecessor,
Burckhardt, found the water detestable. I thought it good. The winter
is long and rigorous, hence partly the fair complexion of its
inhabitants, who rival in turbulence and fanaticism their brethren of
Meccah.

El Medinah consists of three parts――a town, a castle, and a large
suburb. The population, when I visited it, ranged from sixteen
thousand to eighteen thousand souls, whereas Meccah numbered
forty-five thousand, and the garrison consisted of a half-battalion,
or four hundred men. Mohammed’s last resting-place has some fifteen
hundred hearths enclosed by a wall of granite and basalt in irregular
layers cemented with lime. It is pierced with four gates: the Syrian,
the Gate of Hospitality, the Friday, and the Egyptian. The two latter
are fine massive buildings, with double towers like the old Norman
portals, but painted with broad bands of red pillars and other flaring
colours. Except the Prophet’s mosque, there are few public buildings.
There are only four caravanserais, and the markets are long lines of
sheds, thatched with scorched and blackened palm-leaves. The streets
are what they should always be in torrid lands, dark, deep, narrow,
and rarely paved; they are generally of black earth, well watered and
trodden to harden. The houses appear well built for the East, of
square stone, flat roofed, double storied, and enclosing spacious
courtyards and small gardens, where water basins and trees and sheds
“cool the eye,” as Arabs say. Latticed balconies are here universal,
and the windows are mere holes in the walls provided with broad
shutters. The castle has stronger defences than the town, and inside
it a tall donjon tower bears, proudly enough, the banner of the
Crescent and the Star. Its whitewashed lines of wall render this
fortalice a conspicuous object, and guns pointing in all directions,
especially upon the town, make it appear a kind of Gibraltar to the
Bedouins.

For many reasons strangers become very much attached to El Medinah and
there end their lives. My servant, Shaykh Nur, opined it to be a very
“heavenly city.” Therefore the mass of the population is of foreign
extraction.

On August 28th arrived the great Damascus caravan, which sets out from
Constantinople bringing the presents of the Sublime Porte. It is the
main stream which absorbs all the small currents flowing at this
season of general movement from Central Asia towards the great centre
of the Islamitic world, and in 1853 it numbered about seven thousand
souls. It was anxiously expected at El Medinah for several reasons. In
the first place, it brought with it a new curtain for the Prophet’s
chamber, the old one being in a tattered condition; secondly, it had
charge of the annual stipends and pensions for the citizens; and
thirdly, many families had members returning under its escort to their
homes. The popular anxiety was greatly increased by the disordered
state of the country round about, and moreover the great caravan was a
day late. The Russian war had extended its excitement even into the
bowels of Arabia, and to travel eastward according to my original
intention was impossible.

For a day or two we were doubtful about which road the caravan would
take――the easy coast line or the difficult and dangerous eastern, or
desert, route. Presently Saad the robber shut his doors against us,
and we were driven perforce to choose the worse. The distance between
El Medinah and Meccah by the frontier way would be in round numbers
two hundred and fifty (two hundred and forty-eight) miles, and in the
month of September water promised to be exceedingly scarce and bad.

I lost no time in patching up my water-skins, in laying in a store of
provisions, and in hiring camels. Masad El Harbi, an old Bedouin,
agreed to let me have two animals for the sum of twenty dollars. My
host warned me against the treachery of the wild men, with whom it is
necessary to eat salt once a day. Otherwise they may rob the traveller
and plead that the salt is not in their stomachs.

Towards evening time on August 30th, El Medinah became a scene of
exceeding confusion in consequence of the departure of the pilgrims.
About an hour after sunset all our preparations were concluded. The
evening was sultry; we therefore dined outside the house. I was told
to repair to the shrine for the ziyarat el widoa, or the farewell
visitation. My decided objection to this step was that we were all to
part, and where to meet again we knew not. I therefore prayed a
two-prostration prayer, and facing towards the haram recited the usual
supplication. We sat up till 2 p.m. when, having heard no signal gun,
we lay down to sleep through the hot remnant of the hours of darkness.
Thus was spent my last night at the City of the Prophet.


     [1] “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” chap. i.

     [2] _Vide_ Burton’s “Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah,”
         chap. iii.

     [3] _Ibid._, chap. vi.

     [4] “Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah,” by Richard F. Burton.



II

_THE PILGRIMAGE TO MECCAH_


On Wednesday, August 31st, 1853, I embraced my good host, Shaykh
Hamid, who had taken great trouble to see me perfectly provided for
the journey. Shortly after leaving El Medinah we all halted and turned
to take a last farewell. All the pilgrims dismounted and gazed long
and wistfully at the venerable minarets and the Prophet’s green
dome――spots upon which their memories would ever dwell with a fond and
yearning interest.

We hurried after the Damascus caravan, and presently fell into its
wake. Our line was called the Darb el Sharki, or eastern road. It owes
its existence to the piety of Zubaydah Khatun, wife of the well-known
Harun el Rashid. That esteemed princess dug wells, built tanks, and
raised, we are told, a wall with occasional towers between Bagdad and
Meccah, to guide pilgrims over the shifting sands. Few vestiges of all
this labour remained in the year of grace 1853.

Striking is the appearance of the caravan as it draggles its slow
length along

     The golden desert glittering through
     The subtle veil of beams,

as the poet of “Palm-leaves” has it. The sky is terrible in its
pitiless splendours and blinding beauty while the simoon, or wind of
the wild, caresses the cheek with the flaming breath of a lion. The
filmy spray of sand and the upseething of the atmosphere, the
heat-reek and the dancing of the air upon the baked surface of the
bright yellow soil, blending with the dazzling blue above, invests the
horizon with a broad band of deep dark green, and blurs the gaunt
figures of the camels, which, at a distance, appear strings of
gigantic birds.

There are evidently eight degrees of pilgrims. The lowest walk,
propped on heavy staves; these are the itinerant coffee-makers,
sherbet sellers, and tobacconists, country folks driving flocks of
sheep and goats with infinite clamour and gesticulation, negroes from
distant Africa, and crowds of paupers, some approaching the supreme
hour, but therefore yearning the more to breathe their last in the
Holy City. Then come the humble riders of laden camels, mules, and
asses, which the Bedouin, who clings baboon-like to the hairy back of
his animal, despises, saying:――

     Honourable to the rider is the riding of the horse;
     But the mule is a dishonour, and a donkey a disgrace.

Respectable men mount dromedaries, or blood-camels, known by their
small size, their fine limbs, and their large deer-like eyes: their
saddles show crimson sheep-skins between tall metal pommels, and these
are girthed over fine saddle-bags, whose long tassels of bright
worsted hang almost to the ground. Irregular soldiers have
picturesquely equipped steeds. Here and there rides some old Arab
shaykh, preceded by his varlets performing a war-dance, compared with
which the bear’s performance is graceful, firing their duck-guns in
the air, or blowing powder into the naked legs of those before them,
brandishing their bared swords, leaping frantically with
parti-coloured rags floating in the wind, and tossing high their long
spears. Women, children, and invalids of the poorer classes sit upon
rugs or carpets spread over the large boxes that form the camel’s
load. Those a little better off use a shibriyah, or short coat,
fastened crosswise. The richer prefer shugduf panniers with an awning
like a miniature tent. Grandees have led horses and gorgeously painted
takhtrawan――litters like the bangué of Brazil――borne between camels or
mules with scarlet and brass trappings. The vehicle mainly regulates
the pilgrim’s expenses, which may vary from five pounds to as many
thousands.

I will not describe the marches in detail: they much resemble those
between Yambu and El Medinah. We nighted at two small villages, El
Suwayrkiyah and El Suyayna, which supplied a few provisions to a
caravan of seven thousand to eight thousand souls. For the most part
it is a haggard land, a country of wild beasts and wilder men, a
region whose very fountains murmur the warning words, “Drink and
away,” instead of “Rest and be thankful.” In other places it is a
desert peopled only with echoes, an abode of death for what little
there is to die in it, a waste where, to use an Arab phrase, “La Siwa
Hu”――“There is none but HE.” Gigantic sand columns whirl over the
plains, the horizon is a sea of mirage, and everywhere Nature, flayed
and scalped, discovers her skeleton to the gazer’s eye.

We passed over many ridges of rough black basalt, low plains, and
basins white with nitrous salt, acacia barrens where litters were torn
off the camels’ backs by the strong thorns, and domes and streets of
polished rock. Now we travelled down dry torrent-beds of extreme
irregularity, then we wended our way along cliffs castellated as if by
men’s hand, and boulders and pillars of coarse-grained granite,
sometimes thirty feet high. Quartz abounded, and the country may have
contained gold, but here the superficial formation has long since been
exhausted. In Arabia, as in the East Indies, the precious metal still
lingers. At Cairo in 1854 I obtained good results by washing sand
brought from the coast of the Red Sea north of Wijh. My plan for
working was rendered abortive by a certain dictum, since become a
favourite with the governing powers in England――namely, “Gold is
getting too plentiful.”

Few animals except vultures and ravens meet the eye. Once, however, we
enjoyed a grand spectacle. It was a large yellow lion, somewhat white
about the points――a sign of age――seated in a statuesque pose upon a
pedestal of precipitous rock by the wayside, and gazing upon the
passing spectacle as if monarch of all he surveyed. The caravan
respected the wild beast, and no one molested it. The Bedouin of
Arabia has a curious custom when he happens to fall in with a lion: he
makes a profound salaam, says many complimentary things, and begs his
majesty not to harm a poor man with a large family. If the brute be
not hungry, the wayfarer is allowed to pass on; the latter, however,
is careful when returning to follow another path. “The father of
roaring,” he remarks, “has repented of having missed a meal.”

On Friday, September 9th, we encamped at Zaribah, two marches, or
forty-seven miles, from Meccah. This being the north-eastern limit of
the sanctuary, we exchanged our everyday dress for the pilgrim garb,
which is known as el ihrám, or mortification. Between the noontide and
the afternoon prayers our heads were shaved, our beards and nails
trimmed, and we were made to bathe. We then put on the attire which
seems to be the obsolete costume of the ancient Arabs. It consists of
two cotton cloths, each six feet long by three or four feet wide,
white, with narrow red stripes and fringes――in fact, that adopted in
the Turkish baths of London. One of these sheets is thrown over the
back and is gathered at the right side, the arm being left exposed.
The waistcloth extends like a belt to the knee, and, being tucked in
at the waist, supports itself. The head is bared to the rabid sun, and
the insteps, which must also be left naked, suffer severely.

Thus equipped, we performed a prayer of two prostrations, and recited
aloud the peculiar formula of pilgrimage called Talbiyat. In Arabic it
is:

     _Labbayk, ’Allahumma, Labbayk!
     La Sharika laka. Labbayk!
     Jun ’al Hamda wa’ n’ Niamata laka w’ al Mulh!
     La Sharika laka. Labbayk!_

which I would translate thus:

     _Here I am, O Allah, here am I!
     No partner hast thou. Here am I!
     Verily the praise and the grace are thine, and the kingdom!
     No partner hast thou. Here am I._

The director of our consciences now bade us be good pilgrims, avoiding
quarrels, abusive language, light conversation, and all immorality. We
must religiously respect the sanctuary of Meccah by sparing the trees
and avoiding to destroy animal life, excepting, however, the “five
instances,”――a crow, a kite, a rat, a scorpion, and a biting dog. We
must abstain from washes and perfumes, oils, dyes, and cosmetics; we
must not pare the nails nor shave, pluck or cut the hair, nor must we
tie knots in our garments. We were forbidden to cover our heads with
turban or umbrella, although allowed to take advantage of the shade,
and ward off the sun with our hands. And for each infraction of these
ordinances we were commanded to sacrifice a sheep.

The women followed our example. This alone would disprove the baseless
but wide-world calumny which declares that El Islam recognises no soul
in, and consequently no future for, the opposite sex. The Early
Fathers of the Christian Church may have held such tenet, the
Mohammedans never. Pilgrimesses exchange the lisam――that coquettish
fold of thin white muslin which veils, but does not hide, the
mouth――for a hideous mask of split, dried, and plaited palm-leaves
pierced with bull’s-eyes to admit the light. This ugly mask is worn
because the veil must not touch the features. The rest of the outer
garment is a long sheet of white cotton, covering the head and falling
to the heels. We could hardly help laughing when these queer ghostly
figures first met our sight, and, to judge from the shaking of their
shoulders, they were as much amused as we were.

In mid-afternoon we left Zaribah, and presently it became apparent
that although we were forbidden to take lives of others, others were
not prevented from taking _ours_. At 5 p.m. we came upon a wide, dry
torrent-bed, down which we were to travel all night. It was a
cut-throat place, with a stony, precipitous buttress on the right,
faced by a grim and barren slope. Opposite us the way seemed to be
barred by piles of hills, crest rising above crest in the far blue
distance. Day still smiled upon the upper peaks, but the lower grounds
and the road were already hung with sombre shade.

A damp fell upon our spirits as we neared this “Valley Perilous.” The
voices of the women and children sank into deep silence, and the loud
“Labbayk!” which the male pilgrims are ordered to shout whenever
possible, was gradually stilled.

The cause soon became apparent. A small curl of blue smoke on the
summit of the right-hand precipice suddenly caught my eye, and,
simultaneously with the echoing crack of the matchlock, a dromedary in
front of me, shot through the heart, rolled on the sands. The Utajbah,
bravest and most lawless of the brigand tribes of the Moslem’s Holy
Land, were determined to boast that on such and such a night they
stopped the Sultan’s caravan one whole hour in the pass.

There ensued a scene of terrible confusion. Women screamed, children
cried, and men vociferated, each one striving with might and main to
urge his animal beyond the place of death. But the road was narrow and
half-choked with rocks and thorny shrubs; the vehicles and animals
were soon jammed into a solid and immovable mass, whilst at every shot
a cold shudder ran through the huge body. Our guard, the irregular
horsemen, about one thousand in number, pushed up and down perfectly
useless, shouting to and ordering one another. The Pacha of the
soldiers had his carpet spread near the precipice, and over his pipe
debated with the officers about what should be done. No one seemed to
whisper, “Crown the heights.”

Presently two or three hundred Wahhabis――mountaineers of Tebel Shammar
in North-Eastern Arabia――sprang from their barebacked camels, with
their elf-locks tossing in the wind, and the flaming matches of their
guns casting a lurid light over their wild features. Led by the Sherif
Zayd, a brave Meccan noble, who, happily for us, was present, they
swarmed up the steep, and the robbers, after receiving a few shots,
retired to fire upon our rear.

Our forced halt was now exchanged for a flight, and it required much
tact to guide our camels clear of danger. Whoever and whatever fell,
remained on the ground; that many were lost became evident from the
boxes and baggage which strewed the shingles. I had no means of
ascertaining our exact number of killed and wounded; reports were
contradictory, and exaggeration was unanimous. The robbers were said
to be one hundred and fifty in number. Besides honour and glory, they
looked forward to the loot, and to a feast of dead camel.

We then hurried down the valley in the blackness of night, between
ribbed precipices, dark and angry. The torch smoke and the night fires
formed a canopy sable above and livid below, with lightning-flashes
from the burning shrubs and grim crowds hurrying as if pursued by the
Angel of Death. The scene would have suited the theatrical canvas of
Doré.

At dawn we issued from the Perilous Pass into the Wady Laymun, or
Valley of Limes. A wondrous contrast! Nothing can be more soothing to
the brain than the rich green foliage of its pomegranates and other
fruit-trees, and from the base of the southern hills bursts a babbling
stream whose

     _Chiare fresche e dolci acque_

flow through the garden, cooling the pure air, and filling the ear
with the most delicious of melodies, the gladdest sound which nature
in these regions knows.

At noon we bade adieu to the charming valley, which, since remote
times, has been a favourite resort of the Meccan citizens.

At sunset we recited the prayers suited to the occasion, straining our
eyes, but all in vain, to catch sight of Meccah. About 1 a.m. I was
aroused by a general excitement around me.

“Meccah! Meccah!” cried some voices. “The sanctuary, oh, the
sanctuary!” exclaimed others, and all burst into loud “Labbayk!” not
infrequently broken by sobs. With a heartfelt “Alhamdu lillah,” I
looked from my litter and saw under the chandelier of the Southern
Cross the dim outlines of a large city, a shade darker than the
surrounding plain.

A cool east wind met us, showing that it was raining in the Taif
hills, and at times sheet lightning played around the Prophet’s
birthplace――a common phenomenon, which Moslems regard as the testimony
of Heaven to the sanctity of the spot.

Passing through a deep cutting, we entered the northern suburb of our
destination. Then I made to the Shamiyah, or Syrian quarter, and
finally, at 2 a.m., I found myself at the boy Mohammed’s house. We
arrived on the morning of Sunday, September 11th, 1853, corresponding
with Zu’l Hijjah 6th, 1269. Thus we had the whole day to spend in
visiting the haram, and a quiet night before the opening of the true
pilgrim season, which would begin on the morrow.

The morrow dawned. After a few hours of sleep and a ceremonial
ablution, we donned the pilgrim garb, and with loud and long
“Labbayk!” we hastened to the Bayt Ullah, or House of Allah, as the
great temple of Meccah is called.

At the bottom of our street was the outer Bab El Salam, or Gate of
Security, looking towards the east, and held to be, of all the
thirty-nine, the most auspicious entrance for a first visit.

Here we descended several steps, for the level of the temple has been
preserved, whilst the foundations of the city have been raised by the
decay of ages. We then passed through a shady colonnade divided into
aisles, here four, and in the other sides three, pillars deep. These
cloisters are a forest of columns upwards of five hundred and fifty in
number, and in shape and material they are as irregular as trees. The
outer arches of the colonnade are ogives, and every four support a
small dome like half an orange, and white with plaster: some reckon
one hundred and twenty, others one hundred and fifty, and Meccan
superstition declares they cannot be counted. The rear of the
cloisters rests upon an outer wall of cut stone, finished with
pinnacles, or Arab battlements, and at different points in it rise
seven minarets. These are tall towers much less bulky than ours,
partly in facets, circular, and partly cylindrical, built at distinct
epochs, and somewhat tawdrily banded with gaudy colours.

This vast colonnade surrounds a large unroofed and slightly irregular
oblong, which may be compared with an exaggeration of the Palais
Royal, Paris. This sanded area is six hundred and fifty feet long by
five hundred and twenty-five broad, dotted with small buildings
grouped round a common centre, and is crossed by eight narrow lines of
flagged pavement. Towards the middle of it, one hundred and fifteen
paces from the northern colonnade and eighty-eight from the southern,
and based upon an irregularly oval pavement of fine close grey gneiss,
or granite, rises the far-famed Kaabah, or inner temple, its funereal
pall contrasting vividly with the sunlit walls and the yellow
precipices of the city.

Behold it at last, the bourn of long and weary travel, realising the
plans and hopes of many and many a year! This, then, is the kibbal, or
direction, towards which every Moslem has turned in prayer since the
days of Mohammed, and which for long ages before the birth of
Christianity was reverenced by the patriarchs of the East.

No wonder that the scene is one of the wildest excitement! Here are
worshippers clinging to the curtain and sobbing as though their hearts
would break; here some poor wretch with arms thrown high, so that his
beating breast may touch the stone of the house, appears ready to
faint, and there men prostrate themselves on the pavement, rubbing
their foreheads against the stones, shedding floods of tears, and
pouring forth frenzied ejaculations. The most careless, indeed, never
contemplate it for the first time without fear and awe. There is a
popular jest against new-comers that in the presence of the Kaabah
they generally inquire the direction of prayer, although they have all
their lives been praying towards it as the early Christian fronted
Jerusalem.

But we must look more critically at the celebrated shrine.

The word Kaabah means a cube, a square, a _maison carrée_. It is
called Bayt Ullah (House of God) because according to the Koran it is
“certainly the first temple erected for mankind.” It is also known as
the “Bride of Meccah,” probably from the old custom of typifying the
Church Visible by a young married woman――hence probably its face-veil,
its covering, and its guard of eunuchs. Externally it is a low tower
of fine grey granite laid in horizontal courses of irregular depth;
the stones are tolerably fitted, and are not cemented. It shows no
signs of decay, and indeed, in its present form, it dates only from
1627. The shape is rather a trapezoid than a square, being forty feet
long by thirty-five broad and forty-five high, the flat roof having a
cubit of depression from south-west to north-east, where a gold or
gilt spout discharges the drainage. The foundation is a marble base
two feet high, and presents a sharp inclined plane.

All the Kaabah except the roof is covered with a kiswatu garment. It
is a pall-like hanging, the work of a certain family at Cairo, and
annually renewed. The ground is dully black, and Koranic verses
interwoven into it are shining black. There is a door curtain of gold
thread upon red silk, and a bright band of similar material, called
the face-veil of the house, two feet broad, runs horizontally round
the Kaabah at two-thirds of its height. This covering when new is
tucked up by ropes from the roof; when old it is fastened to large
metal rings welded into the basement of the building. When this
peculiar adjunct to the shrine is swollen and moved by the breeze,
pious Moslems believe that angels are waving their wings over it.

The only entrance to the Kaabah is a narrow door of aloe wood, in the
eastern side. It is now raised seven feet, and one enters it hoisted
up in men’s arms. In A.D. 686, when the whole building took its
present shape, it was level with the external ground. The Kaabah opens
gratis ten or twelve times a year, when crowds rush in and men lose
their lives. Wealthy pilgrims obtain the favour by paying for it.
Scrupulous Moslems do not willingly enter it, as they may never
afterwards walk about barefooted, take up fire with their fingers, or
tell lies. It is not every one who can afford such luxuries as
slippers, tongs, and truth. Nothing is simpler than the interior of
the building. The walls are covered with handsome red damask, flowered
over with gold, tucked up beyond the pilgrim’s reach. The flat roof
apparently rests upon three posts of carved and ornamented aloe wood.

Between the three pillars, and about nine feet from the ground, run
metal bars, to which hang lamps, said to be gold. At the northern
corner there is a dwarf door; it leads into a narrow passage and to
the dwarf staircase by which the servants ascend to the roof. In the
south-eastern corner is a quadrant-shaped sofa, also of aloe wood, and
on it sits the guardian of the shrine.

The Hajar el Aswad, or black stone, of which all the world talks, is
fixed in the south-eastern angle outside the house, between four and
five feet from the ground, the more conveniently to be kissed. It
shows a black and slaggy surface, glossy and pitch-like, worn and
polished by myriads of lips; its diameter is about seven inches, and
it appears only in the central aperture of a gilt or gold dish. The
depth to which it extends into the wall is unknown: most people say
two cubits.

Believers declare, with poetry, if not with reason, that in the day of
Atast, when Allah made covenant concerning the souls that animate the
sons of Adam, the instrument was placed in a fragment of the lower
heaven, then white as snow, now black by reason of men’s sins. The
rationalistic infidel opines this sacred corner-stone to be a common
aerolite, a remnant of the stone-worship which considered it the
symbol of power presiding over universal reproduction, and inserted by
Mohammed into the edifice of El Islam. This relic has fared ill; it
has been stolen and broken, and has suffered other accidents.

Another remarkable part of the Kaabah is that between the door and the
black stone. It is called the multazem, or “attached to,” because here
the pilgrim should apply his bosom, weep bitterly, and beg pardon for
his sins. In ancient times, according to some authors, it was the
place for contracting solemn engagements.

The pavement which surrounds the Kaabah is about eight inches high,
and the inside is marked by an oval balustrade of some score and a
half of slender gilt metal pillars. Between every two of these cross
rods support oil lamps, with globes of white and green glasses. Gas is
much wanted at Meccah! At the north end, and separated by a space of
about five feet from the building, is El Hatrim, or the “broken,” a
dwarf semi-circular wall, whose extremities are on a line with the
sides of the Kaabah. In its concavity are two slabs of a finer stone,
which cover the remains of Ishmael, and of his mother Hagar. The
former, I may be allowed to remark, is regarded by Moslems as the
eldest son and legitimate successor of Abraham, in opposition to the
Jews, who prefer Isaac, the child of Sarai the free woman. It is an
old dispute and not likely to be soon settled.

Besides the Kaabah, ten minor structures dot the vast quadrangle. The
most important is the massive covering of the well Zemzem. The word
means “the murmuring,” and here the water gushed from the ground where
the child Ishmael was shuffling his feet in the agonies of thirst. The
supply is abundant, but I found it nauseously bitter; its external
application, however, when dashed like a douche over the pilgrim,
causes sins to fall from his soul like dust.

On the south-east, and near the well, are the Kubbatayn, two domes
crowning heavy ugly buildings, vulgarly painted with red, green, and
yellow bands; one of these domes is used as a library. Directly
opposite the Kaabah door is a short ladder or staircase of carved
wood, which is wheeled up to the entrance door on the rare occasions
when it is opened. North of it is the inner Bab El Salam, or Gate of
Security, under which the pilgrims pass in their first visit to the
shrine. It is a slightly built and detached arch of stone, about
fifteen feet of space in width and eighteen in height, somewhat like
our meaningless triumphal arches, which come from no place and go
nowhere. Between this and the Kaabah stands the Makam Ibraham, or
Station of Abraham, a small building containing the stone which
supported the Friend of Allah when he was building the house. It
served for a scaffold, rising and falling of itself as required, and
it preserved the impressions of Abraham’s feet, especially of the two
big toes. Devout and wealthy pilgrims fill the cavities with water,
which they rub over their eyes and faces with physical as well as
spiritual refreshment. To the north of it is a fine white marble
pulpit with narrow steps leading to the preacher’s post, which is
supported by a gilt and sharply tapering steeple. Lastly, opposite the
northern, the western, and the south-eastern sides of the Kaabah,
stand three ornamental pavilions, with light sloping roofs resting on
slender pillars. From these the representatives of the three orthodox
schools direct the prayers of their congregations. The Shafli, or
fourth branch, collect between the corner of the well Zemzem and the
Station of Abraham, whilst the heretical sects lay claim to certain
mysterious and invisible places of reunion.

I must now describe what the pilgrims do.

Entering with the boy Mohammed, who acted as my mutawwif, or circuit
guide, we passed through the inner Gate of Security, uttering various
religious formulas, and we recited the usual two-prostration prayer in
honour of the mosque at the Shafli place of worship. We then proceeded
to the angle of the house, in which the black stone is set, and there
recited other prayers before beginning tawaf, or circumambulation. The
place was crowded with pilgrims, all males――women rarely appear during
the hours of light. Bareheaded and barefooted they passed the giant
pavement, which, smooth as glass and hot as sun can make it, surrounds
the Kaabah, suggesting the idea of perpetual motion. Meccans declare
that at no time of the day or night is the place ever wholly deserted.

Circumambulation consists of seven shauts, or rounds, of the house, to
which the left shoulder is turned, and each noted spot has its
peculiar prayers. The three first courses are performed at a brisk
trot, like the French _pas gymnastique_. The four latter are leisurely
passed. The origin of this custom is variously accounted for. The
general idea is that Mohammed directed his followers thus to show
themselves strong and active to the infidels, who had declared them to
have been weakened by the air of El Medinah.

When I had performed my seven courses I fought my way through the
thin-legged host of Bedouins, and kissed the black stone, rubbing my
hands and forehead upon it. There were some other unimportant
devotions, which concluded with a douche at the well Zemzem, and with
a general almsgiving. The circumambulation ceremony is performed
several times in the day, despite the heat. It is positive torture.

The visit to the Kaabah, however, does not entitle a man to be called
haji. The essence of pilgrimage is to be present at the sermon
pronounced by the preacher on the Holy Hill of Arafat, distant about
twelve miles from, and to the east of, Meccah. This performed even in
a state of insensibility is valid, and to die by the roadside is
martyrdom, saving all the pains and penalties of the tomb.

The visit, however, must be paid on the 8th, 9th, and the 10th of the
month Zu’l Hijjah (the Lord of Pilgrimage), the last month of the Arab
year. At this time there is a great throb through the framework of
Moslem society from Gibraltar to Japan, and those who cannot visit the
Holy City content themselves with prayers and sacrifices at home. As
the Moslem computation is lunar, the epoch retrocedes through the
seasons in thirty-three years. When I visited Meccah, the rites began
on September 12th and ended on September 14th, 1853. In 1863 the
opening day was June 8th; the closing, June 10th.

My readers will observe that the modern pilgrimage ceremonies of the
Moslem are evidently a commemoration of Abraham and his descendants.
The practices of the Father of the Faithful when he issued from the
land of Chaldea seem to have formed a religious standard in the mind
of the Arab law-giver, who preferred Abraham before all the other
prophets, himself alone excepted.

The day after our arrival at Meccah was the Yaum El Tarwiyah (the Day
of Carrying Water), the first of the three which compose the
pilgrimage season proper. From the earliest dawn the road was densely
thronged with white-robed votaries, some walking, others mounted, and
all shouting “Labbayk!” with all their might. As usual the scene was
one of strange contrasts. Turkish dignitaries on fine horses, Bedouins
bestriding swift dromedaries, the most uninteresting soldiery, and the
most conspicuous beggars. Before nightfall I saw no less than five
exhausted and emaciated devotees give up the ghost and become
“martyrs.”

The first object of interest lies on the right-hand side of the road.
This was a high conical hill, known in books as Tebel Hora, but now
called Tebel Nur, or Mountain of Light, because there Mohammed’s mind
was first illuminated. The Cave of Revelation is still shown. It looks
upon a wild scene. Eastward and southward the vision is limited by
abrupt hills. In the other directions there is a dreary landscape,
with here and there a stunted acacia or a clump of brushwood growing
on rough ground, where stony glens and valleys of white sand, most of
them water-courses after the rare rains, separate black, grey, and
yellow rocks.

Passing over El Akabah (the Steeps), an important spot in classical
Arab history, we entered Muna, a hot hollow three or four miles from
the barren valley of Meccah. It is a long, narrow, straggling village
of mud and stone houses, single storied and double storied, built in
the common Arab style. We were fated to see it again. At noon we
passed Mugdalifah, or the Approacher, known to El Islam as the Minaret
without the Mosque, and thus distinguished from a neighbouring
building, the Mosque without the Minaret. There is something
peculiarly impressive in the tall, solitary, tower springing from the
desolate valley of gravel. No wonder that the old Arab conquerors
loved to give the high-sounding name of this oratory to distant points
in their extensive empire!

Here, as we halted for the noon prayer, the Damascus caravan appeared
in all its glory. The mahmal, or litter, sent by the Sultan to
represent his presence, no longer a framework as on the line of march,
now flashed in the sun all gold and green, and the huge white camel
seemed to carry it with pride. Around the moving host of peaceful
pilgrims hovered a crowd of mounted Bedouins armed to the teeth. These
people often visit Arafat for blood revenge; nothing can be more
sacrilegious than murder at such a season, but they find the enemy
unprepared. As their draperies floated in the wind and their faces
were swathed and veiled with their head-kerchiefs, it was not always
easy to distinguish the sex of the wild beings who hurried past at
speed. The women were unscrupulous, and many were seen emulating the
men in reckless riding, and in striking with their sticks at every
animal in their way.

Presently, after safely threading the gorge called the pass of the Two
Rugged Hills, and celebrated for accidents, we passed between the two
“signs”――whitewashed pillars, or, rather, tall towers, their walls
surmounted with pinnacles. They mark the limits of the Arafat
Plain――the Standing-Ground, as it is called. Here is sight of the Holy
Hill of Arafat, standing boldly out from the fair blue sky, and backed
by the azure peaks of Taif. All the pilgrim host raised loud shouts of
“Labbayk!” The noise was that of a storm.

We then sought our quarters in the town of tents scattered over two or
three miles of plain at the southern foot of the Holy Hill, and there
we passed a turbulent night of prayer.

I estimated the total number of devotees to be fifty thousand; usually
it may amount to eighty thousand. The Arabs, however, believe that the
total of those “standing on Arafat” cannot be counted, and that if
less than six hundred thousand human beings are gathered, the angels
descend and make up the sum. Even in A.D. 1853 my Moslem friends
declared that a hundred and fifty thousand immortal beings were
present in mortal shape.

The Mount of Mercy, which is also called Tebel Ilál, or Mount of
Wrestling in Prayer, is physically considered a mass of coarse
granite, split into large blocks and thinly covered with a coat of
withered thorns. It rises abruptly to a height of a hundred and eighty
to two hundred feet from the gravelly flat, and it is separated by a
sandy vale from the last spur of the Taif hills. The dwarf wall
encircling it gives the barren eminence a somewhat artificial look,
which is not diminished by the broad flight of steps winding up the
southern face, and by the large stuccoed platform near the summit,
where the preacher delivers the “Sermon of the Standing.”

Arafat means “recognition,” and owes its name and honours to a
well-known legend. When our first parents were expelled from Paradise,
which, according to Moslems, is in the lowest of the seven heavens,
Adam descended at Ceylon, Eve upon Arafat. The former, seeking his
wife, began a journey to which the earth owes its present mottled
appearance. Wherever he placed his foot a town arose in the fulness of
time; between the strides all has remained country. Wandering for many
years he came to the Holy Hill of Arafat, the Mountain of Mercy, where
our common mother was continually calling upon his name, and their
recognition of each other there gave the place its name. Upon the
hill-top, Adam, instructed by the Archangel Gabriel, erected a
prayer-station, and in its neighbourhood the pair abode until death.

It is interesting to know that Adam’s grave is shown at Muna, the
village through which we had passed that day. The mosque covering his
remains is called El Kharf; his head is at one end of the long wall,
his feet are at the other, and the dome covers his middle. Our first
father’s forehead, we are told, originally brushed the skies, but this
stature being found inconvenient, it was dwarfed to a hundred and
fifty feet. Eve, again, is buried near the port of Meccah――Jeddah,
which means the “grandmother.” She is supposed to lie, like a
Moslemah, fronting the Kaabah, with her head southwards, her feet to
the north, and her right cheek resting on her right hand. Whitewashed
and conspicuous to the voyager from afar is the dome opening to the
west, and covering a square stone fancifully carved to represent her
middle. Two low parallel walls about eighteen feet apart define the
mortal remains of our mother, who, as she measured a hundred and
twenty paces from head to waist and eighty from waist to heel, must
have presented in life a very peculiar appearance. The archæologist
will remember that the great idol of Jeddah in the age of the Arab
litholatry was a “long stone.”

The next day, the 9th of the month Zu’l Hijjah, is known as Yaum
Arafat (the Day of Arafat). After ablution and prayer, we visited
sundry interesting places on the Mount of Mercy, and we breakfasted
late and copiously, as we could not eat again before nightfall. Even
at dawn the rocky hill was crowded with pilgrims, principally Bedouins
and wild men, who had secured favourable places for hearing the
discourse. From noon onwards the hum and murmur of the multitude waxed
louder, people swarmed here and there, guns fired, and horsemen and
camelmen rushed about in all directions. A discharge of cannon about 2
p.m. announced that the ceremony of wukuf, or standing on the Holy
Hill, was about to commence.

The procession was headed by the retinue of the Sherif, or Prince, of
Meccah, the Pope of El Islam. A way for him was cleared through the
dense mob of spectators by a cloud of macebearers and by horsemen of
the desert carrying long bamboo spears tufted with black ostrich
feathers. These were followed by led horses, the proudest blood of
Arabia, and by a stalwart band of negro matchlock men. Five red and
green flags immediately preceded the Prince, who, habited in plain
pilgrim garb, rode a fine mule. The only sign of his rank was a fine
green silk and gold umbrella, held over his head by one of his slaves.
He was followed by his family and courtiers, and the rear was brought
up by a troop of Bedouins on horses and dromedaries. The picturesque
background of the scene was the granite hill, covered, wherever foot
could be planted, with half-naked devotees, crying “Labbayk!” at the
top of their voices, and violently waving the skirts of their gleaming
garments. It was necessary to stand literally upon Arafat, but we did
not go too near, and a little way off sighted the preacher sitting,
after the manner of Mohammed, on his camel and delivering the sermon.
Slowly the _cortège_ wound its way towards the Mount of Mercy. Exactly
at afternoon prayer-time, the two mahmal, or ornamental litters, of
Damascus and Cairo, took their station side by side on a platform in
the lower part of the hill. A little above them stood the Prince of
Meccah, within hearing of the priest. The pilgrims crowded around
them. The loud cries were stilled, and the waving of white robes
ceased.

Then the preacher began the “Sermon of the Mount,” which teaches the
devotees the duties of the season. At first it was spoken without
interruption; then: loud “Amin” and volleys of “Labbayk” exploded at
certain intervals. At last the breeze became laden with a purgatorial
chorus of sobs, cries, and shrieks. Even the Meccans, who, like the
sons of other Holy Cities, are hardened to holy days, thought it
proper to appear affected, and those unable to squeeze out a tear
buried their faces in the corners of their pilgrim cloths. I buried
mine――at intervals.

The sermon lasted about three hours, and when sunset was near, the
preacher gave the israf, or permission to depart. Then began that
risky part of the ceremony known as the “hurrying from Arafat.” The
pilgrims all rushed down the Mount of Mercy with cries like trumpet
blasts, and took the road to Muna. Every man urged his beast to the
uttermost over the plain, which bristled with pegs, and was strewn
with struck tents. Pedestrians were trampled, litters were crushed,
and camels were thrown; here a woman, there a child, was lost, whilst
night coming on without twilight added to the chaotic confusion of the
scene. The pass of the Two Rugged Hills, where all the currents
converged, was the crisis, after which progress was easier. We spent,
however, at least three hours in reaching Mugdalifah, and there we
resolved to sleep. The minaret was brilliantly illuminated, but my
companions apparently thought more of rest and supper than of prayer.
The night was by no means peaceful nor silent. Lines of laden beasts
passed us every ten minutes, devotees guarding their boxes from
plunderers gave loud tokens of being wide awake, and the shouting of
travellers continued till near dawn.

The 10th of Zu’l Hijjah, the day following the sermon, is called Yaum
Vahr (the Day of Camel Killing), or EEd El Kurban (the Festival of the
Sacrifice), the Kurban Bairam of the Turks. It is the most solemn of
the year, and it holds amongst Moslems the rank which Easter Day
claims from Christendom.

We awoke at daybreak, and exchanged with all around us the compliments
of the season――“EEd Kum mubarak”――“May your festival be auspicious.”
Then each man gathered for himself seven jamrah (bits of granite the
size of a small bean), washed them in “seven waters,” and then
proceeded to the western end of the long street which forms the
village of Muna. Here is the place called the Great Devil, to
distinguish it from two others, the Middle Devil and the First Devil,
or the easternmost. The outward and visible signs are nothing but
short buttresses of whitewashed masonry placed against a rough wall in
the main thoroughfare. Some derive the rite from the days of Adam, who
put to flight the Evil One by pelting him, as Martin Luther did with
the inkstand. Others opine that the ceremony is performed in imitation
of Abraham, who, meeting Sathanas at Muna, and being tempted to
disobedience in the matter of sacrificing his son, was commanded by
Allah to drive him away with stones. Pilgrims approach if possible
within five paces of the pillar, and throw at it successfully seven
pebbles, holding each one between the thumb and forefinger of the
right hand, either extended, or shooting it as a boy does a marble. At
every cast they exclaim: “In the name of Allah, and Allah is almighty!
In hatred to the Fiend and to his shame I do this!” It is one of the
local miracles that all the pebbles thus flung return by spiritual
agency whence they came.

As Satan was malicious enough to appear in a rugged lane hardly forty
feet broad, the place was rendered dangerous by the crowd. On one side
stood the devil’s buttress and wall, bristling with wild men and boys.
Opposite it was a row of temporary booths tenanted by barbers, and the
space between swarmed with pilgrims, all trying to get at the enemy of
mankind. A monkey might have run over the heads of the mob. Amongst
them were horsemen flogging their steeds, Bedouins urging frightened
camels, and running footmen opening paths for the grandees, their
masters, by assault and battery. We congratulated each other, the boy
Mohammed and I, when we escaped with trifling hurts. Some Moslem
travellers assert, by way of miracle, that no man was ever killed
during the ceremony of rajm, or lapidation. Several Meccans, however,
assured me that fatal accidents are by no means rare.

After throwing the seven pebbles, we doffed our pilgrim garb, and
returned to ihlal, or normal attire.

The barber placed us upon an earthen bench in the open shop, shaved
our heads, trimmed our beards, and pared our nails, causing us to
repeat after him: “I purpose throwing off my ceremonial attire,
according to the practice of the Prophet――whom may Allah bless and
preserve! O Allah, grant to me for every hair a light, a purity, and a
generous reward! In the name of Allah, and Allah is almighty!” The
barber then addressed me: “Naiman”――“Pleasure to thee!”――and I
responded: “Allah, give _thee_ pleasure!” Now we could at once use
cloths to cover our heads, and slippers to defend our feet from fiery
sun and hot soil, and we might safely twirl our mustachios and stroke
our beards――placid enjoyments of which we had been deprived by the
ceremonial law.

The day ended with the sacrifice of an animal to commemorate the
substitution of a ram for Ishmael, the father of the Arabs. The place
of the original offering is in the Muna Valley, and it is still
visited by pilgrims. None but the Kruma, the Pacha, and high
dignitaries slaughter camels. These beasts are killed by thrusting a
knife into the interval between the throat and the breast, the muscles
of the wind-pipe being too hard and thick to cut; their flesh is
lawful to the Arabs, but not to the Hebrews. Oxen, sheep, and goats
are made to face the Kaabah, and their throats are cut, the sacrificer
ejaculating: “In the name of Allah! Allah is almighty!” It is
meritorious to give away the victim without eating any part of it, and
thus crowds of poor pilgrims were enabled to regale themselves.

There is a terrible want of cleanliness in this sacrifice. Thousands
of animals are cut up and left unburied in this “Devil’s Punchbowl.” I
leave the rest to the imagination. Pilgrims usually pass in the Muna
Valley the Days of Flesh Drying――namely, the 11th, the 12th, and the
13th of the month Zu’l Hijjah――and on the two former the Great, the
Middle, and the Little Satan are again pelted. The standing miracles
of the place are that beasts and birds cannot prey there, nor can
flies settle upon provisions exposed in the markets. But animals are
frightened away by the bustling crowds, and flies are found in
myriads. The revolting scene, aided by a steady temperature of 120°
Fahr., has more than once caused a desolating pestilence at Meccah:
the cholera of 1865 has been traced back to it; in fine, the safety of
Europe demands the reformation of this filthy slaughter-house, which
is still the same.

The pilgrimage rites over, we returned to Meccah for a short sojourn.
Visitors are advised, and wisely, not to linger long in the Holy City
after the conclusion of the ceremonies. Use soon spoils the marvels,
and, after the greater excitements, all becomes flat, stale, and
unprofitable. The rite called umrah, or the “little pilgrimage,” and
the running between Mounts Safa and Marwah, in imitation of Hagar
seeking her child, remain to be performed. And there are many spots of
minor sanctity to be visited, such as the Jannal El Maala, or Cemetery
of the Saints, the mosque where the genii paid fealty to the Prophet,
the house where Mohammed was born, that in which he lived with his
first wife, Khadijah, and in which his daughter Fatimah and his
grandsons Hasan and Hussayn saw the light, the place where the stone
gave the founder of El Islam God-speed, and about a dozen others. Men,
however, either neglect them or visit them cursorily, and think of
little now beyond returning home.

I must briefly sketch the Holy City before we bid it adieu.

Meccah, also called Beccah, the words being synonymous, signifies
according to some a “place of great concourse,” is built between 21°
and 22° of N. Lat. and in 39° E. Long. (Greenwich).[5] It is therefore
more decidedly tropical than El Medinah, and the parallel corresponds
with that of Cuba. The origin of the Bayt Ullah is lost in the glooms
of time, but Meccah as it now stands is a comparatively modern place,
built in A.D. 450 by Kusayr the Kuraysh. It is a city colligated
together like Jerusalem and Rome. The site is a winding valley in the
midst of many little hills; the effect is that it offers no general
_coup d’œil_. Thus the views of Meccah known to Europe are not more
like Meccah than like Cairo or Bombay.

The utmost length of the Holy City is two miles and a half from the
Mab’dah, or northern suburb, to the southern mound called Jiyad. The
extreme breadth may be three-quarters between the Abu Kubays hill on
the east and the Kaykaan, or Kuwaykaan, eminence on the west. The mass
of houses clusters at the western base of Abu Kubays. The mounts
called Safa and Marwah extend from Abu Kubays to Kayhaan, and are
about seven hundred and eighty cubits apart. The great temple is near
the centre of the city, as the Kaabah is near the middle of the
temple. Upon Jebel Jiyad the Greater there is a fort held by Turkish
soldiery; it seems to have no great strength. In olden time Meccah had
walls and gates; now there are none.

The ground in and about the Holy City is sandy and barren, the hills
are rocky and desert. Meat, fruits, and vegetables must be imported
_viâ_ Jeddah, the port, distant about forty-five miles. The climate is
exceedingly hot and rarely tempered by the sea breeze. I never
suffered so much from temperature as during my fortnight at Meccah.

The capital of the Hejaz, which is about double the size of El
Medinah, has all the conveniences of a city. The streets are narrow,
deep, and well watered. The houses are durable and well built of brick
mixed with granite and sandstone, quarried in the neighbouring hills.
Some of them are five stories high, and more like fortresses than
dwelling-places. The lime, however, is bad, and after heavy rain,
sometimes ten days in the year, those of inferior structure fall in
ruins. None but the best have open-work of brick and courses of
coloured stone. The roofs are made flat to serve for sleeping-places,
the interiors are sombre to keep out the heat; they have jutting upper
stories, as in the old town of Brazil, and huge latticed hanging
balconies――the maswrabujah of Cairo, here called the shamiyah――project
picturesquely into the streets and the small squares in which the city
abounds.

The population is guessed at forty-five thousand souls. The citizens
appeared to me more civilised and more vicious than those of El
Medinah, and their habit of travel makes them a worldly-wise and
God-forgetting and Mammonist sort of folk. “Circumambulate and run
between Mounts Safa and Marwah and do the seven deadly sins,” is a
satire popularly levelled against them. Their redeeming qualities are
courage, _bonhomie_, manners at once manly and suave, a fiery sense of
honour, strong family affections, and a near approach to what we call
patriotism. The dark half of the picture is pride, bigotry,
irreligion, greed of gain, debauchery, and prodigal ostentation.

Unlike his brother of El Medinah, the Meccan is a swarthy man. He is
recognised throughout the east by three parallel gashes down each
cheek, from the exterior angles of the eyes to the corners of the
mouth. These mashali, as they call them, are clean contrary to the
commands of El Islam. The people excuse the practice by saying that it
preserves their children from being kidnapped, and it is performed the
fortieth day after birth.

The last pilgrimage ceremony performed at Meccah is the Tawaf el
Widaaf, or circumambulation of farewell, a solemn occasion. The
devotee walks round the House of Allah, he drinks the water of the
Zemzem well, he kisses the threshold of the door, and he stands for
some time with his face and bosom pressed against the multazem wall,
clinging to the curtain, reciting religious formulas, blessing the
Prophet, weeping if possible, but at least groaning. He then leaves
the temple, backing out of it with many salutations till he reaches
the Gate of Farewell, when, with a parting glance at the Kaabah, he
turns his face towards home.

I will not dwell upon my return journey――how, accompanied by the boy
Mohammed, I reached Jeddah on the Red Sea, how my countrymen refused
for a time to believe me, and how I sadly parted with my Moslem
friends. My wanderings ended for a time, and, worn out with fatigue
and with the fatal fiery heat, I steamed out of Jeddah on September
26th in the little _Dwarka_, and on October 3rd, 1853, after six
months’ absence from England, I found myself safely anchored in Suez
Harbour.


     [5] Both latitude and longitude are disputed points, as the
     following table shows. The Arabs, it must be remembered,
     placed the first meridian at the Fortunate Islands:

     The Atwal makes the latitude 21° 40′, longitude 67° 13′
     Kanun       ”          ”     21° 20′      ”     67°  0′
     Ibu Said    ”          ”     21° 31′      ”     67° 31′
     Rasm        ”          ”     21°  0′      ”     67°  0′
     Khúshyar    ”          ”     21° 40′      ”     67° 10′
     Masr el Din ”          ”     21° 40′      ”     77° 10′
     D’Anville   ”          ”     22°  0′      ”     77° 10′
     Niebuhr     ”          ”     21° 30′      ”     77° 10′

     Humbodlt, therefore, is hardly right to say: “L’erreur est
     que le Mecque paraissait déjà aux Arabes de 19° trop a
     l’est” (“Correspondence,” p. 459).



_A RIDE TO HARAR_

1854-1855



_A RIDE TO HARAR_


The pilgrimage to Meccah being a thing of the past, and the spirit of
unrest still strong within me, I next turned my thoughts to the hot
depths of the Dark Continent. Returning to Bombay early in 1854, I
volunteered to explore the Land of the Somali, the eastern horn of
Africa, extending from Cape Guardafui (N. Lat. 12°) to near the
Equator. For many years naval officers had coasted along it; many of
our ships had been lost there, and we had carefully shot their
wreckers and plunderers. But no modern traveller had ventured into the
wild depths, and we were driven for information to the pages of Father
Lobo, of Salt, and de Rienzi.

My project aimed at something higher; and indeed it was this journey
which led directly to the discovery of the sources of the Nile, so far
as they are yet discovered.

I had read in Ptolemy (I., par. 9) the following words: “Then
concerning the navigation between the Aromata Promontory (_i.e._,
Guardafui) and Rhapta (the ‘place of seven ships,’ generally supposed
to be north of Kilwa), Marianus of Tyre declares that a certain
Diogenes, one of those sailing to India … when near Aromata and having
the Troglodytic region on the right (some of the Somali were still
cave-dwellers), reached, after twenty-five days’ march, the lakes
(plural and not dual) whence the Nile flows and of which Point Raphta
is a little south.”

This remarkable passage was to me a revelation; it was the _mot de
l’enigme_, the way to make the egg stand upright, the rending of the
veil of Isis. The feat for which Julius Cæsar would have relinquished
a civil war, the secret which kings from Nero to Mahommet Ali vainly
attempted to solve, the discovery of which travellers, from Herodotus
to Bruce, have risked their lives, was reduced to comparative
facility. For the last three thousand years explorers had been
working, literally and metaphorically, against the stream, where
disease and savagery had exhausted health and strength, pocket and
patience, at the very beginning of the end. I therefore resolved to
reverse the operation, and thus I hoped to see the young Nile and to
stultify a certain old proverb.

The Court of Directors of the Honourable East India Company
unwillingly sanctioned my project: I was too clever by half, and they
suspected that it concealed projects of annexation or conquest. All
that my political views aimed at was to secure the supremacy of my
country in the Red Sea. Despite Lord Palmerston and Robert Stephenson,
I foresaw that the Suez Canal would be a success, and I proposed to
purchase for the sum of £10,000 all the ports on the East African
shore as far south as Berbera. This was refused; I was sternly
reprimanded, and the result will presently appear.

In July of the same year we reached Aden from Bombay. Our little party
was composed of Lieutenant Herne and Lieutenant Stroyan, with myself
in command. Before setting out I permitted Lieutenant J. H. Speke to
join us; he was in search of African sport, and, being a stranger, he
was glad to find companions. This officer afterwards accompanied me to
Central Africa, and died at Bath on Thursday, September 15th, 1864.

Aden――“eye of Yemen,” the “coal-hole of the East” (as we call it), the
“dry and squalid city” of Abulfeda――gave me much trouble. It is one of
the worst, if not _the_ worst, places of residence to which
Anglo-Indians can be condemned. The town occupies the crater floor of
an extinct volcano whose northern wall, a grim rock of bare black
basalt known as Jebel Shamsham, is said to be the sepulchre of Kabil,
or Cain, and certainly the First Murderer lies in an appropriate spot.
Between May and October the climate is dreadful. The storms of unclean
dust necessitate candles at noon, and not a drop of rain falls, whilst
high in the red hot air you see the clouds rolling towards the
highlands of the interior, where their blessed loads will make Arabia
happy. In Yemen――Arabia Felix――there are bubbling springs and fruits
and vineyards, sweet waters, fertilising suns, and cool nights. In
Aden and its neighbourhood all is the abomination of desolation.

The miseries of our unfortunate troops might have been lightened had
we originally occupied the true key of the Red Sea, the port of
Berbera on the Somali coast opposite Aden. But the step had been
taken; the authorities would not say “Peccavi” and undo the past.
Therefore we died of fever and dysentery; the smallest wound became a
fearful ulcer which destroyed limb or life. Even in health, existence
without appetite or sleep was a pest. I had the audacity to publish
these facts, and had once more to pay the usual penalty for telling
the truth.

The English spirit suffers from confinement behind any but wooden
walls, and the Aden garrison displayed a timidity which astonished me.
The fierce faces, the screaming voices, and the frequent faction
fights of the savage Somali had cowed our countrymen, and they were
depressed by a “peace at any price” policy. Even the Brigadier
commanding, General (afterwards Sir) James Outram, opposed my
explorations, and the leader was represented as a madman leading
others to a certain and cruel death.

I at once changed my plans. To prove that the journey presented no
real danger, I offered to visit alone what was considered the most
perilous part of the country and explore Harar, the capital of the
_terra incognita_. But to prevent my being detained meanwhile, I
stationed my companions on the African coast with orders to seize and
stop the inland caravans――a measure which would have had the effect of
releasing me. This is a serious danger in Abyssinian travel: witness
the case of Pedro Cavilham in 1499, and the unfortunate Consul Cameron
in our own day. Those “nameless Ethiopians,” the older savages,
sacrificed strangers to their gods. The modern only keep them in
irons, flog them, and starve them.

At the time I went few but professed geographers knew even the name of
Harar, or suspected that within three hundred miles of Aden there is a
counterpart of ill-famed Timbuctu. Travellers of all nations had
attempted it in vain; men of science, missionaries, and geographers
had all failed. It was said that some Hamitu prophet had read decline
and fall in the first footsteps of the Frank, and that the bigoted
barbarians had threatened death to the infidel caught within their
walls. Yet it was worth seeing, especially in those days, when few
were the unvisited cities of the world. It has a stirring history, a
peculiar race and language, it coins its own money, and it exports the
finest coffee known. Finally it is the southernmost town in Tropical
Africa.

On April 28th, 1854, in an open boat, I left Aden alone, without my
companions, re-becoming El Hajj Abdullah, the Arab. My attendants were
Mohammed and Guled, two Somali policemen bound to keep my secret for
the safety of their own throats. I afterwards engaged one Abdy Abokr,
a kind of hedge-priest, whose nickname was the “End of Time,” meaning
the _ne plus ultra_ of villainy. He was a caution――a bad tongue, a
mischievous brain, covetous and wasteful, treacherous as a hyena,
revengeful as a camel, timorous as a jackal.

Three days of summer sail on the “blind billows” and the “singing
waves” of the romantic Arab geographers landed us at Zayla, _alias_
Andal, the classical Sinus Avaliticus, to the south-west of Aden.
During the seventh century it was the capital of a kingdom which
measured forty-three by forty days’ march; now the Bedouin rides up to
its walls. The site is the normal Arabo-African scene, a strip of
sulphur-yellow sand with a deep blue dome above and a foreground of
indigo-coloured sea; behind it lies the country, a reeking desert of
loose white sand and brown clay, thinly scattered with thorny shrub
and tree. The buildings are a dozen large houses of mud and coralline
rubble painfully whitewashed. There are six mosques――green little
battlemented things with the Wahhali dwarf tower by way of minaret,
and two hundred huts of dingy palm-leaf.

The population of fifteen thousand souls has not a good name――Zayla
boasting or vanity and Kurayeh pride is a proverb. They are managed by
forty Turkish soldiers under a Somali Governor, the Hajj Shermarkuy,
meaning “one who sees no harm.” The tall old man was a brave in his
youth; he could manage four spears, and his sword-cut was known. He
always befriended English travellers.

The only thing in favour of Zayla is its cheapness. A family of six
persons can live well on £30 per annum. Being poor, the people are
idle, and the hateful “Inshalla bukra”――“To-morrow if Allah
pleases”――and the Arab “tenha paciencia,” “amanha,” and “espere um
pouco” is the rule.

I was delayed twenty-seven days whilst a route was debated upon, mules
were sent for, camels were bought, and an abban, or protector-guide,
was secured. Hereabouts no stranger could travel without such a
patron, who was paid to defend his client’s life and property.
Practically he took his money and ran away.

On the evening of November 27th, 1864, the caravan was ready. It
consisted of five camels laden with provisions, cooking-pots,
ammunition, and our money――that is to say, beads, coarse tobacco,
American sheeting, Indian cotton, and indigo-dyed stuffs. The escort
was formed by the two policemen, the “End of Time,” and Yusuf, a
one-eyed lad from Zayla, with the guide and his tail of three
followers. My men were the pink of Somali fashion. They had stained
their hair of a light straw colour by plastering it with ashes; they
had teased it till it stood up a full foot, and they had mutually
spirted upon their wigs melted tallow, making their heads look like
giant cauliflowers that contrasted curiously with the bistre-coloured
skins. Their tobes (togas) were dazzlingly white, with borders
dazzlingly red. Outside the dress was strapped a horn-hilted two-edged
dagger, long and heavy; their shields of rhinoceros hide were brand
new, and their two spears poised upon the right shoulder were freshly
scraped and oiled, and blackened and polished. They had added my spare
rifle and guns to the camel loads――the things were well enough in
Aden, but in Somali we would deride such strange, unmanly weapons.
They balanced themselves upon dwarf Abyssinian saddles, extending the
leg and raising the heel like the _haute école_ of Louis XIV. The
stirrup was an iron ring admitting only the big toe, and worse than
that of the Sertanejo.

As usual in this country, where the gender masculine will not work, we
had two cooks――tall, buxom, muscular dames, chocolate skinned and
round faced. They had curiously soft and fluted voices, hardly to be
expected from their square and huge-hipped figures, and contrasting
agreeably with the harsh organs of the men. Their feet were bare,
their veil was confined by a narrow fillet, and the body-cloth was an
indigo-dyed cotton, girt at the waist and graceful as a winding sheet.
I never saw them eat; probably, as the people say of cooks, they lived
by sucking their fingers.

And here a few words about the Somali, amongst whom we were to travel.
These nomads were not pure negroes; like the old Egyptians, they were
a mixed breed of African and Arab. The face from the brow to the
nostrils is Asiatic, from the nostrils to the chin showed traces of
negro blood. The hair was African; they decorated it by a sheep-skin
wig cut to the head and died fiery orange with henna. The figure was
peculiar, the shoulders were high and narrow, the trunk was small, the
limbs were spider-like, and the forearm was often of simian
proportions.

The Somali were a free people, lawless as free. The British Government
would not sanction their being sold as slaves. Of course they enslaved
others, and they had a servile caste called Midyan, who were the only
archers. They had little reverence for their own chiefs except in
council, and they discussed every question in public, none hesitating
to offer the wildest conjectures. At different times they suggested
that I was a Turk, an Egyptian, a Marah man, a Banyan, Ahmad the
Indian, the Governor of Aden, a merchant, a pilgrim, the chief of
Zayla or his son, a boy, a warrior in silver armour, an old woman, a
man painted white, and lastly, a calamity sent down from heaven to
tire out the lives of the Somali.

The Somali were bad Moslems, but they believed in a deity and they
knew the name of their Prophet. Wives being purchased for their value
in cows or camels, the wealthy old were polygamous and the young poor
were perforce bachelors. They worked milk-pots of tree-fibre like the
beer-baskets of Kaffir-land. They were not bad smiths, but they
confined their work to knives, spear-heads, and neat bits for their
unshod horses. Like the Kaffirs, they called bright iron “rotten,” and
they never tempered it. Like all Africans, they were very cruel
riders.

These nomads had a passion for independence, and yet when placed under
a strong arm they were easily disciplined. In British Aden a merry,
laughing, dancing, and fighting race, at home they were a moping,
melancholy people; for this their lives of perpetual danger might
account. This insecurity made them truly hard-hearted. I have seen
them when shifting camp barbarously leave behind for the hyenas their
sick and decrepit parents. When the fatal smallpox breaks out, the
first cases are often speared and the huts burned over the still warm
corpse.

The Somali deemed nothing so noble as murder. The more cowardly the
deed is, the better, as showing the more “nous.” Even the midnight
butchery of a sleeping guest is highly honourable. The hero plants a
rish, or white ostrich feather, in his tufty pole and walks about the
admired of all admirers, whilst the wives of those who have not
received this order of merit taunt their husbands as _noirs
fainéants_. Curious to say, the Greek and Roman officers used to
present these plumes to the bravest of their officers for wearing on
their helmet.

My journey began with the hard alluvial plain, forty-five to
fifty-eight miles broad, between the sea and the mountains. It
belonged to the Eesa, a tribe of Somali Bedouins, and how these
“sun-dwellers” could exist there was a mystery. On the second day we
reached a kraal consisting of gurgi, or diminutive hide huts. There
was no thorn fence as is required in the lion-haunted lands to the
west. The scene was characteristic of that pastoral life which
supplies poetry with Arcadian images and history with its blackest
tragedies. Whistling shepherds, tall thin men, spear in hand, bore the
younglings of the herd in their bosoms or drove to pasture the
long-necked camels preceded by a patriarch with a wooden bell. Patches
of Persian sheep with snowy bodies and jetty faces flecked the tawny
plain, and flocks of goats were committed to women dressed in skins
and boys who were unclad till the days of puberty. Some led the ram,
around whose neck a cord of white heather was tied for luck. Others
frisked with the dogs, animals by no means contemptible in the eyes of
these Bedouin Moslems. All begged for bori――the precious
tobacco――their only narcotic. They run away if they see smoke, and
they suspect a kettle to be a mortal weapon. So the Bachwanas called
our cannon, “pots.” Many of these wild people had never tasted grain
and had never heard of coffee or sugar. During the rains they lived on
milk; in the dries they ate meat, avoiding, however, the blood. Like
other races to the north and south, they would not touch fish or
birds, which they compared to snakes and vultures. “Speak not to me
with that mouth that has tasted fish!” is a dire insult.

The Eesa were a typical Somali tribe; it might have numbered one
hundred thousand spears, and it had a bad name. “Treacherous as an
Eesa,” is a proverb at Zayla, where it is said these savages would
offer you a bowl of milk with the left hand and would stab you with
the right. Their lives were spent in battle and murder.

The next march, a total of fifty-two miles, nearly lost us. Just
before reaching the mountains which subtend the coast, we crossed the
warm trail of a razzia, or cavalcade: some two hundred of the Habr
Awal, our inveterate enemies, had been scouring the country. Robinson
Crusoe was less scared by the footprint than were my companions. Our
weak party numbered only nine men, of whom all except Mohammed and
Guled were useless, and the first charge would have been certain
death.

Escaping this danger, we painfully endured the rocks and thorns of the
mountains and wilds. The third march placed us at Halimalah, a sacred
tree about half-way between this coast and our destination――Harar. It
is a huge sycamore suggesting the hiero-sykaminon of Egypt. The Gallas
are still tree-worshippers, and the Somali respect this venerable
vegetable as do the English their Druidical mistletoe.

We were well received at the kers (the kraals or villages). They were
fenced with large and terrible thorns, an effectual defence against
barelegged men. The animals had a place apart――semi-circular beehives
made of grass mats mounted on sticks. The furniture consisted of
weapons, hides, wooden pillows and mats for beds, pots of woven fibre,
and horse gear. We carried our own dates and rice, we bought meat and
the people supplied us with milk gratis――to sell it was a disgrace.
Fresh milk was drunk only by the civilised; pastoral people preferred
it when artificially curdled and soured.

We soon rose high above sea-level, as the cold nights and the burning
suns told us. The eighth march placed us on the Ban Marar, a plain
twenty-seven miles broad――at that season a waterless stubble, a yellow
nap, dotted with thorny trees and bushes, and at all times infamous
for robbery and murder. It was a glorious place for game: in places it
was absolutely covered with antelopes, and every random shot must have
told in the immense herds.

Here I had the distinction of being stalked by a lion. As night drew
in we were urging our jaded mules over the western prairie towards a
dusky line of hills. My men proceeded whilst I rode in rear with a
double-barrelled gun at full cock across my knees. Suddenly my animal
trembled and bolted forward with a sidelong glance of fear. I looked
back and saw, within some twenty yards, the king of beasts creeping up
silently as a cat. To fire both barrels in the direction of my stalker
was the work of a second. I had no intention of hitting, as aim could
not be taken in the gloaming, and to wound would have been fatal. The
flame and the echoed roar from the hills made my friend slink away.
Its intention was, doubtless, to crawl within springing distance and
then by a bound on my neck to have finished my journey through
Somaliland and through life. My companions shouted in horror “Libah!
libah!”――“The lion! the lion!”――and saw a multitude of lions that
night.

After crossing the desert prairie, we entered the hills of the
agricultural Somali, the threshold of the South Abyssinian mountains.
The pastoral scene now changed for waving crops of millet, birds in
flights, and hedged lanes, where I saw with pleasure the dog-rose.
Guided by a wild fellow called Altidon, we passed on to the Sagharah,
the village of the Gerad, or chief, Adan. He had not a good name, and
I was afterwards told he was my principal danger. But we never went
anywhere without our weapons, and the shooting of a few vultures on
the wing was considered a great feat where small shot is unknown. “He
brings down birds from the sky!” exclaimed the people.

I must speak of the Gerad, however, as I found him――a civil and
hospitable man, greedy, of course, suspicious, and of shortsighted
policy.

His good and pretty wife Kayrah was very kind, and supplied me with
abundance of honey wine, the merissa of Abyssinia. It tasted like
champagne to a palate long condemned to total abstinence, without even
tea.

We were now within thirty direct miles of Harar, and my escort made a
great stand. The chief Adan wanted to monopolise us and our goods. My
men, therefore, were threatened with smallpox, the bastinado, lifelong
captivity in unlit dungeons, and similar amenities.

On June 2nd, 1855, sent for our mules. They were missing. An
unpleasantness was the consequence, and the animals appeared about
noon. I saddled my own――no one would assist me. When, mounted and gun
in hand, I rode up to my followers, who sat sulkily on the ground, and
observing that hitherto their acts had not been those of the brave, I
suggested that before returning to Aden we should do something of
manliness. They arose, begged me not to speak such words, and offered
to advance if I would promise to reward them should we live and to pay
blood-money to their friends in case of the other contingency. They
apparently attached much importance to what is vulgarly termed
“cutting up well.”

Now, however, we were talking reason, and I settled all difficulties
by leaving a letter addressed to the Political Resident at Aden.
Mohammed and Guled were chosen to accompany me, the rest remaining
with the Gerad Adan. I must say for my companions that once in the
saddle they shook off their fears; they were fatalists, and they
believed in my star, whilst they had the fullest confidence in their
pay or pension.

The country now became romantic and beautiful――a confusion of lofty
stony mountains, plantations of the finest coffee, scatters of
villages, forests of noble trees, with rivulets of the coolest and
clearest water. We here stood some five thousand five hundred feet
high, and although only nine degrees removed from the Line, the air
was light and pleasant. It made me remember the climate of Aden, and
hate it.

We slept _en route_, and on January 3rd we first sighted Harar City.
On the crest of a hill distant two miles it appeared, a long sombre
line strikingly contrasting with the whitewashed settlements of the
more civilised East, and nothing broke the outline except the two grey
and rudely shaped minarets of the Jami, or Maritz (cathedral). I
almost grudged the exposure of three lives to win so paltry a prize.
But of all Europeans who had attempted it before me not one had
succeeded in entering that ugly pile of stones.

We then approached the city gate and sat there, as is the custom, till
invited to enter. Presently we were ordered to the palace by a
chamberlain, a man with loud and angry voice and eyes.

At the entrance of the palace we dismounted by command, and we were
told to run across the court, which I refused to do. We were then
placed under a tree in one corner of the yard and to the right of the
palace. The latter is a huge, windowless barn of rough stone and red
clay, without other insignia but a thin coat of whitewash over the
doorway.

Presently we were beckoned in and told to doff our slippers. A curtain
was raised, and we stood in the presence of the then Amir of Harar,
Sultan Ahmed bin Sultan Abibaki.

The sight was savage, if not imposing. The hall of audience was a dark
room, eighty to ninety feet long, and its whitewashed walls were hung
with rusty fetters and bright matchlocks. At the further end, on a
common East Indian cane sofa, sat a small yellow personage――the great
man. He wore a flowing robe of crimson cloth edged with snowy fur, and
a narrow white turban twisted round a tall conical cap of red velvet.
Ranged in double ranks perpendicular to the presence and nearest to
the chief were his favourites and courtiers, with right arms bared
after the fashion of Abyssinia. Prolonging these parallel lines
towards the door were Galla warriors, wild men with bushy wigs.
Shining rings of zinc on their arms, wrists, and ankles formed their
principal attire. They stood motionless as statues; not an eye moved,
and each right hand held up a spear with an enormous head of metal,
the heel being planted in the ground.

I entered with a loud “As ’salem alaykum”――“Peace be upon ye!”――and
the normal answer was returned. A pair of chamberlains then led me
forward to bow over the chief’s hand. He directed me to sit on a mat
opposite to him, and with lowering brow and inquisitive glance he
asked what might be my business in Harar. It was the crisis. I
introduced myself as an Englishman from Aden coming to report that
certain changes had taken place there, in the hope that the “cordial
intent” might endure between the kingdoms of Harar and England.

The Amir smiled graciously. I must admit that the smile was a relief
to me. It was a joy to my attendants, who sat on the ground behind
their master, grey-brown with emotion, and mentally inquiring, “What
next?”

The audience over, we were sent to one of the Amir’s houses, distant
about one hundred paces from the palace. Here cakes of sour maize
(fuba), soaked in curdled milk, and lumps of beef plenteously powdered
with pepper, awaited us. Then we were directed to call upon Gerad
Mohammed, Grand Vizier of Harar. He received us well, and we retired
to rest not dissatisfied with the afternoon’s work. We had eaten the
chief’s bread and salt.

During my ten days’ stay at Harar I carefully observed the place and
its people. The city was walled and pierced with five large gates,
flanked by towers, but was ignorant of cannon. The streets――narrow
lanes strewed with rocks and rubbish――were formed by houses built of
granite and sandstone from the adjacent mountains. The best abodes
were double storied, long and flat roofed, with holes for windows
placed jealously high up, and the doors were composed of a single
plank. The women, I need hardly say, had separate apartments. The city
abounded in mosques――plain buildings without minarets――and the
graveyards were stuffed with tombs――oblongs formed by slabs placed
edgeways in the ground.

The people, numbering about eight thousand souls, had a bad name among
their neighbours. The Somali say that Harar is a “paradise inhabited
by asses”; and “hard as the heart of Harar” is a byword. The junior
members of the royal family were imprisoned till wanted for the
throne. Amongst the men I did not see a handsome face or hear one
pleasant voice. The features were harsh and plain, the skin was a
sickly brown, the hair and beard were short and untractable, and the
hands and feet were large and coarse. They were celebrated for laxity
of morals, fondness for strong waters, much praying, coffee-drinking,
and chewing tobacco and kat, a well-known theme plant. They had a
considerable commerce with the coast, which was reached by a large
caravan once a year.

The women were beautiful by the side of their lords. They had small
heads, regular profiles, straight noses, large eyes, mouths almost
Caucasian, and light brown skins. The hair, parted in the centre and
gathered into two large bunches behind the ears, was covered with dark
blue muslin or network, whose ends were tied under the chin. Girls
collected their locks, which were long, thick, and wavy――not
wiry――into a knot _à la Diane_; a curtain of short close plaits
escaping from the bunch fell upon the shoulders. The dress was a wide
frock of chocolate or indigo-dyed cotton, girt round the middle with a
sash; before and behind there was a triangle of scarlet with the point
downwards. The ornaments were earrings and necklaces of black buffalo
horn, the work of Western India. The bosom was tattooed with stars,
the eyebrows were lengthened with dyes, the eyes were fringed with
antimony, and the palms and soles were stained red. Those pretty faces
had harsh voices, their manners were rude, and I regret to say that an
indiscreet affection for tobacco and honey wine sometimes led to a
public bastinado.

At Harar was a university which supplied Somaliland with poor scholars
and crazy priests. There were no endowments for students――learning was
its own reward――and books (manuscripts) were rare and costly. Only
theology was studied. Some of the graduates had made a name in the
Holy Land of Arabia, where few ranked higher than my friend Shaykh
Jami el Berteri. To be on the safer side he would never touch tobacco
or coffee. I liked his conversation, but I eschewed his dinners.

Harar――called Gay or Harar Gay by her sons――is the capital of Hadiyah,
a province of the ancient Zala empire, and her fierce Moslems nearly
extirpated Christianity from Shoa and Amara. The local Attila Mohammed
Gragne, or the “Left-Handed,” slew in 1540 David III., the last
Ethiopian monarch who styled himself “King of Kings.”

David’s successor, Claudius, sent imploring messages to Europe, and D.
Joao III. ordered the chivalrous Stephen and Christopher da Gama, sons
of Vasco da Gama, to the rescue. The Portuguese could oppose only
three hundred and fifty muskets and a rabble rout of Abyssinians to
ten thousand Moslems. D. Christopher was wounded, taken prisoner, and
decapitated. Good Father Lobo declares that “where the martyr’s head
fell, a fountain sprung up of wonderful virtue, which cured many
hopeless diseases.”

Eventually Gragne was shot by one Pedro Leao, a Portuguese soldier who
was bent upon revenging his leader’s fall. The Moslem’s wife,
Tamwalbara, prevented the dispersion of the army, making a slave
personate her dead husband, and drew off his forces in safety. A
strong-minded woman!

My days at Harar were dull enough. At first we were visited by all the
few strangers of the city, but they soon thought it prudent to shun
us. The report of my “English brethren” being on the coast made them
look upon me as a mufsid, or dangerous man. The Somali, on the other
hand, in compliment to my attendants, were most attentive. It was
harvest home, and we had opportunity of seeing the revels of the
threshers and reapers――a jovial race, slightly “dipsomaniac.”

Harar also was the great half-way house and resting place for slaves
between Abyssinia and the coast. In making purchases, the adage was,
“If you want a brother in battle, buy a Nubian; if you would be rich,
an Abyssinian; if you require an ass, a negro.”

I sometimes called upon the learned and religious, but not
willingly――these shaykhash, or reverend men, had proposed detaining me
until duly converted and favoured with a “call.” Harar, like most
African cities, was a prison on a large scale. “You enter it by your
own will; you leave it by another’s,” is the pithy saw.

At length, when really anxious to depart, and when my two Somali had
consulted their rosaries for the thousandth time, I called upon the
Gerad Mohammed, who had always been civil to us. He was suffering from
a chronic bronchitis. Here, then, lay my chance of escaping from my
rat-trap. The smoke of some brown paper matches steeped in saltpetre
relieved him. We at once made a bargain. The minister was to take me
before the Amir and secure for me a ceremonious dismission. On the
other part, I bound myself to send up from the coast a lifelong supply
of the precious medicine. We both kept faith. Moreover, after
returning to Aden I persuaded the authorities to reward with handsome
presents the men who held my life in their hands and yet did not take
it.

After a pleasing interview with the Amir, who did his best to smile,
we left Harar on January 13th, 1855. At Sagharah, where the villagers
had prayed the death-prayer as we set out for the city, we were
received with effusion. They now scattered over us handfuls of toasted
grain, and they danced with delight, absorbing copious draughts of
liquor. The “End of Time” wept crocodile’s tears, and the women were
grateful that their charms had not been exposed to the terrible
smallpox.

After a week’s rest we prepared to make the coast. I was desirous of
striking Berbera, a port south of Zayla, where my friends awaited me.
The escort consented to accompany me by the short direct road, on
condition of travelling night and day. They warned me that they had a
blood feud with all the tribes on the path, that we should find very
little water and no provisions, and that the heat would be frightful.
Truly, a pleasant prospect for a weary man!

But if they could stand it, so could I. The weaker attendants, the
women, and the camels were sent back by the old path, and I found
myself _en route_ on January 26th, accompanied by my two Somali and by
a wild guide known as Dubayr――the “Donkey.” My provaunt for five days
consisted of five biscuits, a few limes, and sundry lumps of sugar.

I will not deny that the ride was trying work. The sun was fearful,
the nights were raw and damp. For twenty-four hours we did not taste
water; our brains felt baked, our throats burned, the mirage mocked us
at every turn, and the effect was a kind of monomania. At length a
small bird showed us a well and prevented, I believe, our going mad.
The scenery was uniform and uninteresting――horrid hills upon which
withered aloes raised their spears; plains apparently rained upon by
showers of fire and stones, and rolling ground rich only in “wait a
bit” thorns, made to rend man’s skin and garment. We scrupulously
avoided the kraals, and when on one occasion the wild people barred
the way we were so intolerably fierce with hunger and thirst that they
fled from us as though we were fiends. The immortal Ten Thousand
certainly did not sight the cold waters of the Euxine with more
delight than we felt when hailing the warm bay of Berbera. I ended
that toilsome ride to and from Harar of two hundred and forty miles at
2 a.m. on January 30th, 1855, after a last spell of forty miles. A
glad welcome from my brother expeditionists soon made amends for past
privations and fatigues.

                      *     *     *     *     *

And now to recount the most unpleasant part of my first adventure in
East Africa.

Having paid a visit to Aden, I returned to Berbera in April, 1855,
prepared to march upon the head waters of the Nile.

But Fate and the British authorities were against me. I had done too
much――I had dared to make Berbera a rival port. They were not
scrupulous at Aden, even to the taking of life.

My little party consisted of forty-two muskets, including three
officers and myself. The men, however, were not to be trusted, but
after repeated applications I could not obtain an escort of Somali
policemen. Matters looked ugly, and the more so as there was no
retreat.

The fair of Berbera, which had opened in early October, was breaking
up, and the wild clansmen were retiring from the seaboard to their
native hills. The harbour rapidly emptied; happily, however, for us, a
single boat remained there.

We slept comfortably on April 18th, agreeing to have a final shot at
the gazelles before marching. Between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. we were roused
by a rush of men like a roar of a stormy wind. I learned afterwards
that our enemies numbered between three and four hundred. We armed
ourselves with all speed, whilst our party, after firing a single
volley, ran away as quickly as possible.

[Illustration: THE ATTACK ON THE CAMP AT BERBERA.    [_See Page 96._]

The unfortunate Lieutenant Stroyan was run through with a spear; he
slept far from us, and we did not see him fall. Lieutenants Herne and
Speke and I defended ourselves in our tent till the savages proceeded
to beat it down. I then gave the word to sally, and cleared the way
with my sabre. Lieutenant Herne accompanied me and――wonderful to
relate――escaped without injury. Lieutenant Speke was seized and tied
up; he had eleven spear-thrusts before he could free himself, and he
escaped by a miracle. When outside the camp, I vainly tried once more
to bring up our men to the fray. Finding me badly hurt they carried me
on board the boat. Here I was joined by the survivors, who carried
with them the corpse of our ill-fated friend.

Sad and dispirited, we returned to Aden. We had lost our property as
well as our blood, and I knew too well that we should be rewarded with
nothing but blame. The authorities held a Court of Inquiry in my
absence, and facetiously found that we and not they were in fault.
Lord Dalhousie, the admirable statesman then governing in general
British India, declared that they were quite right. I have sometimes
thought they were.



_TO THE HEART OF AFRICA_

1856-1859



I

_THE JOURNEY_


I had long wished to “unveil Isis”――in other words, to discover the
sources of the Nile and the Lake regions of Central Africa――and to
this end I left London in September, 1856, for Bombay. Here I applied
for Captain Speke to accompany me as second in command, as he wished
much to go. My subsequent dispute with Speke is well known, and I will
not refer to it here. I took him with me out of pure good nature, for,
as he had suffered with me in purse and person at Berbera the year
before, I thought it only just to offer him the opportunity of
renewing an attempt to penetrate to the unknown regions of Central
Africa. I had no other reasons. He was not a linguist, nor a man of
science, nor an astronomical observer, and during the expedition he
acted in a subordinate capacity only. The Court of Directors refused
him leave, but I obtained it from the local authorities in Bombay. I
may here add that the Royal Geographical Society had given me a grant
of £1,000, and that the Court of Directors of the East India Company
had given me two years’ leave.

I landed at Zanzibar from Bombay on December 19th, 1856, and received
much kindness from Lieutenant-Colonel Hamerton, Her Majesty’s Consul.
First of all I made an experimental trip, and this and the study of
Zanzibar occupied my time until May 14th, 1857, when I left Zanzibar
for the second time, and on the 27th of the same month I landed at
Wale Point, on the east coast of Africa, about eighty-four miles from
the town of Bagamoyo.

I wanted to engage one hundred and seventy porters, but could only get
thirty-six, and thirty animals were found, which were all dead in six
months, so I had to leave a part of my things behind, including a
greater part of my ammunition and my iron boat. I paid various visits
to the hippopotamus haunts, and had my boat uplifted from the water
upon the points of two tusks, which made corresponding holes in the
bottom. My escort were under the impression that nothing less than one
hundred and fifty guns and several cannon would enable them to fight a
way through the perils of the interior. I was warned that I must pass
through savages who shot with poisoned arrows, that I must avoid
trees――which was not easy in a land of forest――that the Wazaramo had
forbidden white men to enter their country, that one rhinoceros had
killed two hundred men, that armies of elephants would attack my camp
by night, and that the hyena was more dangerous than the Bengal
tiger――altogether, not a cheerful outlook.

Most of these difficulties were raised by a rascal named Ramji, who
had his own ends in view. Being a Hindoo, he thought I was ignorant of
Cutchee; so one day I overheard the following conversation between him
and a native.

“Will he ever reach it?” asked the native, meaning the Sea of Ujiji;
to which Ramji replied:

“Of course not; what is he that he should pass through Ugogo?” (a
province about half way).

So I remarked at once that I did intend to pass Ugogo and also reach
the Sea of Ujiji, that I did know Cutchee, and that if he was up to
any tricks, I should be equal to him.

On June 26th, 1857, I set out in earnest on a journey into the far
interior.

On this journey I had several queer experiences. At Nzasa I was
visited by three native chiefs, who came to ascertain whether I was
bound on a peaceful errand. When I assured them of my unwarlike
intentions, they told me I must halt on the morrow and send forth a
message to the next chief, but as this plan invariably loses three
days, I replied that I could not be bound by their rules, but was
ready to pay for their infraction. During the debate upon this
fascinating proposal for breaking the law, one of the most turbulent
of the Baloch, who were native servants in my train, drew his sword
upon an old woman because she refused to give up a basket of grain.
She rushed, with the face of a black Medusa, into the assembly, and
created a great disturbance. When that was allayed, the principal
chief asked me what brought the white man into their country, and at
the same time to predict the loss of their gains and commerce, land
and liberty.

“I am old,” he quoth pathetically, “and my beard is grey, yet I never
beheld such a calamity as this.”

“These men,” replied my interpreter, “neither buy nor sell; they do
not inquire into price, nor do they covet profit.”

An extravagant present――for at that time I was ignorant of the price I
ought to pay――opened the chiefs’ hearts, and they appointed one of
their body to accompany me as far as the western half of the Kingani
valley. They also caused to be performed a dance of ceremony in my
honour. A line of small, plump, chestnut-coloured women, with wild,
beady eyes and thatch of clay-plastered hair, dressed in their
loin-cloths, with a profusion of bead necklaces and other ornaments,
and with their ample bosoms tightly corded down, advanced and retired
in a convulsion of wriggle and contortion, whose fit expression was a
long discordant howl. I threw them a few strings of green beads, and
one of these falling to the ground, I was stooping to pick it up when
Said, my interpreter whispered, in my ear, “Bend not; they will say
‘He will not bend even to take up beads.’”

In some places I found the attentions of the fair sex somewhat
embarrassing, but when I entered the fine green fields that guarded
the settlements of Muhoewee, I was met _en masse_ by the ladies of the
villages, who came out to stare, laugh, and wonder at the white man.

“What would you think of these whites as husbands?” asked one of the
crowd.

“With such things on their legs, not by any means!” was the unanimous
reply, accompanied by peals of merriment.

On July 8th I fell into what my Arab called the “Valley of Death and
the Home of Hunger,” a malarious level plain. Speke, whom I shall
henceforth call my companion, was compelled by sickness to ride. The
path, descending into a dense thicket of spear grass, bush, and thorny
trees based on sand, was rough and uneven, but when I arrived at a
ragged camping kraal, I found the water bad, and a smell of decay was
emitted by the dark, dank ground. It was a most appalling day, and one
I shall not lightly forget. From the black clouds driven before
furious blasts pattered raindrops like musket bullets, splashing the
already saturated ground. Tall, stiff trees groaned and bent before
the gusts; birds screamed as they were driven from their
resting-places; the asses stood with heads depressed, ears hung down,
and shrinking tails turned to the wind; even the beasts of the wild
seemed to have taken refuge in their dens.

Despite our increasing weakness, we marched on the following day, when
we were interrupted by a body of about fifty Wazaramo, who called to
us to halt. We bought them off with a small present of cloth and
beads, and they stood aside to let us pass. I could not but admire the
athletic and statuesque figures of the young warriors, and their
martial attitudes, grasping in one hand their full-sized bows, and in
the other sheaths of grinded arrows, whose black barbs and necks
showed a fresh layer of poison.

Though handicapped by a very inadequate force, in eighteen days we
accomplished, despite sickness and every manner of difficulty, a march
of one hundred and eighteen miles, and entered K’hutu, the safe
rendezvous of foreign merchants, on July 14th. I found consolation in
the thought that the expedition had passed without accident through
the most dangerous part of the journey.

Resuming our march through the maritime region, on July 15th we
penetrated into a thick and tangled jungle, with luxuriant and
putrescent vegetation. Presently, however, the dense thicket opened
out into a fine park country, peculiarly rich in game, where the giant
trees of the seaboard gave way to mimosas, gums, and stunted thorns.
Large gnus pranced about, pawing the ground and shaking their
formidable manes; hartebeest and other antelopes clustered together on
the plain. The homely cry of the partridge resounded from the brake,
and the guinea-fowls looked like large bluebells upon the trees. Small
land-crabs took refuge in pits and holes, which made the path a cause
of frequent accidents, whilst ants of various kinds, crossing the road
in close columns, attacked man and beast ferociously, causing the
caravan to break into a halting, trotting hobble. The weather was a
succession of raw mists, rain in torrents, and fiery sunbursts; the
land appeared rotten, and the jungle smelt of death. At Kiruru I found
a cottage and enjoyed for the first time an atmosphere of sweet, warm
smoke. My companion would remain in the reeking, miry tent, where he
partially laid the foundations of the fever which afterwards
threatened his life in the mountains of Usagara.

Despite the dangers of hyenas, leopards, and crocodiles, we were
delayed by the torrents of rain in the depths of the mud at Kiruru. We
then resumed our march under most unpromising conditions. Thick grass
and the humid vegetation rendered the black earth greasy and slippery,
and the road became worse as we advanced. In three places we crossed
bogs from a hundred yards to a mile in length, and admitting a man up
to the knee. The porters plunged through them like laden animals, and
I was obliged to be held upon the ass. At last we reached Dut’humi,
where we were detained nearly a week, for malaria had brought on
attacks of marsh fever, which, in my case, thoroughly prostrated me. I
had during the fever fit, and often for hours afterwards, a queer
conviction of divided identity, never ceasing to be two persons that
generally thwarted and opposed each other. The sleepless nights
brought with them horrid visions, animals of grisliest form, and
hag-like women and men.

Dut’humi is one of the most fertile districts in K’hutu, and, despite
its bad name as regards climate, Arabs sometimes reside here for some
months for the purpose of purchasing slaves cheaply, and to repair
their broken fortunes for a fresh trip into the interior. This kept up
a perpetual feud amongst the chiefs of the country, and scarcely a
month passed without fields being laid waste, villages burnt down, and
the unhappy cultivators being carried off to be sold.

On July 24th, feeling strong enough to advance, we passed out of the
cultivation of Dut’humi. Beyond the cultivation the road plunged into
a jungle, where the European traveller realised every preconceived
idea of Africa’s aspect at once hideous and grotesque. The general
appearance is a mingling of bush and forest, most monotonous to the
eye. The black, greasy ground, veiled with thick shrubbery, supports
in the more open spaces screens of tiger and spear grass twelve and
thirteen feet high, with every blade a finger’s breadth; and the
towering trees are often clothed with huge creepers, forming heavy
columns of densest verdure. The earth, ever rain-drenched, emits the
odour of sulphuretted hydrogen, and in some parts the traveller might
fancy a corpse to be hidden behind every bush. That no feature of
miasma might be wanting to complete the picture, filthy heaps of the
meanest hovels sheltered their miserable inhabitants, whose frames are
lean with constant intoxication, and whose limbs are distorted with
ulcerous sores. Such a revolting scene is East Africa from Central
K’hutu to the base of the Usagara Mountains.

After a long, long tramp the next day through rice swamps, we came to
the nearest outposts of the Zungomero district. Here were several
caravans, with pitched tents, piles of ivory, and crowds of porters.
The march had occupied us over four weeks, about double the usual
time, and a gang of thirty-six Wanyamwezi native porters whom I had
sent on in advance to Zungomero naturally began to suspect accident.

Zungomero was not a pleasant place, and though the sea breeze was here
strong, beyond its influence the atmosphere was sultry and oppressive.
It was the great centre of traffic in the eastern regions. Lying upon
the main trunk road, it must be traversed by the up and down caravans,
and during the travelling season, between June and April, large bodies
of some thousand men pass through it every week. It was, therefore, a
very important station, and the daily expenditure of large caravans
being considerable, there was a good deal of buying and selling.

The same attractions which draw caravans to Zungomero render it the
great rendezvous of an army of touts, who, whilst watching the arrival
of ivory traders, amuse themselves with plundering the country.

Zungomero is the end of the maritime region, and when I had reached
it, I considered that the first stage of my journey was accomplished.

I had to remain at Zungomero about a fortnight to await the coming of
my porters. In this hot-bed of pestilence we nearly found “wet
graves.” Our only lodging was under the closed eaves of a hut, built
African fashion, one abode within the other; the roof was a sieve, the
walls were a system of chinks, and the floor was a sheet of mud.
Outside the rain poured pertinaciously, the winds were raw and
chilling, and the gigantic vegetation was sopped to decay, and the
river added its quotum of miasma. The hardships of the march had upset
our Baloch guard, and they became almost mutinous, and would do
nothing for themselves. They stole the poultry of the villagers,
quarrelled violently with the slaves, and foully abused their temporal
superior, Said bin Salim.

When we were ready to start from Zungomero, our whole party amounted
to a total of one hundred and thirty-two souls, whom I need not, I
think, describe in detail. We had plenty of cloth and beads for
traffic with the natives, a good store of provisions, arms, and
ammunition, a certain amount of camp furniture, instruments, such as
chronometers, compasses, thermometers, etc., a stock of stationery,
plenty of useful tools, clothing, bedding, and shoes, books and
drawing materials, a portable domestic medicine chest, and a number of
miscellaneous articles. As life at Zungomero was the acme of
discomfort, I was glad enough to leave it.

On August 7th, 1857, our expedition left Zungomero to cross the East
African ghauts in rather a pitiful plight. We were martyred by miasma;
my companion and I were so feeble that we could hardly sit our asses,
and we could scarcely hear. It was a day of severe toil, and we loaded
with great difficulty.

From Central Zungomero to the nearest ascent of the Usagara Mountains
is a march of five hours; and, after a painful and troublesome
journey, we arrived at the frontier of the first gradient of the
Usagara Mountains. Here we found a tattered kraal, erected by the last
passing caravan, and, spent with fatigue, we threw ourselves on the
short grass to rest. We were now about three hundred feet above the
plain level, and there was a wondrous change of climate. Strength and
health returned as if by magic; the pure sweet mountain air,
alternately soft and balmy, put new life into us. Our gipsy encampment
was surrounded by trees, from which depended graceful creepers, and
wood-apples large as melons. Monkeys played at hide-and-seek,
chattering behind the bolls, as the iguana, with its painted
scale-armour, issued forth; white-breasted ravens cawed, doves cooed
on well-clothed boughs, and the field cricket chirped in the shady
bush. By night the view disclosed a peaceful scene, the moonbeams
lying like sheets of snow upon the ruddy highlands, and the stars
shone like glow-lamps in the dome above. I never wearied of
contemplating the scene, and contrasting it with the Slough of
Despond, unhappy Zungomero. We stayed here two days, and then resumed
our upward march.

All along our way we were saddened by the sight of clean-picked
skeletons and here and there the swollen corpses of porters who had
perished by the wayside. A single large body passed us one day, having
lost fifty of their number by smallpox, and the sight of their
deceased comrades made a terrible impression. Men staggered on,
blinded by disease; mothers carried infants as loathsome as
themselves. He who once fell never rose again. No village would admit
a corpse into its precincts, and they had to lie there until their
agony was ended by the vulture, the raven, and the hyena. Several of
my party caught the infection, and must have thrown themselves into
the jungle, for when they were missed they could not be found. The
farther we went on, the more we found the corpses; it was a regular
way of death. Our Moslems passed them with averted faces, and with the
low “La haul” of disgust.

When we arrived at Rufutah, I found that nearly all our instruments
had been spoilt or broken; and one discomfort followed another until
we arrived at Zonhwe, which was the turning-point of our expedition’s
difficulties.

As we went on, the path fell easily westwards through a long, grassy
incline, cut by several water-courses. At noon I lay down fainting in
the sandy bed of the Muhama, and, keeping two natives with me, I
begged my companion to go on, and send me back a hammock from the
halting-place. My men, who before had become mutinous and deserting,
when they saw my extremity came out well; even the deserters
reappeared, and they led me to a place where stagnant water was found,
and said they were sorry. At two o’clock, as my companion did not send
a hammock, I remounted, and passed through several little villages. I
found my caravan halted on a hillside, where they had been attacked by
a swarm of wild bees.

Our march presented curious contrasts of this strange African nature,
which is ever in extremes. At one time a splendid view would charm me;
above, a sky of purest azure, flecked with fleecy clouds. The plain
was as a park in autumn, burnt tawny by the sun. A party was at work
merrily, as if preparing for an English harvest home. Calabashes and
clumps of evergreen trees were scattered over the scene, each
stretching its lordly arms aloft. The dove, the peewit, and the
guinea-fowl fluttered about. The most graceful of animals, the zebra
and the antelope, browsed in the distance. Then suddenly the fair
scene would vanish as if by enchantment. We suddenly turned into a
tangled mass of tall, fœtid reeds, rank jungle, and forest. After the
fiery sun and dry atmosphere of the plains, the sudden effect of the
damp and clammy chill was overpowering. In such places one feels as if
poisoned by miasma; a shudder runs through the frame, and cold
perspiration breaks over the brow.

So things went on until September 4th, which still found us on the
march. We had reached the basin of Inenge, which lies at the foot of
the Windy Pass, the third and westernmost range of the Usagara
Mountains. The climate is ever in extremes; during the day a furnace,
and at night a refrigerator. Here we halted. The villagers of the
settlements overlooking the ravine flocked down to barter their
animals and grain.

The halt was celebrated by abundant drumming and droning, which lasted
half the night; it served to raise the spirits of the men, who had
talked of nothing the whole day but the danger of being attacked by
the Wahumba, a savage tribe. The next morning there arrived a caravan
of about four hundred porters, marching to the coast under the command
of some Arab merchants. We interchanged civilities, and I was allured
into buying a few yards of rope and other things, and also some asses.
One of my men had also increased his suite, unknown to me at first, by
the addition of Zawada――the “Nice Gift.” She was a woman of about
thirty, with black skin shining like a patent leather boot, a bulging
brow, little red eyes, a wide mouth, which displayed a few long,
scattered teeth, and a figure considerably too bulky for her thin
legs. She was a patient and hardworking woman, and respectable enough
in the acceptation of the term. She was at once married off to old
Musangesi, one of the donkey-men, whose nose and chin made him a
caricature of our old friend Punch. After detecting her in a lengthy
walk, perhaps not a solitary one, he was guilty of such cruelty to her
that I felt compelled to decree a dissolution of the marriage, and she
returned safely to Zanzibar. At Inenge another female slave was added
to our troop in the person of Sikujui――“Don’t Know”――a herculean
person with a virago manner. The channel of her upper lip had been
pierced to admit a bone, which gave her the appearance of having a
duck’s bill. “Don’t Know’s” morals were frightful. She was duly
espoused, in the forlorn hope of making her a respectable woman, to
Goha, the sturdiest of the Wak’hutu porters; after a week she treated
him with sublime contempt. She gave him first one and then a dozen
rivals, and she disordered the whole caravan with her irregularities,
in addition to breaking every article entrusted to her charge, and at
last deserted shamelessly, so that her husband finally disposed of her
to a travelling trader in exchange for a few measures of rice. Her
ultimate fate I do not know, but the trader came next morning to
complain of a broken head.

After Inenge we were in for a bad part of the journey, and great
labour. Trembling with ague, with swimming heads, ears deafened by
weakness, and limbs that would hardly support us, we contemplated with
horrid despair the apparently perpendicular path up which we and our
starving asses were about to toil.

On September 10th we hardened our hearts and began to breast the Pass
Terrible. After rounding in two places wall-like sheets of rock and
crossing a bushy slope, we faced a long steep of loose white soil and
rolling stones, up which we could see the porters swarming more like
baboons than human beings, and the asses falling every few yards. As
we moved slowly and painfully forward, compelled to lie down by cough,
thirst, and fatigue, the sayhah, or war-cry, rang loud from hill to
hill, and Indian files of archers and spearmen streamed like lines of
black ants in all directions down the paths. The predatory Wahumba,
awaiting the caravan’s departure, had seized the opportunity of
driving the cattle and plundering the village of Inenge.

By resting every few yards, we reached, after about six hours, the
summit of the Pass Terrible, and here we sat down amongst aromatic
flowers and pretty shrubs to recover strength and breath.

On September 14th, our health much improved by the weather, we left
the hilltop and began to descend the counterslope of the Usagara
Mountains. For the first time since many days I had strength enough to
muster the porters and inspect their loads. The outfit which had been
expected to last a year had been half exhausted within three months. I
summoned Said bin Salim, and told him my anxiety. Like a veritable
Arab, he declared we had enough to last until we reached Unyamyembe,
where we should certainly be joined by reinforcements of porters.

“How do you know?” I inquired.

“Allah is all-knowing,” said Said. “The caravan will come.”

As the fatalism was infectious, I ceased to think upon the subject.

The next day we sighted the plateau of Ugogo and its eastern desert.
The spectacle was truly impressive. The first aspect was stern and
wild――the rough nurse of rugged men. We went on the descent from day
to day until September 18th, when a final march of four hours placed
us on the plains of Ugogo. Before noon I sighted from a sharp turn in
the bed of a river our tent pitched under a huge sycamore, on a level
step. It was a pretty spot in the barren scene, grassy, and grown with
green mimosas, and here we halted for a while. The second stage of our
journey was accomplished.

After three days’ sojourn at Ugogo to recruit the party and lay in
rations for four long desert marches, we set forth on our long march
through the province of Ugogo. Our first day’s journey was over a
grassy country, and we accomplished it in comparative comfort. The
next day we toiled through the sunshine of the hot waste, crossing
plains over paths where the slides of elephants’ feet upon the last
year’s muddy clay showed that the land was not always dry. During this
journey we suffered many discomforts and difficulties. The orb of day
glowed like a fireball in our faces; then our path would take us
through dense, thorny jungle, and over plains of black, cracked earth.
Our caravan once rested in a thorny copse based upon rich red and
yellow clay; once it was hurriedly dislodged by a swarm of wild bees,
and the next morning I learnt that we had sustained a loss――one of our
porters had deserted, and to his care had been committed one of the
most valuable of our packages, a portmanteau containing “The Nautical
Almanac,” surveying books, and most of our papers, pen, and ink.

At last we arrived at Ziwa, a place where caravans generally encamped,
because they found water there. At Ziwa we had many troubles. One
Marema, the Sultan of a new settlement, visited us on the day of our
arrival, and reproved us for sitting in the jungle, pointing the way
to his village. On my replying we were going to traverse Ugogo by
another road, he demanded his customs, which we refused, as they were
a form of blackmail. The Sultan threatened violence, whereupon the
asses were brought in from grazing and ostentatiously loaded before
his eyes. He then changed his tone from threats to beggary. I gave him
two cloths and a few strings of beads, preferring this to the chance
of a flight of arrows during the night.

When we resumed our journey, the heat was awful. The sun burnt like
the breath of a bonfire, warm siroccos raised clouds of dust, and in
front of us the horizon was so distant that, as the Arabs expressed
themselves, a man might be seen three marches off.

October 5th saw us in the centre of Kanyenye, a clearing in the jungle
of about ten miles in diameter. The surface was of a red clayey soil
dotted with small villages, huge calabashes, and stunted mimosas. Here
I was delayed four days to settle blackmail with Magomba, the most
powerful of the Wagogo chiefs. He was of a most avaricious nature.
First of all I acknowledged his compliments with two cottons. On
arrival at his headquarters, I was waited on by an oily Cabinet of
Elders, who would not depart without their “respects”――four cottons.
The next demand was made by his favourite, a hideous old Princess with
more wrinkles than hair, with no hair black and no tooth white; she
was not put right without a fee of six cottons. At last, accompanied
by a mob of courtiers, appeared the chief _in magnifico_. He was the
only chief who ever entered my tent in Ugogo――pride and a propensity
for strong drink prevented such visits. He was much too great a man to
call upon Arab merchants, but in our case curiosity mastered State
considerations. Magomba was an old man, black and wrinkled, drivelling
and decrepid. He wore a coating of castor-oil and a loin-cloth which
grease and use had changed from blue to black. He chewed his quid, and
expectorated without mercy; he asked many questions, and was all eyes
to the main chance. He demanded, and received, five cloths, one coil
of brass wire, and four blue cottons. In return he made me a present
of the leanest of calves, and when it was driven into camp with much
parade, his son, to crown all, put in a claim for three cottons. Yet
Magomba, before our departure, boasted of his generosity――and indeed
he was generous, for everything we had was in his hands, and we were
truly in his power. It was, indeed, my firm conviction from first to
last in this expedition that in case of attack or surprise by natives
I had not a soul except my companion to stand by me, and all those who
accompanied us would have either betrayed us or fled. We literally,
therefore, carried our lives in our hands.

We toiled on and on, suffering severely from the heat by day and
sometimes the cold by night, and troubled much with mutinous porters
and fears of desertion, until at last we reached the heart of the
great desert, or elephant ground, known as Fiery Field. On October
20th we began the transit of this Fiery Field. The waste here appeared
in its most horrid phase; a narrow goat-path serpentined in and out of
a growth of poisonous thorny jungle, with thin, hard grass straw
growing on a glaring white and rolling ground. The march was a severe
trial, and we lost on it three boxes of ammunition. By-and-by we
passed over the rolling ground, and plunged into a thorny jungle,
which seemed interminable, but which gradually thinned out into a
forest of thorns and gums, bush and underwood, which afforded a broad
path and pleasanter travelling. Unfortunately, it did not last long,
and we again had a very rough bit of ground to go over. Another forest
to pass through, and then we came out on October 27th into a clearing
studded with large stockaded villages, fields of maize and millet,
gourds and watermelons, and showing numerous flocks and herds. We had
arrived at Unyamwezi, and our traverse of Ugogo was over.

The people swarmed from their abodes, young and old hustling one
another for a better stare; the man forsook his loom and the girl her
hoe, and we were welcomed and escorted into the village by a tail of
screaming boys and shouting adults, the males almost nude, the women
bare to the waist, and clothed only knee-deep in kilts. Leading the
way, our guide, according to the immemorial custom of Unyamwezi,
entered uninvited and _sans cérémonie_ the nearest village; the long
string of porters flocked in with bag and baggage, and we followed
their example. We were placed under a wall-less roof, bounded on one
side by the bars of the village palisade, and surrounded by a mob of
starers, who relieved one another from morning to night, which made me
feel like a wild beast in a menagerie.

We rested some days at Unyamwezi――the far-famed “Land of the
Moon”――but I was urged to advance on the ground that the natives were
a dangerous race, though they appeared to be a timid and ignoble
people, dripping with castor and sesamum oil, and scantily attired in
shreds of cotton or greasy goat-skins. The dangers of the road between
Unyamwezi and Ujiji were declared to be great. I found afterwards that
they were grossly exaggerated, but I set forth with the impression
that this last stage of my journey would be the worst of all. The
country over which we travelled varied very much from day to day,
being sometimes opened and streaked with a thin forest of mimosas, and
at other times leading us through jungly patches. Going through a
thick forest, one of the porters, having imprudently lagged behind,
was clubbed and cruelly bruised by three black robbers, who relieved
him of his load. These highwaymen were not unusual in this part, and
their raids formed one of the many dangers we had to guard against.

On November 7th, 1857, the one hundred and thirty-fourth day from the
date of leaving the coast, we entered Kazeh, the principal village of
Unyamwezi, much frequented by Arab merchants. I always got on well
with the Arabs, and they gave me a most favourable reception. Striking
indeed was the contrast between the open-handed hospitality and hearty
goodwill of this truly noble race and the niggardliness of the savage
and selfish Africans. Whatever I alluded to――onions, plantains, limes,
vegetables, tamarinds, coffee, and other things, only to be found
amongst the Arabs――were sent at once, and the very name of payment
would have been an insult.

Kazeh is situated in Unyamyembe, the principal province of Unyamwezi,
and is a great meeting-place of merchants and point of departure for
caravans, which then radiate into the interior of Central
Intertropical Africa. Here the Arab merchant from Zanzibar meets his
compatriot returning from the Tanganyika and Uruwwa. Many of the Arabs
settle here for years, and live comfortably, and even splendidly.
Their houses, though single storied, are large, substantial, and
capable of defence; their gardens are extensive and well planted. They
receive regular supplies of merchandise, comforts, and luxuries from
the coast; they are surrounded by troops of concubines and slaves;
rich men have riding asses from Zanzibar, and even the poorest keep
flocks and herds.

I was detained at Kazeh from November 8th until December 14th, and the
delay was one long trial of patience.

It is customary for stranger caravans proceeding towards Ujiji to
remain six weeks or two months at Unyamyembe for repose and recovery
from the labours which they have endured; moreover, they are expected
to enjoy the pleasures of civilised society, and to accept the
hospitality offered them by the resident Arabs. In Eastern Africa, I
may mention, six weeks was the same as the three days’ visit in
England.

The morning after our arrival at Kazeh a great number of our porters
left us, and the rest of our party apparently considered that
Unyamyembe, and not Ujiji, was the end of the exploration. Several of
them were mutinous when I told them they would not be rewarded for
safe-conduct until we had reached the end of the up march, which was
not here; and these difficulties took a long time to settle. Kazeh,
indeed, proved in effect a second point of departure, easier only
because I had now gained some experience. Another cause of delay was
the sickness of many of our people, and it took some time for them to
shake off the ague which they had contracted. Indeed, the wing of
Azrael seemed waving over my own head. Nevertheless, on the morning of
December 15th I started off afresh, charmed with the prospect of a
fine open country, and delighted to get away from what had been to me
a veritable imprisonment.

I will not describe the details of our march, which went on without a
break. Christmas Day found us still marching, and so on day after day,
if I except an enforced halt of twelve days at Msene. On January 10th,
1858, I left Msene, with considerable difficulty through the mutiny of
porters; and so we pressed on, more or less with difficulty, until at
last a formidable obstacle to progress presented itself. I had been
suffering for some days; the miasmatic airs of Sorora had sown the
seeds of a fresh illness. On the afternoon of January 18th, 1858, I
was seized with an attack of fever, and then paralysis set in from the
feet upwards, and I was completely _hors de combat_. There seemed
nothing left for me but to lie down and die. One of my chief porters
declared that the case was beyond his skill: it was one of partial
paralysis, brought on by malaria, and he called in an Arab, who looked
at me also. The Arab was more cheerful, and successfully predicted
that I should be able to move in ten days. On the tenth I again
mounted my ass, but the paralysis wore off very slowly, and prevented
me from walking any distance for nearly a year. The sensation of
numbness in my hands and feet disappeared even more slowly than that.
I had, however, undertaken the journey in a “nothing like leather”
frame of mind, and was determined to press on. So we pressed.

We had now left the “Land of the Moon” behind us, and entered upon a
new district. The road before us lay through a howling wilderness, and
the march lay along the right bank of a malarial river, and the
mosquitoes feasted right royally upon our bodies, even in the daytime.
A good deal of the ground was very swampy, and it then stretched over
jungly and wooded hill-spires, with steep ascents and descents.
Everywhere was thick, fœtid, and putrescent vegetation. The heaviness
of this march caused two of our porters to levant and another four to
strike work. It was, therefore, necessary for me to again mount ass
ten days after an attack of paralysis. So we dragged on for the next
week, throughout the early days of February, a weary toil of fighting
through tiger and spear grass, over broken and slippery paths, and
through thick jungle. But these difficulties were lightly borne, for
we felt that we must be nearing the end of our journey.

On February 13th we resumed our travel through screens of lofty grass,
which thinned out into a straggling forest. After about an hour’s
march, as we entered a small savannah, I saw our Arab leader running
forward and changing the direction of the caravan. Presently he
breasted a steep and stony hill, sparsely clad with thorny trees.
Arrived at the summit with toil, for our fagged beasts now refused to
proceed, we halted for a few minutes and gazed.

“What is that streak of light which lies below?” I inquired of Seedy
Bombay, one of our porters.

“I am of opinion,” quoth Seedy, “that is the water.”

I gazed in dismay. The remains of my blindness, the veil of trees, and
broad ray of sunshine illuminating but one reach of the lake, had
shrunk its fair proportions. Prematurely I began to curse my folly in
having risked life and health for so poor a prize, and even thought of
proposing an immediate return with a view of exploring the Nyanza, or
Northern Lake. Advancing, however, a few yards, the whole scene
suddenly burst upon my view, filling me with wonder, admiration, and
delight. My longing eyes beheld the Tanganyika Lake as it lay in the
lap of the mountain, basking in the gorgeous tropical sunshine. Our
journey had not been in vain.



II

_THE LAKE REGIONS_


I shall never forget my first glimpse of Tanganyika. Below and beyond
a short foreground of rugged and precipitous hill-fold, down which the
footpath zigzagged painfully, a narrow strip of emerald green shelved
towards a ribbon of glistening yellow sand, here bordered by sedgy
rushes, there cleanly cut by the breaking wavelets. Further in front
stretched the waters, an expanse of soft blue, in breadth varying from
thirty to thirty-five miles, and sprinkled by the crisp east wind with
tiny crescents of snowy foam. The background in front was a high and
broken wall of steel-coloured mountain. To the south, and opposite the
long, low point, lay bluff headlands, and, as the eye dilated, it fell
upon a cluster of outlying islets, speckling a sea horizon. Villages,
cultivated lands, the frequent canoes of the fishermen on the waters,
and, as we came nearer, the murmur of the waters breaking upon the
shore, gave variety and movement to the landscape. The riant shores of
this vast lake appeared doubly beautiful to me after the silent and
spectral mangrove creeks on the East African seaboard, and the
melancholy, mononotous experience I had gone through of desert and
jungle, tawny rock and sunburnt plain, or rank herbage and flats of
black mire. Truly it was a feast of soul and sight. Forgetting toils,
dangers, and the doubtfulness of return, I felt willing to endure
double what I had endured. I had sighted the fabled lake, and all the
party seemed to join with me in joy. Even my purblind companion found
nothing to grumble at except the “mist and glare before his eyes.”

Arrived at Ukaranga I was disappointed to find there a few miserable
grass huts that clustered around a single “tembe,” or inn, then
occupied by its proprietor, an Arab trader. I found that that part of
Ukaranga contained not a single native canoe, and there seemed no
possibility of getting one, the innkeeper being determined that I
should spend beads for rations and lodgings among him and his
companions, and be heavily mulcted for a boat into the bargain. The
latter manœuvre was frustrated by my securing a solid-built Arab craft
for the morrow, capable of containing from thirty to thirty-five men.
It belonged to an absent merchant, and in point of size it was second
on Tanganyika, and, being too large for paddling, the crew rowed,
instead of scooping up the water like the natives. I paid an
exorbitant price for the hire of this boat.

Early in the morning of the following day, February 14th, we began
coasting along the eastern shore of the lake in a north-westerly
direction, towards the Kawele district, in the land of Ujiji. The view
was exceedingly beautiful, and the picturesque and varied forms of the
mountains, rising above and dipping into the lake, were clad in
purplish blue, set off by the rosy tints of the morning. As we
approached our destination, I wondered at the absence of houses and
people. By the Arabs I had been taught to expect a town, a port, and a
bazaar excelling in size that of Zanzibar, instead of which I found a
few scattered hovels, and our craft was poled up through a hole in a
thick welting of coarse grass to a level landing-place of flat
shingle. Such was the disembarkation quay of the great Ujiji.

We stepped ashore. Around the landing-place a few scattered huts
represented the port-town. Advancing some hundred yards through a din
of shouts and screams, tom-toms and trumpets, which defies
description, and mobbed by a swarm of black beings whose eyes seemed
about to start from their heads with surprise, I passed a relic of
Arab civilisation, the bazaar. It was on a plot of higher ground, and
there, between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., weather permitting, a mass of
standing and squatting negroes buy and sell, barter and exchange,
offer and chaffer, with a hubbub heard for miles. The articles exposed
for sale were sometimes goats and sheep and poultry, generally fish,
vegetables, and a few fruits, and palm wine was a staple commodity.
Occasionally an ivory or a slave was hawked about. Such was the little
village of Kawele. The Tanganyika is ever seen to advantage from its
shores, and here I found a lodging in a ruinous tembe inn, built by an
Arab merchant, where I was lodged in comparative comfort, though the
tembe was tenanted only by ticks and slaves.

As the tembe was to be my home for a space, my first care was to
purify the floor by pastilles of asafœtida and fumigations of
gunpowder; the second to prepare the roof for the rainy season.
Improvement, however, was slow, for the natives were too lazy to work,
and the porters took the earliest opportunity of deserting. I,
however, managed to provide a pair of cartels, with substitutes for
chairs and tables. Benches of clay were built round the rooms, but
they proved useless, being found regularly every morning occupied in
force by a swarming, struggling colony of white ants. The roof, long
overgrown with tall grass, was fortified with mud; it never ceased,
however, to leak like a colander, and presently the floor was covered
with deep puddles, then masses of earth dropped from the soft sides of
the walls, and, at last, during the violent showers, half the building
fell in.

On the second day of my arrival I was called upon by Kannena, the
headman of Kawele. He was introduced, habited in silk turban and a
broadcloth coat, which I afterwards heard he had borrowed from the
Baloch. His aspect was truly ignoble; a short, squat, and broad-backed
figure, and his apology for a nose much resembled the pug with which
the ancients provided Silenus. On this, his first appearance, he
behaved with remarkable civility, and proceeded to levy his blackmail,
which was finally settled at ten coil-bracelets and two fundi of
beads. I had no salt to spare, or much valuable merchandise might have
been saved. Their return was six small bundles of grain. Then Kannena
opened trade by sending us a nominal gift, a fine ivory, weighing at
least seventy pounds, and worth, perhaps, £100. After keeping it a day
or two I returned it, saying I had no dealings in ivory and slaves.
This, it appears, was a mistake, as I ought, by a trifling outlay, to
have supported the character of a trader. The Wajiji did not
understand. “These are men who live by doing nothing!” they exclaimed,
and they lost no time in requesting me to quit their territory. To
this I objected, and endeavoured to bribe them off. My bribes, I
suppose, were not sufficient, for we at once began to see the dark
side of the native character. Thieves broke into our out-houses, our
asses were wounded by spears, and we were accused of having bewitched
and killed their cattle. Still, other travellers fared even worse than
we did.

At first the cold, damp climate of the lake regions did not agree with
us; perhaps, too, the fish diet was over-rich and fat, and the
abundance of vegetables led to little excesses. All energy seemed to
have abandoned us. I lay for a fortnight upon the earth, too blind to
read and write except at long intervals, too weak to ride, and too ill
to talk. My companion, Speke, who, when we arrived at the Tanganyika
Lake, was almost as groggy upon his legs as I was, suffered from a
painful ophthalmia and a curious distortion of face, which made him
chew sideways, like a ruminant. The Baloch complained of influenzas
and catarrhs, and their tempers were as sore as their lungs and
throats.

But work remained undone, and it was necessary to awaken from my
lethargy. Being determined to explore the northern extremity of the
Tanganyika Lake, whence, according to several informants, issued a
large river flowing northwards, I tried to hire from an Arab merchant
the only dhow, or sailing boat, then in existence, since the wretched
canoes of the people were quite unfit for a long cruise. I entrusted
the mission first of all to my Arab, Said bin Salim, but he shirked
it, and I therefore directed my companion to do his best. I got the
dhow, and set about stocking it with provisions for a month’s cruise.
I had great difficulty in obtaining sufficient provisions, the prices
demanded were so exorbitant. After many delays I at last sent my
companion away, supplied with an ample outfit, escorted by two Baloch,
and attended by his men, across the Bay of Ukaranga. I was then left
alone.

During my twenty-seven days of solitude the time sped quickly; it was
chiefly spent in eating and drinking, dozing and smoking. Awaking at 2
a.m. or 3 a.m., I lay anxiously expecting the grey light creeping
through the door chinks; the glad tidings of its approach were
announced by the cawing of the crows and the crowing of the village
cocks. When the golden rays began to stream over the red earth, my
torpid servant was called out, and he brought me a mass of suji, or
rice-flour boiled in water, with a little cold milk as a relish. Then
entered the “slavey” of the establishment, armed with a leafy branch,
to sweep the floor and slay the huge wasps that riddled the walls of
the tenement. This done, he lit the fire, as the excessive damp
rendered this precaution necessary. Then ensued visits of ceremony
from Said bin Salim and another, who sat, stared, and seeing that I
was not yet dead, showed disappointment in their faces and walked
away. So the morning wore on. My servant was employed with tailoring,
gun-cleaning, and similar light work, over which he grumbled
perpetually, whilst I settled down to diaries and vocabularies, a
process interrupted by sundry pipes. We had two hours’ sleep at noon,
and I may say that most of the day I lay like a log upon my cot,
smoking almost uninterruptedly, dreaming of things past and visioning
things present, and sometimes indulging myself in a few lines of
reading and writing.

Dinner was an alternation of fish and fowl, butchers’ meat being
extremely rare at Ujiji. At evening I used to make an attempt to sit
under the broad eaves of the tembe and enjoy the delicious spectacle
of this virgin nature. I was still very weak.

At 7 p.m., as the last flush faded from the occident, the lamp, a wick
in a pot full of palm oil, was brought in, Said bin Salim would
appear, and a brief conversation led to the hour of sleep. A dreary,
dismal day, yet it had its enjoyments.

On March 29th the rattling of the matchlocks announced my companion’s
return. I never saw a man so thoroughly moist and mildewed; he
justified even the French phrase, “Wet to the bone.” His paraphernalia
were in a similar state; his guns were grained with rust, and his
fireproof powder magazine had admitted the monsoon rain. I was sorely
disappointed; he had done literally nothing. I cannot explain where
the mismanagement lay, but the result was that he had come back to me
without boat or provisions to report ill-success.

It now became apparent that the rainy season was drawing to a close,
and the time for navigation was beginning. After some preliminaries
with Said bin Salim, Kannena, who had been preparing for a cruise
northward, was summoned before me. He agreed to convey me; but when I
asked him the conditions on which he would show me the mtoni, or
river, he jumped up, discharged a volley of oaths, and sprang from the
house like a baboon. I was resolved, however, at all costs, even if we
were reduced to actual want, to visit this mysterious stream. I made
other overtures to Kannena, made him many promises, and threw over his
shoulders a six-feet length of scarlet broadcloth, which made him
tremble with joy. I ultimately secured two large canoes and fifty-five
men.

On April 12th my canoe, bearing for the first time the British flag,
stood out of Bangwe Bay, and, followed by my companion in another
canoe, we made for the cloudy and storm-vexed north. There were great
rejoicings at our arrival at Uvira, the northernmost station to which
merchants had at that time been admitted. Opposite still, rose in a
high, broken line the mountains of the inhospitable Urundi, apparently
prolonged beyond the northern extremity of the waters. The breadth of
the Tanganyika here is between seven and eight miles. Now my hopes
were dashed to the ground; the stalwart sons of the chief Maruta
visited me, and told me that they had been to the northern extremity,
and that the Rusizi enters into, and does not flow out of, the
Tanganyika. I was sick at heart. It appears that my companion had
misunderstood, and our guide now told us that he had never been beyond
Uvira, and never intended to go; so we stopped here nine days, and I
got such a bad ulceration of the tongue that I could not speak. The
chiefs came and claimed their blackmail, and also Kannena, so I had to
pay up all for nothing, as the gales began to threaten, and our crews
insisted on putting to lake on May 6th.

We touched at various stages about the lake, and anchored at Mzimu,
but we left again at sunset; the waves began to rise, the wind also,
and it rained in torrents. It was a doubt whether the cockleshell
craft could live through a short, choppy sea in heavy weather. I
sheltered myself in my mackintosh as best I might. Fortunately the
rain beat down the wind and the sea, or nothing could have saved us.
The next morning Mabruki rushed into my tent, thrust a sword into my
hands, and declared the Warundi were upon us, and that the crews were
rushing to the boats and pushing them off. Knowing that they would
leave us stranded in case of danger, we hurried in without delay; but
no enemy appeared. It was a false alarm.

On May 11th we paddled about a grassy inlet; on the 12th we paddled
again, and the next day we spent in Bangwe Bay. We were too proud to
sneak home in the dark; we had done the expedition, and we wanted to
be looked at by the fair and howled at by the valiant.

The next morning we appeared at the entrance of Kawele, and had a
triumphal entrance. The people of the whole country-side assembled to
welcome us, and pressed waist-deep into the water. My companion and I
were repeatedly called for, but true merit is always modest. We
regained our old tembe, were salaamed to by everybody, and it felt
like a return home. The upshot of it all was this――we had expended
upwards of a month exploring the Tanganyika Lake.

I had explored it thoroughly. My health now began to improve, my
strength increased; my feet were still swollen, but my hands lost
their numbness, and I could again read and write. A relieved mind had
helped on this recovery――the object of my expedition was now
effected――and I threw off the burden of grinding care with which the
prospect of a probable failure had sorely laden me.[6]

The rainy monsoon broke up after our return to Kawele, and the climate
became most enjoyable, but it was accompanied by that inexplicable
melancholy peculiar to tropical countries. I have never felt this
sadness in Egypt and Arabia, but I was never without it in India and
Zanzibar. We were expecting stores and provisions, but we got not one
single word from the agents who were to forward our things, and want
began to stare us in the face. Money was a necessity, or its
equivalent. I had to engage porters for the hammocks, feed
seventy-five mouths, to fee several chieftains, and to incur the heavy
expenses of two hundred and sixty miles’ marching back to Unyamyembe,
so I had to supplement the sum allowed me by the Royal Geographical
Society with my own little patrimony. One thousand pounds does not go
very far when it has to be divided amongst two hundred greedy savages
in two and a half years.

On May 22nd our ears were gladdened by the sound of musket-shots
announcing arrivals, and then, after a long silence of eleven months,
there arrived a caravan with boxes, bales, porters, slaves, and a
parcel of papers and letters from Europe, India, and Zanzibar. How we
pounced upon them! Here we first knew of the Indian Mutiny. The
caravan arrived at a crisis when it was really wanted, but as my agent
could not find porters for all the packages, he had kept back some of
them, and what he sent me were the least useful. They would suffice to
take us back to Unyamyembe, but were wholly inadequate for exploring
the southern end of Tanganyika, far less for returning to Zanzibar
_viâ_ the Nyassa Lake and Kilwa, as I had hoped to do.

On May 26th, 1858, we set out on our homeward journey, and left Kawele
_en route_ for Unyamyembe. I shall never forget my last sunrise look
on Tanganyika. The mists, luminously fringed with purple, were cut by
filmy rays; the living fire shot forth broad beams over the light blue
waters of the lake, and a soft breeze, the breath of the morning,
awoke the waves into life.

I had great difficulties in getting away, but at nine o’clock we
departed with a full gang of porters, and advanced until the evening.
Many troubles arose: a porter placed his burden upon the ground and
levanted, and being cognac and vinegar it was deeply regretted; then
the Unyamwezi guide, because his newly purchased slave girl had become
footsore and unable to walk, cut her head off. All these disagreeables
I was obliged to smooth down as best I could. Then there was a great
dread of savage tribes, and there was also a fear of conflagration, a
sort of prairie fire.

A sheet of flame, beginning with the size of a spark, would overspread
the hillside, advancing on the wings of the wind with the roaring,
rushing sound of many hosts, where the grass was thick, shooting huge
forked tongues high into the air, and tall trees, the patriarchs of
the forest, yielded their lives to the blast. Onward the fire would
sweep, smouldering and darkening where the rock afforded scanty fuel,
then flickering, blazing up, and soaring on again over the brow of the
hill, until the sheet became a thin line of fire, gradually vanishing
from the view.

On October 4th, after a week of halts and snails’ marches, we at last
reached Hanga, our former quarters in the western confines of the
Unyamyembe district. Here my companion was taken seriously ill, and
immediately after our arrival at this foul village, where we were
lodged in a sort of cow-house, full of vermin and exposed directly to
the fury of the cold gales, he complained, in addition to the deaf
ear, an inflamed eye, and a swollen face, of a mysterious pain, which
he knew not whether to attribute to the liver or the spleen. Shortly
after this his mind began to wander, and then he underwent three fits
of an epileptic description, which more closely resembled those of
hydrophobia than any I have ever witnessed. He was haunted by a crowd
of hideous devils, giants, and lion-headed demons, who were wrenching
and stripping the sinews and tendons of his legs. He began to utter a
barking noise, with a peculiar chopping motion of the mouth and
tongue. When the third spasm was over, he called for pen and paper,
and, fearing that increased weakness of mind and body might prevent
any further exertion, he wrote an incoherent letter of farewell to his
family. That, however, was the crisis, and he afterwards spent a
better night; the pains were mitigated, or, as he expressed it, “the
knives were sheathed.”

As we were threatened with want of water on the way, I prepared for
that difficulty by packing a box with empty bottles, which, when
occasion required, might be filled at the springs. The zemzemiyah, or
travelling canteen of the East African, was everywhere a long-necked
gourd, slung to the shoulder by a string. But it became offensive
after some use, and could never be entrusted to a servant for a mile
before its contents were exhausted.

We left Hanga, my companion being now better, on October 13th. Seven
short marches between that place and Tura occupied fifteen days, a
serious waste of time, caused by the craving of the porters for their
homes.

The stages now appeared shorter, the sun cooler, the breeze warmer,
for, after fourteen months of incessant fevers, we had become
tolerably acclimatised; we were now loud in praise, as we had been in
censure, of the water and air. Before re-entering the Fiery Field the
hire for carrying hammocks became so exorbitant that I dismissed the
bearers, drew on my jackboots, mounted the Zanzibar ass, and appeared
once more as the mtongi of a caravan. My companion was also now able
to ride.

At Eastern Tura, where we arrived on October 28th, a halt was
occasioned by the necessity of providing and preparing food for the
week’s march through the Fiery Field. The caravan was then mustered,
and it completed altogether a party of one hundred and fifty-two
souls.

On November 3rd the caravan, issuing from Tura, plunged manfully into
the Fiery Field, and after seven marches in as many days――we halted
for breath and forage at the Round Stone――Jiwe la Mkoa. Here we
procured a few rations, and resumed our way on November 12th, and in
two days exchanged, with a sensible pleasure, the dull expanse of dry
brown bush and brushwood for the fertile red plain of Mdaburn. At that
point began our re-transit of Ugogo, where I had been taught to expect
accidents; they resolved themselves into nothing more than the
disappearance of cloth and beads in inordinate quantities. The
Wanyamwezi porters seemed even more timid on the down journey than on
the up march. They slank about like curs, and the fierce look of a
Mgogo boy was enough to strike terror into their hearts. One of them
would frequently indulge me in a dialogue like the following, which
may serve as a specimen of our conversation in East Africa:――

“The state, Mdula?” (_i.e._, Abdullah, a word unpronounceable to
negroid organs).

“The state is very! (well), and thy state?”

“The state is very! (well), and the state of Spikka?” (my companion).

“The state of Spikka is very! (well).”

“We have escaped the Wagogo, white man O!”

“We have escaped, O my brother!”

“The Wagogo are bad!”

“They are bad!”

“The Wagogo are very bad!”

“They are very bad!”

“The Wagogo are not good!”

“They are not good!”

“The Wagogo are not at all good!”

“They are not at all good!”

“I greatly feared the Wagogo, who killed the Wanyamwezi!”

“Exactly so!”

“But now I don’t fear them. I call them ――――s and ――――s, and I would
fight the whole tribe, white man O!”

“Truly so, O my brother!”

And so on for two mortal hours.

The transit of Ugogo occupied three weeks, from November 14th to
December 5th. In Kanyenye we were joined by a large caravan of
Wanyamwezi, carrying ivories. On December 6th we arrived at a halting
place in the Ugogi Dhun, and were greeted by another caravan, freshly
arrived, commanded by Hindus, who, after receiving and returning news
with much solemnity, presently drew forth a packet of papers and
letters, which as usual promised trouble, and the inevitable――to
me――“official wigging.” I also received the following pleasant
letter:――

     DEAR BURTON,

     Go ahead! Vogel and Macguire dead――murdered. Write often to

                                                Yours truly,
                                                            N.S.

At Ugogo, which, it will be remembered, is considered the half-way
station between Unyamyembe and the coast, we were detained a day
through difficulties with porters, who declared there was a famine
upon the road we had previously traversed, and also that a great
chief, who was also a great extortioner, was likely to insist upon our
calling upon him in person, which would involve a change of route.
However, there was nothing to be done but to take the road. We loaded
on December 7th, and began the passage of the Usagara Mountains, going
this time by the Kiringawana route.

Travelling by a roundabout way, we arrived at the village of the chief
Kiringawana on December 19th, and the next day proceeded to palaver.
After abundant chaffering, the chief accepted from the expedition
three expensive coloured cloths and other things, grumbling the while
because we had neglected to reserve for him something more worthy his
acceptance; he returned a fat bullock, which was instantly shot and
devoured.

We resumed our march on December 22nd, which was almost entirely
down-hill. We crossed in a blazing sun the fœtid plain, and after
finding with some difficulty the jungly path, we struck into a
pleasant forest. Presently we emerged again upon the extremity of the
Makata Plain, a hideous low level of black vegetable earth, peaty in
appearance, and bearing long puddles of dark and stagnant
rain-water――mere horse-ponds, with the additional qualities of miasma
and mosquitoes. The transit of this plain took some days.

The dawn of Christmas Day, 1858, saw us toiling along the Kikoboga
River, which we forded four times. The road presently turned up a
rough rise, from whose crest began the descent of the Mabruki Pass.
The descent was very steep and rough; the path, spanning rough ground
at the hill base, led us to the plains of Uziraha in K’hutu.

We had reserved a bullock in honour of Christmas Day, but as he was
lost, I ordered the purchase of half a dozen goats to celebrate it,
but the porters were too lazy to collect them. My companion and I made
good cheer upon a fat capon, which acted as roast beef, with a mess of
ground-nuts sweetened with sugar-cane, which did duty as plum-pudding.

We started off again and entered Zungomero on December 29th. An army
of black musketeers, in scanty but various and gaudy attire, came out
to meet us, and with the usual shots and shouts conducted us to the
headman’s house. They then stared at us, as usual, for half a dozen
consecutive hours, which done, they retired to rest.

We stayed at Zungomero some time and celebrated the New Year there,
but January 21st, 1859, enabled us to bid it adieu and merrily take to
the footpath way. We made Konduchi on February 3rd, after twelve
marches, which we accomplished in fourteen days. There is little of
interest or adventure to record in this return line, for we travelled
over much the same ground we had done before.

As the mud near Dut’humi was throat-deep, we crossed it lower down――a
weary trudge of several miles through thick, slabby mire, which
admitted a man to his knees. In places, after toiling under a sickly
sun, we crept under tunnels of thick jungle growth, the dank and fœtid
cold causing a deadly sensation of faintness, which was only relieved
by the glass of æther sherbet, a pipe or two of the strongest tobacco,
and half an hour’s rest.

On January 30th our natives of Zanzibar screamed with delight at the
sight of the monkey-tree, an old, familiar sight to them. On February
2nd we greeted, with doffed caps, and with three times three and one
more, as Britons will do on such occasions, the kindly, smiling face
of our father Neptune as he lay basking in the sunbeams between earth
and air. February 3rd saw us winding through the poles decorated with
skulls――a sort of negro Temple Bar――which pointed out the way into the
little village of Konduchi.

Our return was attended with much ceremony: the war-men danced, shot,
and shouted; a rabble of adults, youths, and boys crowded upon us; the
fair sex lulliloo’d with vigour; and a general procession conducted us
to a hut, swept, cleaned, and garnished for us by the principal banyan
of the village, and there they laughed and stared at us until they
could laugh and stare no more.

We were detained at Konduchi for some days, and on February 9th the
battela and the stores required for our trip arrived from Zanzibar,
and the next day saw us rolling down the coast towards the Island of
Zanzibar, where we landed on March 4th, 1859. I was taken ill there,
and my companion went home alone――thereby hangs a tale. But I
recovered after a while, and left Zanzibar for Aden to catch the
homeward boat. I bade adieu to the “coal-hole of the East” on April
28th, 1859, and in due time arrived once more on the shores of Old
England, after an absence of two years and eight months.


     [6] At the time of which I write (1858) the Tanganyika had
     never before been visited by any European.



_THE CITY OF THE MORMONS_

1860



I

_THE JOURNEY_


I had long determined to add the last new name――Great Salt Lake
City――to my list of Holy Cities; to visit the new rival, _soi-disant_,
of Memphis, Benares, Jerusalem, Rome, and Meccah; and to observe the
origin and working of a regular go-ahead Western revelation. Mingled
with the wish of prospecting the city of the Mormons from a spiritual
point of view was the mundane desire of enjoying a little skirmishing
with the savages, who had lately been giving the “pale-faces” tough
work to do.

The man was ready, the hour hardly appeared propitious for other than
belligerent purposes. Throughout the summer of 1860 an Indian war was
raging in Nebraska; the Comanches, Kiowas, and Cheyennes were “out”;
the Federal Government had despatched three columns to the centres of
confusion; intestine feuds amongst the aborigines were talked of; the
Dakota, or Sioux, had threatened to “wipe out” their old foe the
Pawnee. Both tribes were possessors of the soil over which the road to
Great Salt Lake City ran. Horrible accounts of murdered post-boys and
cannibal emigrants, grossly exaggerated as usual, filled the papers.
“Going amongst the Mormons!” said a friend to me at New Orleans. “They
are shooting and cutting one another in all directions. How can _you_
expect to escape?” But sagely reflecting that “dangers which loom
large from afar generally lose size as one draws near,” and that even
the Mormons might turn out less black than they were painted, I
resolved to run the risk of the “red nightcap” from the bloodthirsty
Indians and the poisoned bowie-dagger from the jealous Latter-Day
Saints. I therefore applied myself to then audacious task of an
expedition to the City of the Mormons.

There were three roads to be chosen from――the three main lines,
perhaps, for a Pacific railway between the Mississippi and the Western
Ocean――the northern, the central, and the southern. The first, or
British, was not to be thought of, since it involved semi-starvation,
a possible plundering by the Bedouins, and, what was far worse, five
or six months of slow travel. The third, or southern, took twenty-four
days and nights, and the journey was accompanied by excessive heat in
a malarial climate, to say nothing of poisonous food. There remained
only the central road, which has two branches; of these I chose the
great emigrant road from Missouri to California. The mail coach on
this line was not what one would call luxurious, and the hours of
halting-places were badly selected. The schedule time from St. Joseph,
Missouri, to Great Salt Lake City was twenty-one days; we accomplished
it, it turned out, in nineteen. I therefore travelled to St. Joseph,
disrespectfully known as St. Jo, bought my ticket, and prepared to
start.

An important part in my preparations was the kit, which in my case was
represented as follows:――One India-rubber blanket, pierced in the
centre for a poncho, and with buttons and elastic loops, which
converted it into a carpet bag. I ought to have added a buffalo robe
as a bed, but ignorance prevented. With one’s coat as a pillow, a
buffalo robe, and a blanket, one might defy the dangerous “bunks” of
the stations. For weapons I carried two revolvers. In those days, from
the moment of leaving St. Joseph to the time of reaching Placerville
or Sacramento, the pistol ought never to be absent from a man’s right
hand, nor the bowie-knife from his left. Contingencies with Indians
and others might happen, when the difference of an instant might save
life. In dangerous places the revolver should be discharged and loaded
every morning, both for the purpose of keeping the hand in and doing
the weapon justice. A revolver is an admirable tool when properly
used. Those, however, who are too idle or careless to attend to it had
better carry a pair of “Derringers.” I took also some opium, which is
invaluable on the prairie, and some other drugs against fever. The
“holy weed, Nicotian,” was not forgotten, for cigars were most useful,
as the driver either received or took the lion’s share. The prairie
traveller was not very particular about his clothes; the easiest dress
was a dark flannel shirt, worn over the normal article, no braces, but
a broad leather belt for a six-shooter and a “Kansas tooth-pick,” a
long clasp-knife. The nether garments were forked with good buckskin,
or they would infallibly have given out, and the lower ends were
tucked into the boots, after the sensible fashion of our grandfathers.
In cold weather――the nights were rarely warm――there was nothing better
than an old English shooting-jacket; for riding or driving a large
pair of buckskin gloves, or rather gauntlets, were advisable, and we
did not forget spurs. The best hat was a brown felt, which, by boring
holes around the brim to admit a ribbon, could be converted into a
riding-hat or a nightcap, as you pleased. Having got my kit and
purchased my ticket, I was ready to start.

Precisely at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, August 7th, 1860, there appeared in
front of the Patee House, the Fifth Avenue Hotel of St. Joseph, the
vehicle destined to be my home for the next three weeks. I scrutinised
it curiously. It was what was known as a “concord coach,” a spring
waggon, of which the body is shaped something like an English tax-cart
considerably magnified. It paid no regard to appearances, but was
safe, strong, and light. The wheels were five to six feet apart,
affording security against capsizing; the tyres were of unusual
thickness, and polished like steel by the hard, dry ground. The waggon
bed was supported by iron bands, and the whole bed was covered with
stout osnaburg, supported by strong bars of white oak. There was a
sunshade, or hood, in front where the driver sat, a curtain behind,
which could be raised or lowered at discretion, and four flaps on each
side, either folded up, or fastened down with hooks and eyes. The
coach was drawn by a team of four mules, which were much preferred to
horses as being more enduring. The rate of travel, on an average, was
five miles an hour. This was good; between seven and eight was the
maximum, which sank in hilly country to three or four.

We were detained more than an hour before we started. Our “plunder,”
as they called the luggage, was clapped on with little ceremony, and
when all was packed away (and a good deal of the comfort of the
journey depended on the packing), we rattled through the dusty roads
of St. Jo, got on the steam ferry, which conveyed us from the right to
the left bank of the Missouri River, and landed us in “bleeding”
Kansas. We then fell at once into the emigrant road, as it was called,
to the Far West, a great thoroughfare at this point, open, broad, and
well worn as a European turnpike or a Roman military road, and
undoubtedly the best and longest natural highway in the world.

At first the scene was one of a luxuriant vegetation; but after an
hour of burning sun and sickly damp, the effects of the late storms,
we emerged from the waste of vegetation on to the region of the Grand
Prairie. Over the rolling surface, which rarely broke into hill or
dale, lay a tapestry of thick grass, already turning to a ruddy yellow
under the influence of approaching autumn. Nothing, I may remark, is
more monotonous, except the African and Indian jungle, than these
prairie tracks. You saw, as it were, the ends of the earth, and looked
around in vain for some object upon which the eye might rest; it
wanted the sublimity of repose so suggestive in the sandy deserts, and
the perpetual motion so pleasing in the aspect of the sea.

Passing through a few wretched shanties called Troy, in Syracuse, we
arrived about three o’clock at Cold Springs, where we were allowed an
hour’s halt to dine and change mules. The scene was the “rale” Far
West. The widow body to whom the shanty of the station belonged lay
sick with fever, and the aspect of her family was a “caution to
snakes.” The ill-conditioned sons dawdled about, listless as Indians,
in skin tunics, and the daughters, whose sole attire was apparently a
calico morning wrapper, waited on us in a grudging way in the wretched
log hut, which appeared ignorant of the duster and the broom. Myriads
of flies disputed with us a dinner consisting of dough-nuts,
suspicious eggs in a greasy fritter, and rusty bacon, intolerably fat.
It was our first sight of squatter life, and, except in two cases, it
was our worst.

We drove on all the afternoon and all the night, except for a halt for
supper. The last part of our journey was performed under a heavy
thunderstorm. Gusts of violent wind whizzed overhead, thunder crashed
and rattled, and vivid lightning, flashing out of the murky depths
around, made earth and air one blaze of fire. We arrived about one
o’clock a.m. at Locknan’s station, a few log huts near a creek. Here
we found beds and snatched an hour of sleep. So passed the first day.

It is not my purpose to describe the journey day by day, for it lasted
nineteen days, and one day was often much like another. I shall
therefore content myself with picking out the chief points of interest
on the route.

Before long the prairies wore a burnt-up aspect. As far as the eye
could see the tintage was that of the Arabian desert. It was still,
however, too early for prairie fires, and I therefore did not witness
this magnificent spectacle. In some parts, where the grass is tall and
rank, and the roaring flames leap before the fire with the stride of a
maddened horse, the danger is imminent, and the spectacle must be one
of awful sublimity.

I said at first that the prairie scenery was monotonous, and so on the
whole it was, but every now and then we came upon beautiful oases in
the desert. Such was the valley of the Little Blue River, fringed with
emerald-green oak groves, cotton wood, and long-leaved willow. As we
got on to the tableland above this river, between that and the River
Platte, the evening approached, and a smile from above lit up into
perfect beauty the features of the world below. It was a glorious
sunset. Stratum upon stratum of cloud banks, burnished to golden red
in the vicinity of the setting sun, and polished to dazzling silvery
white above, lay piled half-way from the horizon to the zenith, with a
distinct strike towards a vanishing point to the west and dipping into
a gateway, through which the orb of day slowly retired. Overhead
floated, in a sea of amber and yellow, pink and green heavy purple
clouds, whilst in the east black and blue were so curiously blended
that the eye could not distinguish whether it rested upon a darkening
air or a lowering thunder-cloud. We enjoyed these beauties, I am glad
to say, in silence; not a soul said “Look there!” or “How pretty!”

When we came to the fork of the great River Platte we saw from time to
time a line of Indian removes. This meant that these wild people were
shifting their quarters for grass, and when it became a little colder
they sought some winter abode on the banks of a stream which supplied
fuel and where they could find meat, so that with warmth and food,
song and talk, and smoke and sleep, they could while away the dull and
dreary winter.

The remove of an Indian village presented an interesting sight. The
animated and shifting scene of bucks and braves, squaws and papooses,
ponies dwarfed by bad breeding and hard living, dogs and puppies――all
straggled over the plains westward. In front, singly or in pairs, rode
the men, as if born upon, and bred to become part of, the animal; some
went bare-backed, others rode upon a saddle tree. In some cases the
saddle was trimmed with bead hangings. Their long, lank, thick,
brownish-black hair, ruddy from the effects of the weather, was worn
parted in the middle. This parting in men, as well as in women, was
generally coloured with vermilion, and plates of brass or tin were
inserted into the front hair. They wore many ornaments, and the body
dress was a tight-sleeved waistcoat over an American cotton shirt,
scarlet and blue being the colours preferred. The garb ended with
buckskin leggings and moccasins. The braves were armed with small
tomahawks, or iron hatchets, which they carried with the powder horn
in the belt on the right side. Their nags were lean and ungroomed.
They treat them as cruelly as do the Somali, yet nothing――short of
whiskey――could persuade an Indian warrior to part with his favourite
steed. Behind the warriors and the braves followed the baggage of the
village. The rich squaws rode in litters, the poorer followed their
pack-horses on foot. Their garb did not a little resemble their lords,
and I saw no great beauty among them, young or old, rich or poor. _La
belle savage_ of the party had large and languishing eyes, dentists’
teeth that glittered, and silky, long, black hair like the ears of a
Blenheim spaniel. Her ears and neck were laden with tinsel ornaments,
and she was very finely dressed. There was with the cavalcade a great
company of boys and girls.

On the sixth day we crossed the Platte. We had spent most of the night
in the waggon, most uncomfortably. At 3.15 a.m., hungry and thirsty,
and by no means in the best of humours, we heard with joy the savage
“Yep, yep, yep,” with which the driver was wont to announce our
approach to a station. Presently the plank lodging appeared through
the darkness. We sprang out of the ambulance; but all was dark and
silent as the grave: the station was asleep. A heavy kick opened the
door of the restaurant, when a wheezy, drowsy voice from an inner room
asked us in German-English, “And how ze komen in?” Without waiting to
answer we pulled the owner of it out of bed, and ordered supper,
refreshment, and repose. But he raised all sorts of difficulties, and
it ended with our sitting down and staring at the fire and waiting for
the vile food which he provided for our breakfast. I should like here
to describe an ordinary prairie breakfast, the one which greeted us
nearly all through our journey. First, the coffee, three parts burnt
beans, which had been duly ground to a fine powder and exposed to the
air lest the aroma should prove too strong for us. It was placed on
the stove to simmer, till every noxious principle was duly extracted
from it. Then the rusty bacon, cut into thick slices, was thrust into
the frying-pan; here the gridiron was unknown. Thirdly, antelope
steak, cut off a carcase suspended for the benefit of flies outside
was placed to stew within influence of the bacon’s aroma. Lastly came
the bread, which, of course, should have been cooked first. The meal
was kneaded with water and a pinch of salt; the raising was done by
means of a little sour malt, or more generally by the deleterious
yeast powders of the trade. The dough, after having been sufficiently
manipulated, was divided into doughnuts, or biscuits, and finally it
was placed to be half-cooked under the immediate influence of the
rusty bacon and rancid antelope. Uncle Sam’s stove was a triumph of
convenience, cheapness, unwholesomeness, and nastiness. It made
everything taste like its neighbour; by virtue of it mutton borrowed
the flavour of fish, and tomatoes resolved themselves into the flavour
of greens.

One of the most notable points of our journey was Scott’s Bluffs, the
last of the great marl formations which break the dull uniformity of
the prairies. Before we came to them we passed the far-famed Chimney
Rock, which lies two and a half miles from the south bank of the
Platte. Viewed from the south-east, it was not unlike a gigantic
jack-boot poised on a high pyramidal mound; I took a sketch of it.
Scott’s Bluffs are far more striking and attractive objects; indeed,
they excel the Castle Craig of Drachenfels or any of the beauties of
the romantic Rhine. From the distance of a day’s march they appeared
in the shape of a large blue mound. As you approached within four or
five miles, a massive mediæval city gradually defined itself,
clustering with wonderful fulness of detail round a colossal fortress,
and crowned with a royal castle. It was indeed a beautiful castle on
the rock, and that nothing may be wanting to the resemblance, the
dashing rains and angry winds have cut the old line of road at its
base into a regular moat with a semicircular sweep, which the mirage
fills with a mimic river. Quaint figures develop themselves, guards
and sentinels in dark armour keep watch and ward upon the slopes, the
lion of Bastia crouched unmistakably overlooking the road, and, as the
shades of evening closed in, so weird was its aspect that one might
almost expect to see some spectral horseman go his rounds about the
broken walls. At a nearer aspect the quaint illusion vanished, the
lines of masonry became great layers of boulder, curtains and angles
changed to the gnashing rents of ages, and the warriors were
transformed into dwarf cedars and dense shrubs. Travellers have
compared Scott’s Bluffs to Gibraltar, to the Capitol at Washington,
and to Stirling Castle; I could think of nothing in its presence but
the Arabs’ “City of Brass,” that mysterious abode of bewitched
infidels, which often appears to the wayfarer toiling under the sun,
but which for ever eludes his nearer search.

On our last day in the Platte Valley, just before we entered the Sioux
territory, we came to Horseshoe station, which was impressed upon my
memory by one thing, which I shall presently explain. We were struck
by the aspect of the buildings, which were on an extensive scale; in
fact, got up regardless of expense. An immense silence, however,
reigned. At last, by hard knocking, we were admitted into a house with
a Floridan verandah. By the pretensions of the room we were at once
threatened with a “lady.” Our mishap was really worse than we
expected, for in reality we were exposed to two “ladies,” and one of
these was a Bloomer. This, it is fair to state, was the only
hermaphrodite of the kind that ever met my eyes in the States; the
great founder of the Bloomer order has long since subsided into her
original obscurity, and her acolytes have relapsed into petticoats.
The Bloomer was an uncouth being, her hair, cut level with her eyes,
depended with the graceful curl of a drake’s tail around a fat and
flabby countenance, whose only expression was sullen insolence. Her
body-dress, glazed brown calico, fitted her somewhat like a soldier’s
tunic, developing haunches which would be admired only in venison;
and――curious inconsequence of woman’s nature!――all this sacrifice of
appearance upon the shrine of comfort did not prevent her wearing that
kind of crinoline depicted by Mr. _Punch_ around “our Mary Hanne.” The
pantolettes of glazed brown calico, like the vest, tunic, blouse,
shirt, or whatever they may call it, were in peg-top style, admirably
setting off a pair of thin-soled, Frenchified, patent-leather
bottines, with elastic sides, which contained feet as large, broad,
and flat as a negro’s in Africa. The dear creature had a husband: it
was hardly safe to look at her, and as for sketching her, I avoided
it. The other “lady,” though more decently attired, was like women in
this wild part of the world generally――cold and disagreeable, with a
touch-me-not air, which reminded me of a certain

                      Miss Baxter,
  Who refused a man before he axed her.

Her husband was the renowned Slade, who had the reputation of having
killed his three men. This pleasant individual “for an evening party”
wore a revolver and bowie-knife here, there, and everywhere. It at
once became evident that this station was not conducted for the public
convenience. One of our party who had ventured into the kitchen was
fiercely ejected by the “ladies,” and, asking for dormitories, we were
informed that lady travellers were admitted into the house, but men
could sleep where they could. We found a barn outside; it was hardly
fit for a decently brought up pig: the floor was damp and knotty;
there was not even a door to keep out the night breeze; and several
drunken fellows lay about in different parts of it. Into this
disreputable hole we were all thrust for the night. “May gracious
Heaven,” I prayed, “keep us safe from all ‘ladies’ in future!” Better
a hundred times the squaw, with her uncleanliness and her civility!

It was about the tenth day of our journey that the formation of the
land began to warn us that we were approaching, as yet far off, the
Rocky Mountains. We saw for the first time a train of Mormon waggons,
twenty-four in number, slowly wending their way towards the Promised
Land. The “captain” was young Brigham Young, a nephew of the
Prophet――a fine fellow, with yellow hair and beard, an intelligent
countenance, a six-shooter by his right, and a bowie-knife by his left
side. It was impossible to mistake, even through the veil of freckles
and sunburn with which a two months’ journey had invested them, the
nationality of these emigrants――“British-English” was written all over
them. One young person concealed her facial attractions under a manner
of mask. I I though that perhaps she might be a sultana, reserved for
the establishment of some very magnificent Mormon bashaw; but the
driver, when appealed to, responded with contempt, “’Guess old Briggy
won’t stampede many o’ that ere lot!” Though homely in appearance,
they seemed to be healthy and well fed.

The same day, a little later, we crossed a war party of Arapahos; they
looked less like warriors than a band of horse-stealers, and though
they had set out with the determination of bringing back some Utah
scalps and fingers, they had not succeeded. The war party consisted of
some dozen warriors, with a few limber, lithe lads. They had sundry
lean, sorry-looking nags, which were presently turned out to graze.
Dirty rags formed the dress of the band; their arms were the usual
light lances, garnished with leather at the handles, with two cropped
tufts and a long loose feather dangling from them. They carried mangy
buffalo robes; and scattered upon the ground was a variety of belts,
baldricks, and pouches, with split porcupine quills dyed a saffron
yellow. I found them sulky and not disposed to be communicative, a
fact which, no doubt, was accounted for by the ill-success of their
expedition.

I have given some account of the “ladies” we met _en route_; in
fairness one must reverse the shield, for, at a station forbiddingly
known as the Devil’s Post-Office, we came across an Englishwoman, a
“Miss” Moore (Miss is still used for Mrs. by Western men and negroes),
who was a pattern of cleanliness, tidiness, civility, and housewifery
in general. Her little ranche was neatly swept and garnished, papered
and ornamented. The table-cloth was clean, so was the cooking, and so
were the children, and I was reminded of Europe by the way in which
she insisted upon washing my shirt, an operation which, after leaving
the Missouri, had fallen to my own lot. This day also introduced me to
the third novel sensation on the western side of the Atlantic. The
first was to feel that all men were your equal; that you were no man’s
superior, and that no man was yours. The second――this is spoken as an
African wanderer――was to see one’s quondam acquaintance, the Kaffir or
Negro, put by his grass kilt and coat of grease, invest himself in
broadcloth, part his wool on one side, shave, and call himself, not
Sambo, but “Mr. Scott.” The third was to meet in the Rocky Mountains
with this woman, a refreshing specimen of that far-off Old World.
“Miss” Moore’s husband, a decent appendage, had transferred his belief
from the Church of England to the Church of Utah, and the good wife,
as in duty bound, had followed in his wake. But when the Serpent came
and whispered in “Miss” Moore’s modest, respectable, one-idea’d ear
that the Abrahams of Great Salt Lake City were mere “Shamabrams,” and
not content with Sarahs, but added to them an unlimited supply of
Hagars, her power of endurance broke down. Not an inch would she
budge, not a step nearer to the City of the Saints would she take. She
fought against the impending misfortune, and she succeeded in reducing
her husband to submission and making him earn a good livelihood as
station-master on the waggon-line――he who might have been a Solomon in
the City of the Saints!

The evening of the next day, when we had reached Pacific Springs, the
Wind River Mountains appeared in marvellous majesty. It was one of the
sights of the journey. The huge purple hangings of rain-clouds in the
northern sky set off their vast proportions, and gave prominence, as
in a stereoscope, to their gigantic forms and their upper heights,
hoar with the frosts of ages. The setting sun diffused a charming
softness over their more rugged features, defining the folds and
ravines with a distinctness which deceived every idea of distance. As
the light sank beyond the far western horizon it travelled slowly up
the mountain side, till, reaching the summit, it mingled its
splendours with the snow. Nor was the scene less lovely in the morning
hour, as the first effulgence of day fell upon the masses of
dew-cloud, lit up the peaks, which gleamed like silver, and poured
streams of light and warmth over the broad skirts reposing on the
plain.

On August 25th, the nineteenth day of our journey, we set out at 7
a.m. to breast the Wasach, the last and highest chain of the mountain
mass before we reached Great Salt Lake Valley, and to arrive at our
destination――the New Jerusalem, the future Zion on the tops of the
mountains. The road up the big mountain was a very rough one, lined on
either side with great trees――hemlocks, firs, and balsam-pines. The
varied hues of the quaking ash were there also; the beech, dwarf oak,
and thickets of elders and wild roses; whilst over all the warm
autumnal tints already mingled with the bright green of summer. The
ascent became more and more rugged; this steep pitch, at the end of a
thousand miles of hard work and semi-starvation, caused the death of
many a wretched animal. Towards the summit it rises sharpest. Here we
descended from the waggon, which the four mules had work enough to
draw. The big mountain lies eighteen miles from the city; the top is a
narrow crest. From that eyrie, eight thousand feet above sea-level,
the weary pilgrim first sights his shrine, the object of his long
wanderings, hardships, and perils――the Happy Valley of the Great Salt
Lake.

After a few minutes’ delay to stand and gaze, we resumed the footpath
way, whilst the mail-waggon, with wheels rough-locked, descended what
appeared to be an impracticable slope. Falling into the gorge of Big
Kanyon Creek, we reached about midday a station, half stifled by the
thick dust and the sun. We slaked our thirst with the cool water that
trickled down the hill by the house side. Presently the station-master
arrived; he was introduced to us as Mr. Eph Hanks. I had often heard
of him as a Mormon desperado, leader of the dreaded Danite band, and a
model ruffian. We found him very pleasant and sociable, though a
facetious allusion to the dangers that awaited us under the roof of
the Danite was made. We had dinner there, and, after a friendly leave,
we entered the mail-waggon again, and prepared ourselves for the last
climb over the western-most reach of the Wasach.

The road was now only a narrow shelf, and frequent fordings were
rendered necessary by the capricious wanderings of the torrent. At one
of the most ticklish turns our driver kindly pointed out a precipice
where four of the mail passengers fell and broke their necks. He also
entertained us with sundry other horrible tales. In due time, emerging
from the gates and portals and deep serrations of the upper course, we
descended into a lower level, and the valley presently lay full before
our sight. At this place the pilgrim emigrants, like the hajis of
Jerusalem and Meccah, were wont to give vent to the emotions pent up
in their bosoms by sobs and tears, laughter and congratulations,
psalms and hysterics. It is indeed no wonder that children danced,
that strong men cheered and shouted, and that nervous women, broken
with fatigue and hope deferred, screamed and fainted; that the
ignorant fondly believed that the “Spirit of God” pervaded the very
atmosphere, and that Zion on the tops of the mountains is nearer
Heaven than the other parts of the earth. In good sooth, though
uninfluenced by religious fervour――beyond the natural satisfaction of
seeing a brand new Holy City――even I could not, after nineteen days of
the mail-waggon, gaze upon the scene without emotion.

The hour was about 6 p.m., the atmosphere was touched with a dreamy
haze, and a little bank of rose-coloured clouds, edged with flames of
purple and gold, floated in the upper air, whilst the mellow radiance
of an American autumn diffused its mild, soft lustre over the face of
the earth. The sun was setting in a flood of heavenly light behind the
bold, jagged outline of Antelope Island. At its feet, and then
bounding the far horizon, lay, like a band of burnished silver, the
Great Salt Lake, that innocent Dead Sea. South-westwards, and the
Oquirrh Range sharply silhouetted against the depths of an evening
sky.

The undulating valley-plain between us and the Oquirrh Range, once a
howling wilderness given over to a few miserable savages, was now the
site of a populous city. Truly the Mormon prophecy had been fulfilled;
the desert had blossomed like the rose.

As we descended the Wasach Mountains we could look and enjoy the view
of the Happy Valley, and the bench-land then attracted our attention.
The eastern valley-bench, upon whose western declivity the city lies,
may be traced on a clear day along the base of the mountains for a
distance of twenty miles. As we advanced over the bench-ground, the
city by slow degrees broke upon our sight. It showed, one may readily
believe, to special advantage after a succession of Indian lodges,
Canadian ranchos, and log-hut mail-stations of the prairies and the
mountains. About two miles north, and overlooking the settlements from
a height of four hundred feet, a detached cone called Ensign Mount
rose at the end of a chain, and overhung and sheltered the
north-eastern corner of the valley. Upon this mount the spirit of the
martyred Prophet, Mr. Joseph Smith, is said to have appeared to his
successor, Mr. Brigham Young, and pointed out to him the position of
the new temple, which, after Zion had “got up into the high mountain,”
was to console the saints for the loss of Nauvoo the Beautiful.

The city was about two miles broad, running parallel with the right
bank of the Jordan, which forms its western limit. As we approached,
it lay stretched before us as upon a map; at a little distance the
aspect was somewhat Oriental, and in some points it reminded me of
modern Athens――without the Acropolis. None of the buildings, except
the Prophet’s house, were whitewashed. The material, the thick,
sun-dried adobe, common to all parts of the Eastern world, was here of
a dull leaden blue, deepened by the atmosphere to a grey, like the
shingles of the roofs. The number of gardens and compounds, the dark
clumps of cottonwood, locust, or acacia, fruit trees――apples, peaches
and vines――and, finally, the fields of long-eared maize, strengthened
the similarity to an Asiatic rather than to an American settlement.
But the difference presently became as marked. Farm houses strongly
suggested the old country; moreover, domes and minarets, even churches
and steeples, were wholly wanting. The only building conspicuous from
afar was the block occupied by the present Head of the Church. The
court-house, with its tinned, Muscovian dome; the arsenal, a barn-like
structure; and a saw-mill were next in importance.

As we entered the suburbs, the houses were almost all of one pattern,
a barn shape, and the diminutive casements showed that window glass
was not yet made in the valley. The poorer houses are small, low, and
hut-like; the others, single-storied buildings, somewhat like stables,
with many entrances. The best houses resembled East Indian bungalows,
with flat roofs and low, shady verandahs, well trellised, and
supported by posts or pillars. I looked in vain for the outhouse-harems,
in which certain romancers concerning things Mormon had told me that
wives were kept, like other stock. I presently found this one of a
multitude of delusions. The people came out to their doors to see the
mail-coach, as if it were a “Derby dilly” of old, go by. I was struck
by the English appearance of the colony, and the prodigious numbers of
white-headed children.

Presently we turned into the main thoroughfare, the centre of
population and business, where the houses of the principal Mormon
dignitaries and the stores of the Gentile merchants combined to form
the city’s only street, properly so called. We pulled up at the Salt
Lake House, the principal if not the only establishment of the kind in
New Zion. In the Far West one learns not to expect much of a hostelry,
and I had not seen one so grand for many a day. It was a two-storied
building, with a long verandah supported by painted posts. There was a
large yard behind for coralling cattle. A rough-looking crowd of
drivers and their friends and idlers, almost every man armed with
revolver and bowie-knife, gathered round the doorway to prospect the
“new lot.” The host presently came out to assist us in carrying in our
luggage. There was no bar, but upstairs we found a Gentile ball-room,
a fair sitting-room, and bedchambers, apparently made out of a single
apartment by partitions too thin to be strictly agreeable. The
proprietor was a Mormon who had married an Englishwoman. We found him
in the highest degree civil and obliging. To sum up, notwithstanding
some considerable drawbacks, my first experience of the Holy City of
the Far West was decidedly better than I expected.

Our journey had occupied nineteen days, from August 7th to 25th both
included, and in that time we had accomplished not less than 1,136
statute miles.



II

_THE CITY AND ITS PROPHET_


Before giving any detailed account of the Mormons, I should like to
say that I was twenty-four days at headquarters, and every opportunity
was given me of surface observation; but there is in Mormondom, as in
all other exclusive faiths, Jewish, Hindu, or other, an inner life,
into which I cannot flatter myself to have penetrated. No Gentile,
however long he may live in Salt Lake City, or how intimately he may
be connected with the Mormons, can expect to see anything but the
outside. The different accounts which have been given of life in the
City of the Saints by anti-Mormons and apostates are venomous and
misleading, whilst the writings of the faithful are necessarily
untrustworthy. I therefore take the middle distance of the
unprejudiced observer, and can only recount, honestly and truthfully,
what I heard, felt, and saw.

The day after my arrival I went to see the Governor, the Hon. Alfred
Cumming, who had been appointed by the President of the United States
to assume the supreme executive authority at Great Salt Lake City. The
conditions were that polygamy should not be interfered with, nor
forcible measures resorted to, except in extremest need. Governor
Cumming, accompanied by his wife, with an escort of six hundred
dragoons, entered the city in the spring of 1858, shortly after the
Mormons were in open rebellion against the Federal authority. By
firmness, prudence, and conciliation, he not only prevented any
collision between the local militia and the United States army, but
succeeded in restoring order and obedience throughout the territory.
He was told that his life was in danger, and warned that he might
share the fate of Governor Boggs, who was shot through the mouth when
standing at the window. His answer was to enlarge the casements of his
house, in order to give the shooters a fair chance. The impartiality
which he brought to bear in the discharge of his difficult and
delicate duties, and his resolution to treat the saints like Gentiles
and citizens, not as Digger Indians or felons, had not, when I was at
Great Salt Lake City, won him the credit which he deserved from either
party. The anti-Mormons abused him, and declared him to be a Mormon in
Christian disguise; the Mormons, though more moderate, could never, by
their very organisation, be content with a temporal and extraneous
power existing side by side with a spiritual power. Governor Cumming
did not meet his predecessor, the ex-Governor, Brigham Young, except
on public duty. Mrs. Cumming visited Mrs. Young and the houses of the
principal dignitaries, this being the only society in the place.
Amongst the Moslems a Lady Mary Wortley Montagu could learn more of
domestic life in a week than a man could in a year. So it was among
the Mormons, and Mrs. Cumming’s knowledge far exceeded all that I
might ever hope to gain.

The leading feature of Great Salt Lake City was Main, otherwise
Whiskey, Street. This broadway was 132 feet wide, including twenty
sidewalks, and, like the rest of the principal avenues, was planted
with locust and other trees. The whole city was divided up into wide
streets, and planted with trees. The stores were far superior to the
shops of an English country town; the public buildings were few and
unimposing. I was disappointed with the Temple block, the only place
of public and general worship in the city; when I was there it was
unfinished, a mere waste. The Tabernacle, the principal building,
required enlarging, and was quite unfitted for the temple of a new
faith. It seemed hardly in accordance with the energy and devotedness
of this new religion that such a building should represent the House
of the Lord, while Mr. Brigham Young, the Prophet, thinking of his own
comfort before the glory of God, was lodged, like Solomon of old, in
what was comparatively a palace. Near the Tabernacle was the Endowment
House, or place of great medicine. Many rites took place here in
secret that were carefully concealed from Gentile eyes, and with a
result that human sacrifices were said to be performed within its
walls. Personally, I did not believe in these orgies; there were
probably ceremonies of the nature of masonic rites. Gentiles declared
that the ceremonies consisted of a sort of miracle play, and a
respectable judge was popularly known as “The Devil,” because he was
supposed to play the part of the Father of Sin when tempting Adam and
Eve. It was said that baptism by total immersion was performed, and
the ceremony occupied eleven or twelve hours, the neophyte, after
bathing, being anointed with oil, and dressed in clean white garments,
cap and shirt, of which the latter was rarely removed.

On the Monday after my arrival a smoke-like column towards the east
announced that the emigrants were crossing the bench-land, and the
people hurried from all sides to greet them. Of course, I went, too,
as the arrival of these emigrants, or rather prilgrims, was one of the
sights of the City of the Saints. Presently the carts came. All the
new arrivals were in clean clothes, the men washed and shaved, and the
girls were singing hymns, habited in Sunday dress. Except the very
young and the very old, the company of pilgrims did not trouble the
waggons. They marched through clouds of dust over the sandy road
leading to the town, accompanied by crowds, some on foot, others on
horseback, and a few in traps. A score of youths of rather rowdy
appearance were mounted in all the tawdriness of Western
trappings――Rocky Mountain hats, embroidered buckskin garments, red
flannel shirts, gigantic spurs, pistols and knives stuck in red sashes
with depending ends. By-and-by the train of pilgrims reached the
public square, and here, before the invasion of the Federal army, the
first President used to make a point of honouring the arrival of
pilgrims by a greeting in person. Not so on this occasion; indeed, it
was whispered that Brigham Young seldom left his house except for the
Tabernacle, and, despite his powerful will and high moral courage, did
not show the personal intrepidity of Mr. Joseph Smith. He had guards
at his gates, and never appeared in public unattended by friends and
followers, who were, of course, armed. On this occasion the place of
Mr. Brigham Young was taken by President-Bishop Hunter. Preceded by a
brass band, and accompanied by the City Marshal, the Bishop stood up
in his conveyance, and calling up the captains of companies, shook
hands with them, and proceeded forthwith to business. In a short time
arrangements were made for the housing and employment of all who
required work, whether men or women. Everything was conducted with
decorum.

I mingled freely among the crowd, and was introduced to many, whose
names I did not remember. Indeed, the nomenclature of the Mormons was
apt to be rather confusing, because, in order to distinguish children
of different mothers, it was usual to prefix the maternal to the
paternal parents’ name, suppressing the Christian name altogether.
Thus, for instance, my sons, if I had any, by Miss Brown and Miss
Jones and Miss Robinson respectively, would call themselves Brother
Brown-Burton, Brother Jones-Burton, and Brother Robinson-Burton. The
saints, even the highest dignitaries, waive the reverend and the
ridiculous esquire, that “title much in use among vulgar people.” The
Mormon pontiff and the eminences around him are simply brother or
mister. _En revanche_, amongst the crowd there are as many colonels
and majors, about ten being the proportion to one captain, as in the
days when Mrs. Trollope set the Mississippi on fire. Sister is applied
to women of all ages, whether married or single.

Many of the pilgrims were English, who had crossed over the plains,
looking towards Mr. Brigham Young and Great Salt Lake City much as
Roman Catholics regard the Pope and Rome. The arrangements for their
convoy appeared to have been admirable, but many tales were told of
mismangement. An old but favourite illustration of the trials of
inexperienced travellers from the Mississippi to California was as
follows. A man rode up to a standing waggon, and seeing a
wretched-looking lad nursing a starving baby, asked him what the
matter might be: “Wal now,” responded the youth, “guess I’m kinder
streakt――ole dad’s drunk, ole marm’s in hy-sterics, brother Jim be
playing poker with two gamblers, sister Sal’s down yonder a-courtin’
with an in-tire stranger, this ’ere baby’s got the diaree, the team’s
clean guv out, the waggon’s broke down, it’s twenty miles to the next
water. I don’t care a damn if I never see Californy!”

The dress of the fair sex in Great Salt Lake City was somewhat
peculiar. The article called in Cornwall a “gowk,” in other parts of
England a “cottage bonnet,” was universally used, plus a long, thick
veil behind, which acts as a cape or shawl. A loose jacket and a
petticoat, mostly of calico or some inexpensive stuff, made up all
that was visible. The wealthier ladies affected silks, especially
black. Love of dress, however, was as great among the sisters as in
women in any other part of the world; in fact, I noticed that this
essential is everywhere a pleasing foible, and the semi-nude savage,
the crinolined “civilisee,” the nun and the quakeress, the sinner and
the saint, the _biche_ and the _grande dame_, all meet for once in
their lives pretty much on a par and on the same ground.

The sisters of Great Salt Lake City――at least, the native ones――were
distinctly good-looking, with regular features, lofty brow, clear
complexion, long, silky hair, and a bewitching soft smile. It would
seem that polygamy had agreed with them. The belle of the city, so far
as I could see, was a Miss Sally A――――, daughter of a judge. Strict
Mormons, however, rather wagged their heads at this pretty person. She
was supposed to prefer Gentile and heathenish society, and it was
whispered against her that she had actually vowed never to marry a
saint.

The City of the Saints was not a dull city. In addition to the
spiritual exercises, provision was also made for physical pastimes.
The Social Hall was the usual scene of Mormon festivities, and here
one could see the beauty and fashion of Great Salt Lake City _en
grande tenue_. Good amateur acting took place here, and dancing seemed
to be considered a most edifying exercise. The Prophet danced, the
apostles danced, the bishops danced, the young and the old danced.
There is high authority for perseverance in this practice: David
danced, we are told, with all his might; and Scipio, according to
Seneca, was wont thus to exercise his heroic limbs. The balls at the
Social Hall were highly select, and conducted on an expensive scale;
ten-dollar tickets admitted one lady with one gentleman, and for all
extra ladies two dollars each had to be paid. Space was limited, and
many a Jacob was shorn of his glory by having to appear with only
Rachael in his train, and without a following of Leahs, Zilpahs, and
Bilhahs.

An account of one of these balls might be of interest. The hall was
tastefully decorated. At four o’clock in the afternoon the Prophet
entered, and order was called. He ascended a kind of platform, and,
with uplifted hands, blessed those present. He then descended to the
boards and led off the first cotillon. At 8 p.m. supper was served;
dancing was resumed with spirit; and finally the party ended as it
began, with prayer and benediction, about five o’clock in the
morning――thirteen successive mortal hours. I may mention that, in
order to balance any disparity of the sexes, each gentleman was
allowed to lead out two ladies and dance with them, either together or
alternately. What an advantage this would be in many a London
ball-room!

I will now proceed to describe my visit to the President, or Prophet,
Brigham Young. Governor Cumming had first written to ask if he would
give me the honour of an interview; and, having received a gracious
reply, I proceeded with him to call upon the Prophet on August 31st,
at 11 a.m., as appointed. We arrived at the house, and, after a slight
scrutiny, passed the guard, and, walking down the verandah, entered
the Prophet’s private office. Several people who were sitting there
rose at Governor Cumming’s entrance. At a few words of introduction,
Brigham Young advanced, shook hands with me, and invited me to be
seated on a sofa on one side of the room, and presented me to those
present.

The “President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints all
over the World” was born at Whittingham, Vermont, on June 1st, 1801.
He was, consequently, at the time I saw him, in 1860, fifty-nine years
old; he looked about forty-five. I had expected to see a
venerable-looking old man; but scarcely a grey thread appeared in his
hair, which was parted on the side, light-coloured, and rather thick.
His forehead was somewhat narrow, the eyebrows thin, the eyes between
grey and blue, with a calm and somewhat reserved expression. A slight
droop in the left lid made me think he had suffered from paralysis; I
afterwards heard it was the result of a neuralgia, which long
tormented him. The nose, which was fine and somewhat pointed, was bent
a little to the left; the lips were like the New Englander’s, and the
teeth were imperfect. The cheeks were rather fleshy, the chin somewhat
peaked, and face clean-shaven, except under the jaws, where the beard
was allowed to grow. The hands were well-made, and the figure was
somewhat large and broad-shouldered.

The Prophet’s dress was neat and plain as a Quaker’s, of grey
homespun, except the cravat and waistcoat. His coat was of antique cut
and, like the pantaloons, baggy, and the buttons were black. A necktie
of dark silk, with a large bow, was passed round a starchless collar.
He wore a black satin waistcoat, and plain gold chain. Altogether, the
Prophet’s appearance was that of a gentleman farmer in New England.

His manner was affable and impressive, and distinctly unpretentious.
He showed no signs of dogmatism or bigotry, and never once entered,
with me at least, on the subject of religion. He impressed me with a
certain sense of power. It was commonly said there was only one chief
in Great Salt Lake City, and that was “Brigham.” His temper was even,
and his manner cold; in fact, like his face, somewhat bloodless. He
had great powers of observation and judgment of character; if he
disliked a stranger at the first interview, he never saw him again. He
lived a most temperate and sober life, his favourite food being baked
potatoes, with a little buttermilk, and his drink water; he
disapproved, like all strict Mormons, of spirituous liquors, and never
touched anything stronger than a glass of lager beer, and never smoked
tobacco. His followers deemed him an angel of light, his foes a fiend
damned; he was, I presume, neither one nor the other. He has been
called a hypocrite, swindler, forger, and murderer; no one looked it
less. In fact, he was the St. Paul of the New Dispensation; he gave
point, energy, and consistency to the disjointed and turbulent
fanaticism of Mr. Joseph Smith; and if he was not able to create, he
was at least able to control circumstances.

Such was His Excellency, President Brigham Young, “painter and
glazier”――his earliest craft――prophet, revelator, translator, and
seer; the man who was revered as no king or kaiser, pope or pontiff,
ever was; who, like the Old Man of the Mountain, by holding up his
hand could cause the death of any one within his reach; who, governing
as well as reigning, long stood up to fight with the sword of the
Lord, and with his few hundred guerillas, against the mighty power of
the United States; who outwitted all diplomacy opposed to him; and,
finally, made a treaty of peace with the President of the great
Republic as though he had wielded the combined power of France,
Russia, and England.

The Prophet’s private office, where he was in the habit of transacting
the greater part of his business, correcting his sermons, and
conducting his correspondence, was a plain, neat room, with a large
writing-table and money-safe. I remarked a pistol and rifle hung
within easy reach on the right-hand wall. There was a look of order
which suited the character of the man, and his style of doing business
was to issue distinct directions to his employés, after which he
disliked referring to the subject. He had the reputation of being a
wealthy man, though he began life as a poor one; and, so far as I
could see, he had made his money, not by enriching himself by the
tithes and plunder of his followers, but in business and by hard work.

After the first few words of greeting, I interpreted the Prophet’s
look to mean that he would like to know my object in coming to the
City of the Saints. I told him that, having read and heard much about
Utah as it was said to be, I was anxious to see Utah as it was. He
then touched upon agricultural and other subjects; but we carefully
avoided anything to do with religion or his domestic peculiarities, on
which, I was warned, he disliked to be questioned. After talking for
about half an hour, the conversation began to flag, so we rose up,
shook hands all round, as was the custom there, and took our leave.

The first impression left upon my mind, and subsequently confirmed,
was that the Prophet was no common man, and that he had none of the
weakness and vanity which characterise the common uncommon man. I also
remarked the veneration shown to him by his followers, whose affection
for him was equalled only by the confidence with which they entrusted
to him their dearest interests in this world and in the next. After my
visit many congratulated me, as would the followers of Tien Wong, or
Heavenly King, upon having at last seen the most remarkable man in the
world.

The Prophet’s block was surrounded by a high wall and strengthened
with semi-circular buttresses; it consisted of many houses. The Lion
House was occupied by Mrs. Young and her family in the eastern part of
the square. On the west of it lay the private office, in which we were
received, and further west again was the public office, where the
church and other business was transacted. Beyond this was the Bee
House, so named from the sculptured bee-hive in front of it. The Bee
House was a large building with long walls facing east and west. It
was tenanted by the Prophet’s “plurality wives” and their families,
who each had a bedroom, sitting-room, and closet, simply and similarly
furnished. There was a Moslem air of retirement about the Bee House;
the face of woman was rarely seen at the window, and her voice was
never heard without. Anti-Mormons declared the Bee House to be like
the State prison of Auburn, a self-supporting establishment, for not
even the wives of the Prophet were allowed to live in idleness.

As I have said before, I was unwilling to add to those who had annoyed
the Prophet by domestic allusions, and have, therefore, no direct
knowledge of the extent to which he carried his polygamy; some
Gentiles allowed him seventeen, others thirty-six, wives out of a
household of seventy members, others an indefinite number of wives
scattered through the different settlements. Of these, doubtless, many
were but wives by name――such, for instance, as the wives of the late
Prophet; and others were married more for the purpose of building up
for themselves spiritual kingdoms than for the normal purpose of
matrimony. I judged the Prophet’s progeny to be numerous from the
following circumstance. On one occasion, when standing with him on the
belvedere, my eye fell upon a new erection; it could be compared
externally to nothing but an English gentleman’s hunting-stables, and
I asked him what it was intended for. “A private school for my
children,” he replied, “directed by Brother Kelsey.”

The following Sunday I attended a Mormon service. I passed the morning
in the painful but appropriate exercise of reading the books of Mormon
and of Moroni the prophet. Some people had told me that it was the
best imitation of the Old Testament existing; to me it seemed to
emulate the sprightliness of Leviticus. Surely there never was a book
so dull and heavy; it was as monotonous as a sage prairie. In
Mormonism it holds the same place as the Bible in the more ignorant
Roman Catholic countries, where religious reading is chiefly
restricted to the Breviary, tales of miracles, of saints, and so
forth. It was strictly proper, and did not contain a word about
materialism and polygamy.

The early part of the morning passed. At 9.45 a.m. we entered “the
Bowery”; it was advisable to go early to get seats within hearing.
This place was a kind of “hangar,” about one hundred feet long by the
same breadth, with a roofing of bushes and boughs supported by rough
posts, and open for ventilation on the sides; it contained about three
thousand souls. The congregation was accommodated upon long rows of
benches, opposite the dais, or tribune, which looked like a long lane
of boarding open to the north, where it faced the audience, and
entered by steps from the east. Between the people and the platform
was the orchestra――a violin, a bass, two women, and four men
performers――who sang the sweet songs of Zion tolerably well.

We took our seats on the benches, where we could see the congregation
flocking in, a proceeding which was not over for half an hour. The
people were all in their Sunday best, and many a pretty face peeped
out from the sun-bonnet, though the “mushroom” and the “pork-pie” had
found their way over the plains, and trim figures were clad in neat
dresses, sometimes with a little faded finery. The men were decently
attired; but the weather being hot, many of them had left their coats
at home, and had come in their shirt sleeves. The custom, however,
looked natural, and there was no want of cleanliness, such as
sometimes lurks behind the bulwark of buttons. The elders and
dignitaries on the platform affected coats of black broadcloth. All
wore their hats till the address began, then all uncovered. The number
of old people astonished me; half a dozen were sitting on the same
bench: these broken-down men and decrepit crones had come to lay their
bones in the Holy City.

At 10 a.m. the meeting opened with a spiritual song, and then a
civilised-looking man, being called upon by the presiding Elder for
the day, offered up prayer. The matter was good, but somewhat
commonplace. The conclusion was an “Amen,” in which all hands joined.
It reminded me of the historical practice of “humming” in the
seventeenth century.

Next arose Bishop Abraham O. Smoot, second Mayor of Zion, who began
with “Brethring,” and proceeded in a Methody tone of voice to praise
the saints and pitch into the apostates. He made an undue use of the
regular Wesleyan organ――the nose; but he appeared to speak excellent
sense in execrable English. As he was in the midst of an allusion to
the President, Brigham Young entered, and all turned their faces, even
the old lady who was sleeping through the discourse.

The Prophet was dressed as usual in grey homespun and home-woven; he
wore, like most of the elders, a tall, steeple-crowned straw hat, with
a broad black ribbon, and he had the gentility of black kid gloves. He
entered the tribune covered, and sat down. A man in a fit was carried
out pumpwards. Bishop Smoot concluded with informing us that we should
live for God. Another hymn was sung. Then a great silence, which told
us that something was about to happen: _that_ old man held his cough;
_that_ old lady awoke with a start; _that_ child ceased to squall.
President Brigham Young removed his hat, advanced to the end of the
tribune, expectorated into the spittoon, restored the balance of fluid
by a glass of water from a decanter on a stand, and, leaning slightly
forwards with both hands propped on the green baize of the tribune,
addressed his followers.

The discourse began slowly, word crept titubantly after word, and the
opening phrases were scarcely audible; but as the orator warmed, his
voice rose high and sonorous, and a fluency so remarkable succeeded
hesitation that the latter seemed to have been a work of art. The
gestures were easy and rounded, except one of raising and shaking the
forefinger, which struck me as threatening and bullying. The address
was long. Mormonism was a great fact. Religion had made him, Brigham
Young, the happiest of men. He was ready to dance like a Shaker. At
this the Prophet, who was a good mimic and had much of humour, raised
his right arm, and gave, to the amusement of the congregation, a droll
imitation of the Shakers. A great deal of what followed contained
topical allusions. The Saints had a glorious destiny before them, and
their morality was remarkable as the beauty of the Promised Land. The
soft breeze blowing over the Bowery, and the glorious sunshine
outside, made the allusion highly appropriate. After a somewhat
lengthy string of sentences concerning the great tribulation coming on
earth――it had been coming for the last eighteen hundred years――he
concluded with good wishes to visitors and Gentiles generally, with a
solemn blessing upon the President of the United States, the
territorial Governor, and all that be in authority over us, and with
an “Amen” which was loudly re-echoed by all around, he restored his
hat and resumed his seat.

Then arose Mr. Heber C. Kimball, the second President. He was the
model of a Methodist, a tall, powerful man, with dark, piercing eyes
and clean-shaven, blue face. He affected the Boanerges style, from a
certain dislike to the Nonconformist rant and whine, and his manner of
speech savoured rather of familiarity than of reverence. Several of
his remarks were loudly laughed at by the congregation. His style of
oratory was certainly startling; he reminded me of Luther’s
description of Tetzel’s sermon, in which he used to shout the words
“Bring! bring! bring!” with such a horrible bellowing that one would
have said it was a mad bull rushing on the people and goring them with
its horns.

After this worthy’s address, a list of names for whom letters were
lying unclaimed was called from the platform. A missionary adjourned
the meeting till two o’clock, delivered the prayer of dismissal,
during which all stood up, and ended with the Benediction and “Amen.”
The Sacrament was not administered on this occasion. It was often
given, and reduced to the very elements of a ceremony; even water was
used instead of wine, because the latter is of Gentile manufacture.
Two elders walked up and down the rows, one carrying a pitcher, the
other a plate of broken bread, and each Saint partook of both.

That same evening when dining out, I had a lesson in Mormon modesty.
The mistress of the house, a Gentile but not an anti-Mormon, was
requested by a saintly visitor, who was also a widow, to instruct me
that on no account I must propose to see her home. “Mormon ladies,”
said my kind informant, “are very strict”; “Unnecessarily so on this
occasion,” I could not help adding. Something similar occurred on
another occasion: a very old lady, wishing to return home,
surreptitiously left the room and sidled out of the garden gate, and
my companion, an officer from Camp Floyd, at once recognised the
object of the retreat――_viz._ to avoid our possible escort. I
afterwards learned at dinner and elsewhere amongst the Mormons to
abjure the Gentile practice of giving precedence to the fair sex. The
lesson, however, was not new; I had been taught the same, in times
past, amongst certain German missionaries, who assumed precedence over
their wives upon a principle borrowed from St. Paul.

There was a certain monotony of life in Great Salt Lake City, a
sameness from day to day, which does not render the subject favourable
for a lively description; moreover, the Moslem gloom, the result of
austere morals and manner, of the semi-seclusion of the sexes, and, in
my case, the reserve arising towards a stranger who appeared in the
train of Federal officials, hung over society. We rose early, and
breakfasted at any hour between 6 and 9 a.m. Then ensued “business,”
which seemed to consist principally of correcting one’s teeth and a
walk about the town, with an occasional liquor up. Dinner was at 1
p.m., announced not by the normal gong of Eastern States, but by a
most discordant hand-bell. Jostling into the long room of the
ordinary, we took our seats, and, seizing our forks, proceeded at once
to action. Nothing but water was drunk at dinner, except when a
gentleman preferred to wash down roast pork with a tumbler of milk.
Wine in this part of the world was dear and bad, and even if the
Saints made their own, it could scarcely be cheap, on account of the
price of labour. The feeding ended with a glass of liquor, not at the
bar, because there was none, but in the privacy of one’s own chamber,
which takes from drinking half its charms. Most of the well-to-do men
found time for a siesta in the afternoon. There was supper at 6 p.m.,
and the evening was quietly spent with a friend.

To describe Great Salt Lake City in those days without some account of
polygamy would be like seeing _Hamlet_ with the part of the Prince of
Denmark omitted. It is, I suppose, therefore necessary to supply a
popular view of the peculiar institution which at once was the bane
and the blessing of Mormonism――plurality. I approach the subject with
a feeling of despair, so conflicting are opinions concerning it, and
so difficult is it to naturalise in Europe the customs of Asia,
Africa, and America, and reconcile the habits of the nineteenth
century A.D. with those of 1900 B.C. A return to the patriarchal ages
must necessarily have its disadvantages.

I found that the marriage ceremony was performed in the Temple, or, if
that was impossible, in Mr. Brigham Young’s office, properly speaking,
by the Prophet, who, however, could depute any follower to act for
him. When mutual consent was given, the parties were pronounced man
and wife in the name of Jesus Christ; prayers followed, and there was
a patriarchal feast of joy in the evening.

The first wife, as amongst polygamists generally, was _the_ wife, and
assumed the husband’s name and title. Her plurality partners were
called sisters, such as Sister Anne, or Sister Maria, and were the
“aunts” of her children. The first wife was married for time, the
others were sealed for eternity. Girls rarely remained single past
sixteen (in England the average marrying age is thirty), and they
would have been the pity of the community if they had been doomed to a
waste of youth so unnatural.

Divorce was rarely obtained by the man, who was ashamed to own that he
could not keep his house in order. Some, such as the President, would
grant it only in the case of adultery; and here I may say the two
mortal sins in Mormonism are (1) adultery, and (2) shedding innocent
blood. Wives, however, were allowed to claim it for cruelty,
desertion, or neglect. Mormon women married to Gentiles were cut off
from the society of the Saints, and without uncharitableness men
suspected a sound previous reason. The widows of the Prophet were
married to his successor, as David took unto himself the wives of
Saul; being generally aged, they occupied the position of matron
rather than wife, and the same was the case where a man espoused a
mother and her daughter.

There were rules and regulations of Mormonism. All sensuality in the
married state was strictly forbidden beyond that necessary to procure
progeny――the practice, in fact, of Adam and Abraham.

It is not necessary to go into the arguments which are adduced by the
Mormons in favour of polygamy, nor to recount the arguments on the
other side. I content myself here with stating facts as I saw them. It
will be asked, What view did the softer sex take of this state of
affairs? A few, mostly from the Old Country, lamented that Mr. Joseph
Smith ever asked of the Creator that question which was answered in
the affirmative. A very few, like the Curia Electa, Emma, the first
wife of Mr. Joseph Smith――who said of her, by-the-bye, that she could
not be contented in Heaven without rule――apostatised, and became Mrs.
Brideman. But most of the women were even more in favour of polygamy
than the men. For this attachment of the women of the Saints to the
doctrine of plurality I found two reasons. The Mormon prophets
expended all their arts upon this end, well knowing that without the
hearty co-operation of mothers and wives, sisters and daughters, their
institution could not exist long. They bribed them with promises of
Paradise, they subjugated them with threats of annihilation. With
them, once a Mormon always a Mormon. The apostate Mormon was looked
upon by other people as a scamp and a knave, and as regards a woman,
she was looked upon as worse than a prostitute. The Mormon household
has been described by its enemies as a hell of hatred, envy, and
malice; the same has been said of the Moslem harem; both, I believe,
suffer from the assertions of prejudice or ignorance.

Another curious effect may be noticed. When a man had four or five
wives, with reasonable families by each, he was fixed for life; his
interests, if not his affections, bound him irrevocably to his New
Faith. But the bachelor, as well as the monogamic youth, was prone to
backsliding and apostacy. This, when I was at Great Salt Lake City,
was apparently so common that many of the new Saints formed a mere
floating population. But without expressing any further opinions
(those I have given so far are merely the opinions of others), I may
say that the result of my investigations was to prove that Great Salt
Lake City had been wonderfully successful in its colonisation.
Physically speaking, there was no comparison between the Saints and
the class from which they were mostly taken, and, in point of view of
mere morality, the Mormon community was perhaps purer than any other
of equal numbers.

About the middle of September the time for my departure drew nigh. I
prepared for difficulties by having my hair “shingled off,” till my
head somewhat resembled a pointer’s dorsum, and deeply regretted
having left all my wigs behind me. We laid in a good store of
provisions, not forgetting an allowance of whiskey and schnapps.

My last evening was spent in the genial company of a few friends. I
thanked Governor Cumming for his generous hospitality, and made my
acknowledgments to the courtesy of his amiable wife. My adieux were on
an extensive scale, and the next day, September 19th, in the morning,
I left Great Salt Lake City, _en route_ for the South.

The day was fine and wondrous clear, affording a splendid back view of
the Happy Valley before it was finally shut out from sight, and the
Utah Lake looked a very gem of beauty, a diamond in its setting of
steelly blue mountains. It was with a feeling of real regret that I
bade adieu to the City of the Saints.



_A MISSION TO DAHOMÉ_

1863



_A MISSION TO DAHOMÉ_

1863


It is a long stride from Salt Lake City to Dahomé, from the Mormons to
the Amazons, but I take my visit to the King of Dahomé as next in
date. Before, however, beginning my journey to Dahomé let me touch
briefly on that much-vexed and little-understood subject――the negro.

Central Intertropical Africa, lying between north latitude 10° and
south latitude 20°, at that time contained eight considerable negro
circles, which may be called kingdoms. Of these there were three on
the west coast north of the Equator, namely:

1st. Ashanti, the land which exports the “Minas” negroes. This
despotism has been well known to us since the beginning of the present
century. The capital is Kumasi, nearly 133 direct miles from the
coast. This empire may be said to rest on two pillars, blood and gold.
Human sacrifice was excessive, and the “customs” mean the slaughter of
fellow-creatures.

2nd. Benin, a kingdom well known to old travellers, and the place
where Belzoni of the Pyramids died. I visited it in August, 1862, and
my reception was the crucifixion of a negro. On the night after my
arrival a second slave was slain and placed before my doorway. My
lodgings commanded a view of the principal square, which was strewn
with human bones, _green_ and _white_.

3rd. Dahomé. From the plain and unvarnished account of this tyranny,
which I am about to relate, may be estimated the amount of hopeless
misery which awaited the African in Africa. And as it is
unsatisfactory to point out a disease without suggesting a remedy, I
will propose my panacea at the end of this essay.

We now cross the Equator and find ourselves among the great South
African family. Their common origin is proved by their speech. Briefly
to characterise their language, the place of our genders are taken by
personal and impersonal forms, and all changes of words are made at
the beginning, not, as with us, at the end. The Kaffir (Caffre race in
South-east Africa) is evidently a mixed breed, and it has nearly
annihilated the Bushmen and the Hottentots――the original lords of the
land. There is a curious resemblance between the Coptic, or Old
Egyptian, and the Hottentot tongues, which suggests that in the
prehistoric ages one language extended from the Nile Valley to the
Cape of Good Hope. The true negroes, distinguished by their long,
ape-like head and projecting jaws, bowed shins and elongated heels and
forearms, are all the tribes of Intertropical Africa whose blood is
unmixed. This is my definition; but of this point opinions differ.

And here we may stand to view the gleam of light which the future
casts across the Dark Continent. Slowly but surely the wave of Moslem
conquest rolls down towards the line. Every Moslem is a propagandist,
and their traders, unlike ours, carry conversion with them. This fact
European missionaries deny, because they do not like it: they would
rather preach to heathens than to Moslems, whom Locke describes as
unorthodox Christians. They even deny the superiority of El Islam,
which forbids the pagan abominations of child-murder, human sacrifice,
witch-burning, ordeal-poisons, and horrors innumerable. But we, who
look forward to the advent of a higher law, of a nobler humanity, hail
with infinite pleasure every sign of progress.

Philanthropists, whose heads are sometimes softer than their hearts,
have summed up their opinion of slavery as the “sum of all
villainies.” I look upon it as an evil, to the slaveholder even more
than to the slave, but a necessary evil, or, rather, a condition of
things essentially connected, like polygamy, with the progress of
human society, especially in the tropics. The savage hunting tribes
slave for themselves; they are at the bottom of the ladder. Advancing
to agricultural and settled life, man must have assistants, hands,
slaves. As population increases, commerce develops itself and free
labour fills the markets; the slave and the serf are emancipated: they
have done their task; they disappear from the community, never more to
return. Hence every nation, Hindu and Hebrew, English and French, have
had slaves; all rose to their present state of civilisation by the
“sum of all villainies.” And here, when owning slavery to be an evil,
I must guard against being misunderstood. It is an evil to the white
man: it is often an incalculable boon to the black. In the case of the
negro it is life, it is comfort, it is civilisation; in the case of
the white it has done evil by retarding progress, by demoralising
society, and by giving rise to a mixed race.

And there is yet another point to be settled when speaking of the
negro. In the United States every black man is a negro, or, to speak
politely, a “cullard pussun.” Thus the noble races of Northern Africa
and the half-Arab Moors, the Nubians and Abyssinians, and the fine
Kaffir (Caffre) type of South-eastern Africa are confounded with the
anthropoid of Sierra Leone, of the Guinea and of the Congo regions.
The families first mentioned differ more from the true negro than they
do from the white man.

My first visit to Gelele, then King of Dahomé, was in May and June,
1863. Already in 1861 I had proposed to restore those amicable
relations which we had with his father Gezo; but my application was
not accepted by the Government. On my return to the West African coast
after a six weeks’ visit to England, the journey was made on my own
responsibility, and it was not pleasant. I was alone――in such matters
negroes do not count as men――and four mortal days upon the Slave Coast
lagoons, salt, miry rivers, rich only in mud, miasma, and mosquitoes,
with drenching rains and burning suns playing upon a cramping canoe
without awning, are unsatisfactory even to remember. Having reached
Whydah, the seaport and slave-market of Dahomé, I procured a hammock,
and in three days I arrived at Kana, a summer residency for the Court,
distant 7,500 miles from Agbomé, the capital.

The human sacrifices called the “nago customs” had lately ended.
Twelve men had lost their lives, and, dressed in various attire like
reapers, dancers, and musicians, had been exposed on tall scaffolds of
strong scantling. “_C’est se moquer de l’humanité_,” remarked to me
the Principal of the French Mission at Whydah. But the corpses had
been removed, and during my flying visit of five days nothing
offensive was witnessed.

At Kana I met M. Jules Gerard, first “_le chasseur_,” then “_le tueur
des lions_”: we had sailed together from Europe to Madeira, and he had
been sea-sick during the whole voyage. Men who have spent their youth
in the excitement of dangerous sport often lose their nerve in middle
age. This was the case with the unfortunate lion-hunter; the sight of
the “customs” threw him into a fever. Disappointment also weighed upon
his spirits. He came to West Africa in the hope that his fame as a
killer of lions had preceded him; but the only lion that can exist in
that mouldy climate is the British lion, and even he is not a terrible
beast to bring amongst the ladies. He expected to find Dahomé a kind
of Algiers, and he exchanged a good for a very bad country. He had set
his mind upon crossing the northern frontier; but the king at once put
an end to that plan, and afterwards played me the same trick. He had
also based his hopes upon his good shooting and upon an explosive
bullet calculated to do great execution; but many of the king’s women
guards could use their guns better than he did, and when the said
shell was produced, Gelele sent to his stores and brought out a
box-full.

M. Gerard proposed to himself a journey which would have severely
tried the health of the strongest man in Europe. He resolved to make
his way from the Gulf of Guinea through dangerous Timbuktu (Timbuctos)
and the terrible Sahara to Algiers. I advised him to retire to
Teneriffe or Madeira and recruit his energies. But he was game to the
last. He made another departure through the malarious Sherbro country,
south of pestilential Sierra Leone. The next thing we heard of him was
when crossing the Jong River he had been drowned by the upsetting of a
canoe. Somewhat later came the report that he had been foully
murdered. I was rejoiced to hear that a subscription had been raised
for his aged and bereaved mother.

Having reported that Dahomé was, under normal circumstances, as safe
as most parts of Africa, I received in August, 1863, orders to visit
it as Commissioner. My “mission” was to make certain presents to the
king, and to preach up cotton and palm oil versus war and human
sacrifices. I may begin by saying I lectured hard and talked to the
wind.

H.M.’s cruiser _Antelope_ landed me at Whydah in December, the dry
season, and the surf was not particularly dangerous. The beach is
open; between it and Brazil rolls the broad Atlantic; and near the
shore are an outer and inner sandbar with an interval forming a fine
breeding-ground for sharks. A girl is occasionally thrown in as an
offering to “Hu,” the sea-dog, and this does not diminish the evil.

We entered Whydah in state, paraded and surrounded by chiefs and
soldiery in war dress, kilts and silver horns like the giraffe’s:
their arms were long guns and short swords for decapitating the
wounded. Each troop had its flag, its umbrella, its band of drums and
tom-toms, its horns and cymbals. I especially remarked a gourd bottle
full of, and covered with, cowries, or pebbles――in fact the celebrated
“maraca” of Brazil, which, it has been conjectured, contributed
towards the formation of the word America. Every five minutes the
warriors halted to drink and dance. The drink is easily described――tafia
or bad caxaca. But the dance! I defy mortal man to paint it in words.
Let me briefly say that the arms are held up as though the owner were
running, the elbows being jerked so as nearly to meet behind the back;
the hands paddle like the paws of a swimming dog; the feet shuffle and
stamp as though treading water; the body-trunk joins in the play, and
the hips move backwards and forwards to the beating time. The jig and
the hornpipe are repose compared with this performance. There is also
a decapitation dance over an ideal dead enemy, whose head is duly sawn
off with the edge of the hand.

At Whydah I lodged at the English fort, a large double-storied
building of “taipa,” tenanted by Wesleyan missionaries. It was once a
strong place, as the ruined towers and burst guns show.

There were three other forts in the town. The Brazilian, which was
nearest the sea, was held by Chico de Souza, the son of the late
Francisco Fellis de Souza. This was a remarkable man. Born at
Cachoeira, near Bahia, he emigrated to Africa, where by courage and
conduct he became the Chacha, or Governor, of the Guild of Merchants,
a kind of Board of Trade. He made an enormous fortune, and by his many
wives he left about a hundred olive branches. Though a slave-dealer,
he was a man of honour and honesty. The English had done him many an
injury, yet he was invariably courteous and hospitable to every
English traveller. He strongly opposed human sacrifice, and he saved
many lives by curious contrivances. Of the same stamp was M. Domingos
Martins of Bahia, once celebrated for enormous wealth. He died in the
interval between my first and second visits. I regretted his death,
for he had been most kind and attentive to me.

The Portuguese fort had also been repaired, and was inhabited by six
members of the Lyons Mission, “_Le Vicariate Apostolique de Dahomé_.”
They kept a school, and they were apparently convinced that it was
hopeless to attempt the conversion of adults. The superior, Father
François Borghero, had several times been ill-treated by the
barbarians, and his hatred of idolatry had exposed him to not a little
danger. It is rare in those lands to find a highly educated and
thoroughly gentlemanly man; and, looking back, I am not surprised that
all my time not occupied by study or observation was spent in the
Portuguese fort.

Lastly, there was the French fort, in far better condition than the
others. It was held in my time by M. Marius Daumas, agent to M. Regis
(_aîné_) of Marseilles, and _faute de mieux_ he was buying and
shipping palm oil.

Whydah was easily seen. The houses were red “taipa” with thick thatch,
and each had its large and slovenly courtyard. The market-place was a
long street of small booths open to the front, where everything from a
needle to a moleque (small slave-boy) could be bought. The
thoroughfares were studded with small round roofs of grass, which
sheltered a hideous deity called Legba. He was made of muddy clay,
with holes for eyes and cowries for teeth, and he squatted before a
pot in which the faithful placed provisions, which were devoured by
the urubu (vulture). The chief temple was dedicated to the danh, or
snake, which here was the principal “fetish.” It was a circular hut
with two doorless entrances, and the venerated boas curled themselves
comfortably on the thickness of the walls. The largest was about six
feet long, and it was dangerous only to rats, of which it was very
fond. Several foreigners had been killed for injuring these reptiles,
and Whydah, once an independent kingdom, lost her liberty through the
snakes. When attacked by Dahomé in 1729, her chief defence was to
place a serpent on the invaders’ path. The Dahomans killed the
guardian genius and slaughtered the Whydahs till the streets ran
blood. But, when the conquerors had reduced their neighbour, they gave
her leave to adore the snake, and Whydah felt consoled, even happy. It
sounds like a traveller’s tale. I am writing history.

At Whydah we complied with the custom of sending up a messenger to
report our arrival. After three days came three officials from the
palace, who presented their sticks and delivered to me a verbal
invitation from their master. The sticks were white sticks, two feet
long, adorned with plates of silver, cut into the shapes of lions,
sharks, crocodiles, and other savage beasts. These batons served as
visiting cards, and were signs of dignity. When the king made me
honorary commandant of a corps of life-guardswomen, he sent me two
sticks by way of commission or diploma.

We set out _en route_ for the capital on December 13th, 1863. My
little party consisted of Mr. George Cruikshank, a naval
assistant-surgeon detached to accompany me; the Rev. Mr. Bernasco,
Wesleyan missionary and private friend of the king; two negro
interpreters, thirty hammock men, and a troop of baggage porters. This
made up a total of ninety-nine mouths, which were never idle except
when asleep.

Between the seaboard and Kana, the “villegiatura,” or country capital,
of the king, there were fifty-two to fifty-three direct miles. The
country was here a campo, or rolling grassy prairie: there was a dense
and magnificent forest. At every few miles there were settlements, now
villages, once capitals which felt the weight of the Dahomé arm. The
first was Savé, ancient metropolis of the Whydah kingdom, when the
present Whydah, which was properly Gle-hwe, or the Garden House, was
only a squalid port. The territory was only thirty miles by seven, but
it mustered 200,000 fighting men. This, however, was easily explained.
In Africa every male between the ages of seventeen and fifty carried
arms: this would be about one-fifth of the population; consequently
there was one million inhabitants in an area of two hundred square
miles (4,762 souls to each mile).

After Savé came Tevé, also an ex-capital. It was a pretty little
village commanded by a Dahoman “caboceer.” This frequently used word
is a corruption of a Portuguese corruption, “caboceer,” or, rather,
“caboceira,” and means a pillow, a headman, or a chief officer. The
etiquette on arriving at such places is as follows. You alight from
your hammock before the tree under which the grandee and his party are
drawn up to receive you with vociferous shouts, with singing,
drumming, and dancing. After the first greetings you pledge him in
fresh water, which he has tasted before you. Then you drink spirits
and receive an offering of provisions. You make a return of rum and
gin, the people drum, dance, sing, and shout their thanks, and you are
at liberty to proceed.

On the fourth day we crossed the “Agrime Swamp,” which is hardly
practicable in the wet season. The road then entered upon a true
continent: we emerged from the false coast, which at one time was
under water, and which is raised by secular upheaval. At the little
town of Agrime we were delayed till the king, who was in his country
capital, sent an escort and permission to advance.

On Friday, December 18th, we entered Kana, a large and scattered town,
shaded by magnificent trees. It is about two hundred and seventy feet
above sea-level, and the climate is a relief after Whydah. The morrow
was fixed for our reception. It was Ember Day, and the date could
hardly have been better chosen.

It is hardly possible to form an idea of the _peine forte et dure_
attending the presentation in Africa. It is every negro’s object to
keep the white man waiting as long as possible, and the visitor must
be very firm and angry if he would not lose all his time.

We were duly warned to be ready at 10 a.m.; but local knowledge kept
me in the house till 1 p.m. Then we sat under a tree upon the chairs
which we had brought from Whydah, to witness the procession of
“caboceers.” Each grandee, preceded by his flag or flags, his band of
drums and rattles, and his armed retainers dancing and singing, passed
before us, shaded by an enormous umbrella of many colours. Having
marched round, he came up to us and snapped fingers (the local style
of shaking hands); then he drank with us three toasts, beginning with
his master’s health. After the “caboceers” trooped various
companies――musicians, eunuchs, and jesters. The last are buffoons,
reminding one of our feudal days. Their entertainment consists in
“making faces” (_cara feia_), as children say――wrinkling the forehead,
protruding the tongue, and clapping the jaws as apes do. They can
tumble a little and “throw the cart wheel” neatly; they dance in a
caricatured style, draw in the stomach to show that they are hungry,
pretend to be deaf and dumb, smoke a bone by way of a pipe, and
imitate my writing by scratching a sweet potato with a stick.

The review over, we made for the palace in a long procession; my men,
wearing bright red caps and waist-cloths, carried the flag of St.
George. The royal abodes are all on the same pattern: enclosures of
“taipa” wall, four courses high, and pierced with eight or ten gates.
The irregular square or oblong may be half a mile in circumference. At
the principal entrances are thatched sheds like verandahs, one hundred
feet long by fourteen to fifteen feet deep. The roof ledge rises sixty
to seventy feet high, enough for two stories, whilst the eaves of
thick and solidly packed straw rested upon posts barely four feet
tall. The inner buildings, as far as they could be seen, corresponded
with the external, and the king held his levées in one of these
barn-like sheds. The royal sleeping-places, which were often changed,
were described to me as neat rooms, divided from the courtyard by a
wall with a _chevaux de frise_ of human jawbones. The floors were
paved with the skulls of conquered chiefs, forming a _descente de lit_
upon which Gelele had the daily pleasure of trampling.

The complicated reception was typical of the Dahoman military empire.
We found, ranged in a line outside the gate, twenty-four umbrellas or
brigades belonging to the highest male dignitaries. The army, or, what
was here synonymous, the Court, was divided into two portions, male
and female, or, rather, female and male, as the women troops took
precedence. They occupied the inside of the palace, and they were the
king’s bodyguard in peace or war. Each line had a right and a left
wing, so called from their position relative to the throne. The
former, which is the senior, was commanded by the “min-gau” who
cumulated the offices of premier and head executioner. His lieutenant
was the adanejan. Dahoman officials, for better espionage, were always
in pairs. The general of the left wing was the “meu,” who collected
revenue and tribute, declared war, and had charge of all strangers.
His _alter ego_ was styled the ben-wan-ton. Under these great men were
smaller great men, and all were _de facto_ as well as _de jure_ slaves
to the king.

[Illustration: BURTON VISITS THE KING OF DAHOMÉ.    [_See Page 213._]

Presently we were summoned to enter the palace. We closed our
umbrellas by order, walked hurriedly across a large yard, and halted
at a circle of white sand spread upon the clayey ground. Here we bowed
to a figure sitting under the shady thatch; and he returned, we were
told, the compliment. The chief ministers who accompanied us fell flat
upon the sand, kissed it, rolled in it, and threw it by handfuls over
their heads and robes of satin and velvet. The ceremony is repeated at
every possible opportunity; and when the king drinks, all the subjects
turn their backs upon him and shout.

Then we advanced to the clay bench upon which King Gelele sat. After
the usual quadruple bows and hand-wavings, he stood up, tucked in his
toga, descended to the ground, and, aided by nimble feminine fingers,
donned his sandals. He then greeted me with sundry vigorous wrings _à
la John Bull_, and inquired after Queen Victoria, the Ministry, and
the people of England, which country is supposed to be like Dahomé,
but a little larger and richer.

Our chairs were then placed before the seat, to which he returned, and
we drank the normal three toasts to his health. On these occasions it
is not necessary to empty the glass, which may be handed to an
attendant. Salutes having been fired, we retired a hundred feet from
the presence and sat under giant umbrellas.

Gelele was then about forty-five years old, upwards of six feet high,
olive complexioned, athletic and well made, with clear signs of
African blood. His dress was simple to excess: a loose shirt of plain
white stuff edged with green silk, a small smoking-cap, a few iron
rings on his arms, and a human tooth strung round his neck. The only
splendour was in his gold and scarlet sandals, here distinctive of
royalty. They were studded with crosses, also royal emblems. He called
himself a Christian, and he was a Moslem as well: like all barbarians,
he would rather believe too much than too little, and he would give
himself every chance in both worlds.

Under the thatch behind the king were his wives, known by their
handsome dresses, silver hair studs, and the absence of weapons. They
atoned for want of beauty by excessive devotion to their lord, who
apparently did everything by proxy except smoke his long-stemmed clay
pipe.

The inner court of the palace reflected the outer, and the women sat
in the sun along the external wall of the royal shed with their
musket-barrels bristling upwards. The right wing was commanded by a
“premieress,” who executed all women; the left was also under the she
“meu.” A semicircle of bamboos lying on the ground separated the sexes
at levées. The instrument of communication was a woman-messenger, who,
walking up to the bamboos, delivered her message on all fours to the
“meu.” The latter proclaimed it to the many.

I must here say a few words about the Amazons, or fighting women. The
corps was a favourite with the late king, who thus checked the
turbulence and treachery of his male subjects. The number was
estimated at 10,000 to 12,000; I do not believe it exceeded 2,500.
They were divided into blunderbuss-women, elephant-hunters, beheaders,
who carry razors four feet long, and the line armed with muskets and
short swords.

All the Amazons were _ex-officio_ royal wives, and the first person
who made the king a father was one of his soldieresses. It was high
treason to touch them even accidentally; they lodged in the palace,
and when they went abroad all men, even strangers, had to clear off
the road. Gelele often made his visitors honorary commandants of his
guard of Amazons (I was made one); but this did not entitle them to
inspect companies.

Such a _régime_ makes the Amazons, as might be expected, intolerably
fierce. Their sole object in life is blood-spilling and head-snatching.
They pride themselves upon not being men, and with reason. The
soldiers blink and shrink when they fire their guns; the soldieresses
do not. The men run away; the women fight to the bitter end. In the
last attack on the city of Abokuta (March 15th, 1864) several of the
Amazons of my own regiment scaled the walls; their brethren-in-arms
hardly attempted the feat.

Dahomé thus presented the anomaly of an African kingdom in which women
took precedence of men. Hence every employé of Government had to
choose a “mother”――that is to say, some elderly Amazon officer who
would look after his interests at headquarters. Often he had two, an
“old mother,” dating from the days of the late king, and a “young
mother,” belonging to the actual reign. He had to pay them well, or
his affairs were inevitably bad. Thus there was also a Brazilian, an
English, and a French “mother”; and visitors of those nations were
expected to propitiate their fond and unpleasant parents with presents
of cloth, jewelry, perfumes, and so forth.

The levée ended with a kind of parade. A few simple manœuvres and many
furious decapitation dances were performed by a select company of the
young Amazons. They were decently dressed in long sleeveless
waistcoats, petticoats of various coloured cottons, secured at the
waist by a sash and extending to the ankles, whilst narrow fillets of
ribbon secured their hair and denoted their corps. Their arms were
muskets and short swords, and all had belts, bullet bags, and
cartridge boxes.

When the sun set a bottle of rum was sent to us. At this hint we rose
and prepared to retire. Gelele again descended from his seat and
accompanied us to the gate, preceded by a buzzing swarm of courtiers,
who smoothed every inch of ground for the royal foot. He finally shook
hands with us, and promised to meet us in a few days at Agbomé, the
capital.

We lost no time in setting out for Agbomé, and were surprised to find
an excellent carriage road, broad and smooth, between the two cities.
Agbomé had no hotels, but we managed lodgings at the house of the
bukono, a high officer who was doctor and wizard to the Court and
curator of strangers, whom he fleeced pitilessly.

I will now touch briefly on the ill-famed “customs” of Dahomé. The
word is taken from the Portuguese _costume_, and here means the royal
sacrifices. Many travellers have witnessed them, but no one has
attempted to inquire into their origin. I attribute these murderous
customs not to love of bloodshed, but simply to filial piety.

The Dahoman, like the ancient Egyptian, holds this world to be his
temporary lodging. His own home is Ku-to-men, or Deadman’s Land. It is
not a place of rewards and punishments, but a Hades for ghosts, a
region of shades, where the king will rule for ever and where the
slave will always serve. The idea is ever present to the popular mind.
When, for instance, sunshine accompanies rain the Dahoman says the
spirits are marketing. In Brazil the fox is marrying; in England the
devil is beating his wife.

A deceased king cannot, therefore, be sent to Ku-to-men as a common
negro. At his interment a small court must be slain――leopard-wives
(that is to say, young and handsome wives), old wives, ministers,
friends, soldiers, musicians, men and women. These are the grand
customs, which may average one thousand to two thousand deaths. The
annual customs, which we were now to witness, reinforce the ghostly
court, and number from eighty to one hundred head.

But destruction of life does not end here. All novelties, such as the
arrival of an officer in uniform, must be reported to the dead by the
living king. A captive or a criminal is summoned, and the message is
given to him. He is made to swallow a bottle of rum, whose object is
to keep him in a good humour, and his head is then and there struck
off. Only on one occasion did the patient object to the journey,
saying that he did not know the road to Ku-to-men. “You shall soon
find it out!” cried the king, who at once decapitated the wretch
without rum. If any portion of the message be forgotten, another
victim must be despatched with it. A hard-hearted traveller calls this
the postscript.

A Dahoman king neglecting these funeral rites would have been looked
upon as the most impious of men, and a powerful priesthood would soon
have sent him to Ku-to-men on his own account. It may now be
understood how hopeless was my mission. It may be compared, without
disrespect, to memorialising the Vatican against masses for the dead.
The king’s sole and necessary answer was _non possumus_.

The “customs” began on December 28th, 1863, and ended on January 25th,
1864. They were of two kinds. The first was performed by Gelele, king
of the city; the second are in the name of Addo-Kpon, ruler of the
“bush,” or country――also Gelele. The ruler of Dahomé was thus double,
two persons in one, and each had his separate palace and property,
mothers and ministers, Amazons, officers, and soldiers. I have
conjectured that the reason of this strange organisation is that the
“bush-king” may buy and sell, which the “city-king” holds to be below
his dignity.

The description of a single “custom” will suffice. About midday of
December 28th, when summoned to the palace, we passed through the
market-place, and we found the victim-shed finished and furnished.
This building was a long, wall-less barn one hundred feet long, the
roof was a thatch covered with a striped cloth on a blood-red ground
and supported by tree trunks. On the west was a two-storied tower,
sixty feet high, with four posts in front of each floor. There were on
this occasion twenty victims sitting on stools, each before his post,
with his arms around it and his wrists lashed together outside it. The
confinement was not cruel; each had a slave to flap away the flies,
all were fed four times a day, and they were released at night. The
dress was a long white nightcap and a calico shirt with blue and
crimson patches and bindings. A white man would have tried to escape;
these negroes are led like black sheep to the slaughter. They marked
time as the bands played, and they chatted together, apparently
quizzing us. I may here remark that at my request the king released
half of these men, and that not one of them took the trouble to thank
me or to beg alms from me.

Hardly were we seated when Gelele, protected by a gorgeous canopy
umbrella, came forth from the palace with Amazons and courtiers in a
dense, dark stream. Having visited his fetish gods, he greeted us and
retired to his seat under the normal shed. As at Kana, his wives
crowded together behind and the soldieresses ranged themselves in
front. The ceremonies consisted of dancing, drumming, and distributing
decorations――necklaces of red and yellow beads. There was fearful
boasting about feats of past valour and bravery to come. About sunset
the king suddenly approached us, and I thanked him for the spectacle.
He then withdrew, and we lost no time in following his example.

Nothing could be poorer than this display: any petty Indian rajah can
command more wealth and splendour. All was barren barbarism, and the
only “sensation” was produced by a score of human beings condemned to
death and enjoying the death show.

On the morrow I sent a message to the palace, officially objecting to
be present at any human sacrifice, and declaring that if any murder
took place before me I should retire to the coast. The reply was that
few were to be executed, that the victims would only be malignant war
captives and the worst of criminals, and that all should be killed at
night. With this crumb of comfort I was compelled to rest satisfied.
Hitherto gangs of victims cruelly gagged had been paraded before
visitors, in whose hearing and often before whose sight the murders
were committed. Something is gained by diminishing the demoralising
prominence of these death scenes. It is not so long ago since it was
determined that the “customs” of England should be performed within
the prisons, and not further debase the mob of spectators.

The catastrophe took place on what is called the “zan nya nyana,” or
the evil night. At intervals we heard the boom of the death-drum
announcing some horrible slaughter. It was reported that the king had
with his own hand assisted the premier-executioner.

On the next morning we were summoned to the palace, whose approach was
a horror. Four corpses, habited in the criminal shirts and nightcaps,
sat as though in life upon the usual dwarf stools. The seats were
supported upon a two-storied scaffold made of four rough beams, two
upright and two horizontal, and about forty feet high. On a similar
but smaller erection hard by were two victims, one above the other.
Between these substantial erections was a tall gallows of thin posts,
from which a single victim dangled by his heels. Lastly, another
framework of the same kind was planted close to our path, and attached
to the cross-bar, with fine cords round the ankles and above the
knees, hung two corpses side by side and head downwards. The bodies,
though stiff, showed no signs of violence: the wretches had probably
been stifled.

At the south-eastern gate of the palace we found freshly severed heads
in two batches of six each, surrounded by a raised rim of ashes. The
clean-cut necks were turned upwards, and the features were not
visible. Within the entrance were two more heads; all the bodies had
been removed, so as not to offend the king.

Thus on Gelele’s “evil night” twenty-three human beings had lost their
lives. And this is but one act in the fatal drama called the
“customs.” It is said that an equal number of women were slaughtered
within the walls of the royal abode, and I had every reason to believe
the report.

I was kept waiting more than a month in this den of abominations
before the king could enter upon public affairs. He was discontented
with the presents sent from England, and he was preparing to attack a
huge Nago city――Abeokuta――where, by-the-bye, he was signally defeated.

When my last visit to him took place he stubbornly ignored, even in
the least important matters, the wishes of H.M.’s Government. Filled
with an exaggerated idea of his own importance, and flattered almost
to madness by his courtiers, he proceeded to dictate his own terms.
His next thought was an ignoble greed for presents. He bade me a
friendly adieu, and asked me to visit him next year with an English
carriage and horses, a large silk pavilion, and other such little
gifts. I refused to promise, and I resolved not to put my head for the
third time into the hyæna’s mouth. For although Gelele has never shed
the blood of a white man, he might, at the bidding of his fetishers,
send a new kind of messenger to Ku-to-men by means of a cup of coffee
or a dish of meat. I was glad when I found myself safely back in the
pestilential climate of Fernando Po.



_A TRIP UP THE CONGO_

1863



_A TRIP UP THE CONGO_[7]

1863


Before starting on an exploration into any part of Africa (especially
the West Coast), it is essential that the traveller should be properly
equipped with the necessary kit both for the inward and outward man.
Clothing, blankets, and waterproofs of every description; tea, coffee,
and sugar if they be desirable; a few bottles of real genuine cognac
if come-at-able, or some ten years’ old Jamaica rum if attainable.

On the occasion of our starting from Fernando Po in August 1863, for
the purpose of ascending the river Congo, our kit consisted of one
bullock-trunk, one small portable canteen, one dressing-bag, two
uniform-cases, one hat-box, one gun-case, one tin box, one deal case
of bread, one package of tins of milk, one canteen of cooking
utensils, one tin of green tea, one ditto coffee, one small box of
medical comforts, etc., two striped bags, a white canvas bag
containing newspapers, three guns, two walking sticks, one camp bed
and mats, two revolvers, one simpiesometer, a pocket azimuth, an
instrument case, one powder horn, one shot-bag and hunting ditto. At
St. Paul de Loanda we added two cases of gin, and at Point Banana
twelve pieces of siamois, or fancy cloths, twenty pieces riscados, or
blue and white stripe, and ten pieces satin stripe, besides six
thousand five hundred beads, china, and imitation corals. To all this
we afterwards received at Embomma fifteen kegs of gunpowder and ten
demijohns of rum.

H.M.S. _Torch_ took us down to Loango Bay, and there Captain Smith
transferred us on board the sloop-of-war _Zebra_, Captain Hoskins, who
in his turn took us to St. Paul’s and put us in the hands of Captain
Perry, of H.M.S. _Griffon_, and this latter vessel took us into the
Congo; and forthwith we commenced a start up the river on August 31st,
1863.

The usual mode of ascending the river up as far as Embomma is by means
of small fore and aft schooners, generally from twenty to forty tons
measurement, which are heavily sparred and well supplied with canvas.
Our gear was taken by the _Griffon’s_ boats and put on board the
French schooner _Esperance_. We had a fine breeze that afternoon, and
the _Esperance_ sailed up the river most gallantly. The party on board
consisted of myself, Captain Perry, Mr. Bigley, and Monsieur Pisseaux,
a Frenchman; besides William Dean, boatswain, my servant, four French
native soldiers, and the schooner’s crew.

_Wednesday, September 2nd._――We breakfasted at a Portuguese factory,
and soon after breakfast we weighed anchor and sailed up the river,
arriving betimes at Porto da Lentra. In the afternoon we left Porto da
Lentra, and proceeded. Passed several villages on the port hand. Boat
got ashore several times after dark. About nine o’clock the
Missolongis hailed and asked who we were. When I answered, they said
they would pay us a visit during the night. We prepared to give them a
warm reception. During the night we rounded Point Devil, a most
dangerous place for navigation. Anchored at 10.30 p.m.

_Thursday, September 3rd._――Arrived at Embomma at 1.30 p.m. Embomma
contained a French factory and several Portuguese establishments. At
9.30 we got under weigh again, and in about an hour afterwards entered
a part of the river where it assumes the appearance of an inland lake,
some parts nearly two miles wide. The scenery here is varied, but
principally hilly, the highest of the hills being about 1,500 feet
above the level of the river. Here we met a native chief in his canoe.
He came to levy contributions from us. His people, who were armed with
guns and hatchets, made various warlike gestures and ordered us to
stop. Monsieur Pisseaux being our guide and adviser, we were compelled
to pay one bottle of rum and a piece of cloth twelve fathoms in
length.

Captain Perry shot a fish-eagle, which was considered a fine
achievement, as very few of that species can be shot on account of
their inclination to fly high in the air and to perch on the highest
trees. About three o’clock we landed to rest, the scenery still
bearing the same character, only perhaps the hills were a little
higher than those we had passed. The grass was dry all over the hills
(indeed, everywhere except close to the water’s edge); and little
animal life being visible, the country had a very barren and desolate
appearance. The trees were not of much consequence, and most of those
we saw were stunted and leafless. The chief were the baobab, or monkey
bread-fruit tree, the fan palm, or palmijra, a few palm-nut trees, and
a species of large spreading tree well scattered over the water side.
Its leaves were of a dark green colour, about the size of the lime
leaf; its fruit, a long reddish plum, was said to be eaten by monkeys,
and also to be fit for human food.

Here was the farthest extent of Monsieur Pisseaux’s knowledge of the
river, and, to our future sorrow, we landed in the banza, or district,
of Nokki. We cooked some food on shore, and messengers were despatched
with a bottle of gin to the king of Kayé.

_Tuesday, September 8th._――We now left the river for the interior, and
found the road excessively irksome and trying to our wind and legs;
nothing but hills and dales, the descents and ascents very difficult,
and stony withal, the soles of our feet receiving a most disagreeable
grating on small quartz and schistus. Passing one or two fields of
native beans, we arrived at the village of Kindemba.

After resting here for a short time we again started, and ascended a
hill some six or seven hundred feet in height, and came to another
village, where we saw something like a large baracoon for slaves, but
it turned out to be a fetish house for circumcised boys.

Not many minutes’ walk from this was the village of Kayé. On entering
it we were marched off to see the king. We found him seated in state,
dressed in a motley garb of European manufacture: a white shirt with
collar turned down, a crimson velvet loin-cloth, fringed with gold and
tied round the waist by means of a belt, and a beautifully mounted
sheath-knife stuck in the belt. The handle of the knife was made of
nickel silver, and very showily ornamented with imitation emeralds and
ruby garnets. Over all he wore a red beadle’s cloak, and on his head a
helmet somewhat resembling those worn by English Life Guardsmen, but
it was evidently of French manufacture. The king was very young,
apparently not more than twenty years of age, very smooth-faced, and
looked quite shy when he came _vis-à-vis_ with his illustrious
visitors. When we were all seated, I on a chair, and the others on a
covered table, the courtiers sat down on the ground at a respectful
distance. The king’s old father was seated on the ground before his
son.

The king’s name was Sudikil, and that of his father Gidi Mavonga, both
of them very bright specimens of their race. After some compliments,
Sudikil received his presents――one piece of fine fancy cloth and a
bottle of gin. The carriers received five bunches of beads. But it
appeared that the king was not satisfied with his presents, and he
would give us nothing to eat. Therefore my companions, Captain Perry,
Dean, and Monsieur Pisseaux, at once started for the river to return
to Embomma. I, however, remained, and engaged Nchama, a native who
spoke African idiomatic Portuguese, to act as interpreter and
go-between. I may here mention that our party when it first started
from the river consisted of fifty-six persons, but it continued to
augment until our arrival at Kayé, when it mounted up to one hundred
and fifty. We were domiciled for the night in the house of Siko Chico
Mpambo, a man who put himself up as a French interpreter, without even
knowing one personal pronoun of that language. In the evening the
rabble that pretended to have escorted our party down to the canoe
returned and requested some gin, and I gave them a bottle. The prince
likewise sent for a bottle, which he received.

_Wednesday, September 9th._――Early in the morning we received a visit
from Gidi Mavonga and his son King Sudikil. They examined all our
travelling-gear, whilst my servant kept sentry at the door to prevent
their escort from going into the house. This consisted of ten men,
four of whom carried matchlocks. After about half an hour’s palaver,
everything was handed over to Gidi, who promised to start for the
Congo in three days, and, in consideration of receiving the said
goods, bound himself to take us there, bring us back, and feed us by
the way. This arrangement was a good one, as it secured the friendship
of the old chief and prevented him and his people from robbing and
poisoning us.

We later received a visit from Tetu Mayella, king of an adjacent
village called Neprat. He was accompanied by about twenty followers,
all of whom came to us for the express purpose of getting some rum.
Tetu Mayella wrangled for two hours with Gidi and another half-hour
with Sudikil about a bottle of grog, and ultimately despatched Nchama
to plead with me for him. I referred him back to Gidi Mavonga, and,
after a further consultation, Tetu received one bottle of gin, in
return for which he came personally and presented us with two fowls.
This was a godsend, as the day before we had nothing to eat but a few
pieces of dry bread, and water to wash it down. A pig was then
slaughtered with great ceremony. The carcass was cut up and divided
according to custom, the king getting the lion’s share, and the other
personages an allowance in accordance with their rank. We made ready
to retire to rest after eating a good bush dinner and drinking plenty
of palm wine. Gidi Mavonga paid us a visit late in the evening, and
final arrangements were made with him to proceed first to Yellalla, or
the Congo Cataracts, and afterwards to St. Salvador, or Great Gongo
City.

_Thursday, September 10th._――The direction of the Yellalla Cataracts
from the village of Kayé was east-north-east, and that of St.
Salvador, or Congo, east-south-east. This morning we had dandelion
coffee for the fourth time. It was a most excellent decoction, acting,
when used judiciously, on the liver and kidneys. We found that the
natives breakfasted on beans, ground nuts, fish, and beef when it can
be had, and the second course is a good jorum of palm wine. At noon we
began packing up, in order to start for Gidi Mavonga’s village. The
natives of the Congo are divided into two classes only, the mfumo, or
freeman, and the muleque, or slave. The mfumo marries amongst his own
slaves, or, properly speaking, retainers, and the children born by him
are in their turn mfumos, or freemen. The word slave is here quite
improperly used, for the slave in reality is a freer man than the king
himself. Everything the king possesses, except his wives, is literally
at the disposal of the slave. Unquestionably the slave is the
bodyguard of the mfumo, and, as regards work, he does what he likes,
sleeps when he chooses, attends to his private affairs when he
pleases, and if his master finds fault with his conduct, the chances
are, if his own country be not too far away from the place of his
thraldom, he will leave his master and make a bold effort to reach his
native land.

_Friday, September 11th._――Very early this morning we were astonished
by hearing a yelling noise from a lot of women. To use a Scotch
phrase, it was a regular “skirl.” It so happened that a woman was
bearing a child, and these noises were made either to drown the pains
of labour or to welcome the little stranger into his trouble. In any
case, we pitied the poor sufferer in travail, for the screeching must
have given her an awful headache.

Gidi Mavonga came to take us to his village of Chingufu this morning.
It was not a long journey, we found. Gidi’s house was a facsimile of
the one we had left at Kayé: an oval building upheld by two upright
posts, and the roof supported by a long stout beam laid on the top of,
and tied to, the uprights. The hut boasted of three doors, one at each
end and one at the side. Doubtless, fox-like, the suspicious native
makes all these doors to serve as mediums of escape in case of war or
a slave-hunt. There was a partition in the centre dividing the hut
into two rooms, the first being a general room, and the second the
_sanctum sanctorum_, accessible only to the husband and wife. The
furniture was very simple, consisting of a native bed in each room.
The walls and roof were composed of bamboos and grass very neatly tied
together. There was no flooring but the clay bottom, and the whole
looked very clean and simple.

Gidi appeared to be a great worshipper of the native fetish Ibamba, or
Nzamba, a variation of the devil. The natives called him Masjinga, and
he is a house-god, usually keeping guard at the bedsides. The idol in
Gidi’s hut was a peculiarly droll-looking object. He was an image
about three feet in height, with his mouth wide open, his under lip
hanging down, and the upper drawn up as if by some strong convulsions,
his nose flat as Africa, and the nostrils very much inflated. His eyes
were composed of pieces of looking-glass, and in his belly was
inserted a penny mirror, but for what purpose we could not discover.
On his head was an English billycock hat, and about his shoulders were
hung different kinds of medicines, a calabash, and a knife. The face
of this wonderful figure was part black, part red, and part white. On
the walls of the house, and particularly about the bed, were hung
medicines, spells, and potions of every description, supposed to be
antidotes against every evil to which the human frame is subject;
medicines to prevent gun-shots from taking effect, spells against
ill-luck, potions to have wives and plenty of children, and, in fine,
charms to protect against the wrath and subtlety of Nzamba.

About midday we had a visit from some neighbouring chiefs, all gaily
attired. They wore red nightcaps on their heads, and this was the only
head-dress I ever saw adopted by the men on great occasions, Sudikil’s
military helmet excepted. The women always went bareheaded. I had
often wondered where in the wide universe old clothes went to after
they are purchased by the Jews in London. The mystery was here solved,
for I found kings wearing second-hand livery suits, with the coronet
and crest of a marquis on the button, and princes disporting
themselves in marines’ jackets of the last century, besides a variety
of heterogeneous habiliments, such as old superfine black coats which
had been worn threadbare, and pantaloons whose seats had become quite
glazed from long service. All these had been cleaned and turned inside
out by the Jews; and, although some would scarcely bear the tug of
needle and thread, they were sent out to the west coast of Africa as
bran-new garments, love of dress entirely blinding the natives to
their defects. Our visitors were regaled with palm wine and a bottle
of gin, and after laughing and talking for a long time they went away.

About sunset we witnessed a native game, which certainly was one of
the liveliest sights since our start up the river. A number of Gidi’s
slaves assembled in a large open space between the houses, and,
dividing themselves into two parties, began throwing a ball from one
to another. Upwards of twenty were engaged in this game, and the fun
consisted in the one side dodging about in all directions, and
preventing its opponents from catching the ball by playing the game
into each others’ hands. The ball was made of palm fibre tied round
with a central fibre of the plantain leaf. After sunset there was a
wild country-dance, which was kept up to a late hour.

_Saturday, September 12th._――The chief Furano, who was expected from
Embomma, arrived the next morning, and we started at once for the
cataracts. After marching for a short time and passing two or three
small villages, we commenced a descent in a north-easterly direction,
and, journeying at a rapid pace for about three miles, we entered the
village of Chinsawu, the residence of Prince Nelongo. Arrived at
Nelongo’s, we were detained for about half an hour, waiting in the
verandah of an empty house, after which we were honoured by the
presence of the prince, who intimated his pleasure to us by asserting
that unless the same presents as those given to Sudikil were given to
him, it would be impossible for us to pass his place. This was
preposterous, for we only stopped to breakfast here, whereas we were
four or five days in the territory of Sudikil. It was remarkable that
nearly all the people in this region, from the prince down to the
smallest child, were diseased with the itch. We observed them lying on
the ground from morning till night, with their skins so covered with
dust that a hippopotamus was a clean beast when compared with these
beings, who ranked in animate nature as lords of creation.

We were comfortably housed at Nelongo’s village, but Gidi and Nelongo
were palavering all day, hammer and tongs. I noticed at Nelongo’s
village, as I did in other places on the banks and neighbourhood of
the Congo, that all the children were afraid of the white man, for
when any person attempted to bring them in proximity with me, the
little brats howled as if Satan from the infernal regions had got hold
of them. Most of the women were of the same texture as their progeny.

_Sunday, September 13th._――After coffee this morning all the great
folks assembled in front of our house and recommenced the
half-finished palaver of last evening. Council present: myself, Gida
Mavonga, Nelongo, Furano, Siko Npamba, and Interpreter Nchama. All
ended in talk, and Nchama threatened to resign. The native idea of the
riches possessed by a white man is fabulous. Nelongo refused to
believe that we had not sufficient cloth with us to answer his most
exorbitant demands. We had a respectable present for him; but that did
not satisfy his avarice, and he wanted more than we had taken with us
for the whole road. As there was another prince to consult in the
matter, it was agreed, at my suggestion, that the whole of our gear
should be submitted to examination. The expected prince arrived,
carried on a hammock, and, after a heavy palaver and a great deal of
yelling from the women, he went away; and then we had another visit
from Nelongo, who made some very noisy demonstrations, but as the
noise was conducted in the language of the country, we were not able
to understand a single syllable. Suffice it to say that the whole
affair ended by his receiving an additional supply of cotton, not from
us, but from Gidi Mavonga. This Nelongo handed to one of his armed
slaves, and then went away; but he returned again in about five
minutes and intimated that the palaver was all right, which caused
Gidi and his men to make demonstrations of approval by jumping up and
running some paces from the house and attacking a supposed enemy. Then
they returned to the house, Furano holding the supposed wounded head
of Gidi Mavonga. But the truth must be told: the whole batch of the
debaters had got drunk on a mixture of palm wine and Hollands. Hence
the noise, which, however, I did not allow to affect me, for I assumed
during the greater part of the row the most stoical silence, and
pretended to go to sleep. These tactics were successful, and we were
shortly afterwards informed that we could depart in peace.

We were ready to start by twelve o’clock noon. The sun was very hot,
and the thermometer stood at 90° in the shade; but we were glad to get
out of a place which reminded us of Bedlam, and therefore set out in
all haste, making a slight descent into a valley, and then ascending a
peculiarly formed hill, the perpendicular height of which might be a
hundred and fifty feet, and from whose summit we obtained a glorious
view of the river, which was seen some eight hundred feet below us,
flowing down rapidly and majestically to the sea. But the utter
barrenness of the country in the vicinity of its banks carried away
every association of fertility. This view of the country, however, is
given at the end of the dry season, when almost every tree loses its
leaves, and the green grass becomes withered and dried up.

From this point we began a decline down hill which beggars
description. We had not walked above a quarter of a mile before we
arrived at a part of our road where, without the least exaggeration,
the path, if such it could be called, was only two degrees from the
perpendicular, and as slippery as ice, owing to the loose stones and
dry grass that created a stumbling-block for the feet, and we had
frequently to descend sitting instead of walking down. Alpine and
Vesuvian mountaineers, do try the banks of the Congo.

The distance from Nelongo’s village to the banks of the river was
about five miles, and on reaching the water-side we found ourselves
exactly at the junction of the Nomposo with the Congo River. The
Nomposo, we were informed, extended all the way to St. Salvador, but
was not navigable, even for canoes. There were some fishermen who
followed their vocation at the mouth of this small river, whose
services were soon brought into requisition to take us across the
Nomposo and land us a little above its mouth, but on the bank of the
great river. This landing was the place where the fishermen dried
their fish, and was called Munyengi Asiko. Being heartily tired, we
very gladly sat down, and ultimately got ourselves ready to pass the
night in the open air, not for the first time. Just about sunset this
evening we were visited by one of those nasty drizzling showers,
commonly called a Scotch mist. In about an hour it increased to a
smart shower; but, luckily, we were well provided with good waterproof
sheets and coats, so that no harm happened to the gear or to
ourselves.

_Monday, September 14th._――Great excitement this morning, having on
the previous night lost my tablets of daily memoranda. An offer of
four fathoms of cloth was made to any person who would recover the
same and return them to their owner. The whole batch of carriers and
fishermen were instantly hard at work trying to find the missing
tablets. After twenty minutes’ search they were found in Captain
Tuckey’s book on the Congo.

Another row amongst the natives. It appears that some two days
previously a man had supplied another with two jars of palm wine upon
condition of his receiving some fish in return. The unlucky fisherman,
after drinking the wine, did not succeed in catching fish for two
days, and consequently was unable to pay his debt. Hence the high
words and brandishing of hatchets on the part of the wine merchant and
his people. But that was all; no blows were struck, for the dog that
barks very loud seldom bites.

It is always advisable in travelling through Africa to keep guides and
interpreters ignorant of your possessions, for they are sure to make
some excuse or other to fleece you. This morning we had evidence of
this. We had paid our guide everything that was necessary for the
road, yet he sent the interpreter to ask us for a piece of fancy cloth
which he knew I had. I had to grant his request, otherwise I might
have had to give up the journey, for ten chances to one he would have
left me in a huff.

At eight o’clock we crossed the river, the time occupied being a
quarter of an hour. We reached the village of Vivi after half an
hour’s march; distance, one and a half miles. Nesalla was the name of
the king at Vivi; he spoke Portuguese and dressed plainly. One of his
attendants, however, wore a hussar’s jacket. Nesalla sent three
bunches of plantains and seven fowls for the expedition. At twelve
o’clock I washed, more or less in public, and, in the meantime, the
women and children performed a grigri for goodness to be bestowed on
their town and prince. One of the children beat on a long native drum,
another performed on a native whistle attached to an image of
Diabolus, and the women used their tongues very freely. It was a
horrid din.

About two o’clock Nesalla came with upwards of one hundred men and
commenced a long palaver about our going on to Yellalla. Five or six
persons spoke, and the conference lasted one hour. The conclusion
showed that the cloth we had with us was not enough, and that the
princes at Yellalla must get a different piece from that which was
before the conference, and no division into two pieces must be made of
it under any consideration whatever. As the whole affair was conducted
in a most good-humoured manner, I agreed to the terms.

In the evening the inhabitants of the village had a dance. Those who
have witnessed the Spanish cachucha need scarcely be told what this
dance was. The cachucha is a very good dance in its way; but the Congo
dance beats it hollow, because it has more pith in it than the
cachucha. The fun was kept up till a late hour, every one, both great
and small, young and old, joining in it, so that in the end, what with
palm wine and excitement, the people became quite unruly, and when
they left off the babel of tongues was unbearable. They came to our
quarters, aroused us out of our sleep by opening the door and very
unceremoniously pulling our clothes from us. They wanted some sort of
covering, and thinking we might be kind enough to let them have
something, took the liberty of taking without asking. We could not,
however, submit to this. We permitted old Gidi Mavonga to sleep in the
house, and turned the rest out of doors.

_Tuesday, September 15th._――Early this morning we started for the
Banza Nculu. The scenery along the road was varied and picturesque.
The first view we had of the river was from an eminence about a mile
from Vivi on the road to the Banza Nculu. Here we had a view of the
Congo as it was flowing onwards, and round about in all directions
were hills and dales adding a panoramic beauty to the scene. We had to
descend from the summit of the first hill and ascend a second one much
higher than the first, and from here we again obtained views of the
Congo. One, the lower view, appeared like a lake, apparently shut in
on all sides by hills, whose lofty summits stretched far and wide on
every side, and some of them peered to the height of above a thousand
feet into the heavens. Proceeding onwards, we ascended a third
eminence, but by this time we had lost sight of the river, and our
path became more level for a short distance.

We now commenced a gradual descent, but before doing so we obtained an
open and extensive view of the valley that lay between us and the
Banza Nculu. On descending into the valley, we found the soil a dark
clay mould with fewer stones on it than on that of the country through
which we had hitherto passed. It was certainly a fine sight to behold,
and the best addition to the scene was the caravan which formed the
expedition now disappearing down a valley, now rising to the top of
one of the many hillocks with which the valley abounded. The fertility
of the soil may be observed here from the fact of the grass growing to
the height of ten or twelve feet, and here also the native beans grow
to a greater height than did those we saw in other parts of the
country. In the valley we crossed three streams of running water, all
feeders of the big river; and considering that it was the latter end
of the dry season, these streams all had a fair supply of water.

We now arrived at the summit of the hill of the Banza Nculu, and as
the three kings and three interpreters could not be seen at once, in
consequence of their having first to settle some palaver about fish,
we were compelled to bivouac under a large tree in the environs of
Nculu until their highnesses might condescend to give us an audience.
We breakfasted under the large tree, and were amused before and after
breakfast by a number of urchins (say eight or ten) who had undergone
the ceremony of circumcision, and who delighted in making a churring
noise――a ch-u-r-r decidedly intended to frighten us into hysterics.
But our nerves were stronger than they at first imagined, and I went
up to them and complimented them on their performance. The dress of
these youths was a crinoline made of palm leaves, extending from their
armpits down to their knees, or a little below that. Their arms, neck,
and face were chalked white, and one of them had on a mask
representing a white man with whiskers. The performance of this mask
was admirably wild and laughable.

About two o’clock one of the three interpreters came to see us. He was
dressed in a trade shirt and red nightcap, and was accompanied by a
few men only, and had merely come to show us to a house.

At half-past three we heard the beating of a drum and cone, and, on
looking out at the door, saw a procession making its way to the house
in which we were lodged. I was already seated at the door, and, the
whole cavalcade coming up, they seated themselves around the front of
the house in a semicircle. Altogether there might have been about two
hundred and fifty persons, including all sexes and sizes. Three
ministers belonging to the three kings were the principal personages,
and had come as ambassadors for their masters. One of them had already
given his opinion in a refusal to permit me to pass on to Sundi, and
it now remained for the whole council to arrive at the ultimate
decision of Yes or No. The first conference assembled and broke up in
a very short time. The beginning appeared favourable, for the
ministers retired amidst the noise of drum and cone. The latter is an
iron musical instrument peculiar to the country, and when played
sounds exactly like the triangle of the Ethiopian serenaders. When
they had reached the palaver tree we heard a great yelling among the
populace, which showed that they were satisfied. In a very short time
they returned again to the house and waited till I had finished
dinner, and then demanded the presents for themselves and their royal
masters. As usual they were not satisfied; but we had no more to give
them, and Furano, our interpreter, took one of the ministers into the
house and showed him all our gear. A grunt from the minister announced
to us that he saw it was impossible to get “blood out of a stone.”

They went away, and the third conference took place at four o’clock.
This was the Grand Council, and there were plenty who spoke, the
upshot of the whole affair being that they ultimately demanded the
moderate sum of £300 in cloth, beads, and liquor, giving us permission
(on our agreeing to the foregoing terms) to go on to Sundi above the
cataracts, a journey occupying only three days. “Impudence is better
than modesty,” but we thought this was carrying impudence to a pitch.
This sum was out of the question, and had we been possessed of enough
to answer the demands of those bushmen, rather than acquiesce, we
should certainly have preferred throwing the amount into the “Slough
of Despond.”

_Wednesday, September 16th._――This morning we went to view the rapids.
We found that the Yellalla Rapids ran east-north-east and
west-south-west, and might be said to be about a mile in length. They
were assuredly very grand, although the natives led us to expect
something grander still. Some fishermen were busy catching fish up and
down the quieter part of the rapids, whilst the eagles and cranes were
satisfying their hunger in the vicinity of the island of
Sanga-chya-Malemba in the middle of the stream, some hundred yards
from either side of the river’s banks.

All day Gidi Mavonga was very stubborn and irritable, and wished to
start at once for Vivi and return home; but as I had to put up some
botanical specimens, to finish two sketches of this part of the
country, and besides, having sore feet from walking, I would not hear
of starting. Gidi therefore started, after repeated palavers, and
called his muleks to follow him: some followed; others begged off, but
to no purpose. Off he went, and after proceeding a short distance,
returned, and in very strong words expressed himself an injured man.
This was taking high ground; I therefore told the interpreter to tell
Gidi that he might go away, and, at the same time, to inform him that
he must send certain properties belonging to me which had been left at
his banza, and that in future no further communication would be held
with his place by any Englishman.

Gidi said that the property belonged to him. I told him to take all,
but, he might rely upon it, the kings who live close to the riverside
would have to answer for the things. Whereupon Gidi at once gave way,
and most submissively begged pardon, and matters were set right for a
short time.

_Saturday, September 19th._――We found ourselves back again at Gidi
Mavonga’s village, paying off all the extra hands who accompanied us
to the rapids. The pay was made in cloth, beads, and liquors.

The heavy demands made by the bigwigs of Banza Nculu――_viz._ £300 for
mere permission to pass to Sundi, beside the enormous expense of
feeding ourselves and thirty-five followers――had compelled us to give
up the project we had in view, especially as we had seen the principal
rapids on the river――the rest of the falls, until reaching Sundi,
being mere elevations, in themselves quite insignificant. My object
had been to reach Sundi, and thence try to ascertain the course of the
river, and to find out whether its source could be nearly reached by
canoes, or entirely reached by carriers. But finding the demands of
the chiefs beyond my power of compliance, I resolved to return. Our
chief guide, Gidi Mavonga, was anxious to make a retrograde movement
as quickly as possible, and urged upon us the necessity of packing up
and starting after three o’clock on the afternoon of our return from
visiting the rapids. But I declined to stir until the next morning,
and after much trouble I gave him and his slaves one blanket cloth and
a pair of razors, which quieted him a little. But it was soon evident
that even this munificent gift merely banked up the fires of discord
in the breasts of the savages, for the same dissatisfaction was
observable even after we returned to their village. The day of
settlement brought Gidi and his slaves to our temporary residence, and
what followed beggared powers of description. What uproar! What
threats! What runnings to and fro! All the devils in the infernal
regions appeared to have infused a double portion of their diabolical
influence into the bodies and souls of their willing disciples on that
day of settlement, and when everybody’s fury had reached the climax of
rage and insolence, old Gidi rushed into the house occupied by us,
commenced turning all our gear upside down, and at last laid forcible
hands upon a bale of merchandise.

I therefore quietly informed the wild old man that he was carrying
matters too far, asked the meaning of it, and took out a six-barrelled
Colt’s revolver, and placed it at my feet ready for use in case of
need. This had the desired effect, for Gidi, after taking a long,
covetous look at the bale of merchandise, turned round and stared at
the leveller of six men at my feet, and having balanced the
difference, he slunk out in perfect silence, followed by his two
myrmidons, who had accompanied their master into the house to carry
away anything that their lord might select. Outside the slaves still
clamoured, and at last induced their master to beard me again when I
was writing.

Thus for two days affairs progressed as hot as fire and as irritating
as a wife’s bad temper, till at length, by some special interposition
of Providence, we managed to make arrangements for some people to
carry our gear down to the riverside, and for a canoe to take us to
Embomma, one of the principal stations on the river.

The preliminaries of this arrangement occupied two days, and on the
morning of the third day we were ready to start by half-past five
o’clock, but no carriers had as yet made their appearance, and after
they did come, it was with the same infernal noise that we managed to
start them with the loads. But the moment they were _en route_ they
almost ran with the things, and shortly disappeared from our view. We
followed as quickly as we could after them, and arriving at Kayé, a
sentinel with a gun stopped us, and informed us that his Highness
Prince Sudikil desired our presence. On reaching the house of our old
landlord, we discovered the whole of our gear before his door, and the
prince with his mother and some of his slaves standing in a circle
round the things, whilst one disgusting-looking brute was about to
open a box of beads. I at once walked up to the rascal and gave him a
castigation with a stick. The fellow looked daggers; but on showing
him a fine breech-loading Cooper’s rifle, he held down his head and
slunk a little way back from the box and sat down.

And now commenced a palaver between the prince and myself, the
substance of which was that the prince wished to exact more presents
from me, but this time by force. The armed slaves began to come up one
by one, until they added a considerable number to the crowd. I told
the prince that it was customary to give on the arrival but not on the
departure of a stranger. But as his highness persisted in his
inflexible determination to have something, I referred him to Mambuka
Prata, a powerful chief at Embomma, and requested Sudikil to take and
keep my signet ring until the case was settled by arbitration at
head-quarters.

At this suggestion the prince, his mother, some of the slaves, and
even Nchama, our interpreter, commenced such a babel of tongues that
we wished the whole bunch of them keeping company with Pharaoh at the
bottom of the Red Sea. It was quite evident that they had perceived
the absurdity and obstinacy of their covetous desires. The prince
therefore walked away in a great rage, taking with him all his slaves,
and nearly one-half of those who had brought our kit from his father’s
house. Here, again, was another fix. We were standing pondering over
the peculiar position in which we were placed, when luckily the few
who remained at once resolved to carry each a double load, and this
brought us to the waterside, and examining all our baggage, and seeing
everything correct, I made a present of beads to the carriers and had
breakfast.

By 9.45 a.m. we set off for Embomma with thankfulness, where we
arrived at 5 p.m. on the same day, having run down with the current,
slightly assisted by paddles, a distance of forty-five miles in seven
hours and a quarter.

_Wednesday, September 23rd._――John Clarke, being engaged to go with us
to St. Salvador, started this afternoon with Nchama to bring carriers
from Mambuka Prata. Chief Mambuka Prata had a few trading huts close
to the French factory, where he flew a black and white flag on trading
occasions. The district of Embomma may extend about eight or ten miles
in length, and throughout the whole of it villages of from ten to
twenty houses may be seen standing in all directions, and sometimes
several miles apart from one another. The king’s residence may consist
of sixty houses, and it is generally at the royal villages that the
traveller finds a home during his sojourn.

_Thursday, September 24th._――At Embomma. This day’s proceedings have
been more annoying than any that have preceded it. The two messengers,
John Clarke and Nchama, who had been sent on a mission to Mambuka
Prata, returned without having accomplished a single order in
connection with the mission entrusted to them. Nchama returned about
six o’clock in the morning, perfectly drunk, and incapable of giving a
single word of explanation as to his whereabouts and doings. John
Clarke returned in the afternoon, and gave rather a tame version of
his proceedings. He said that Mambuka Prata, being annoyed at not
receiving a coat promised him by Monsieur Pisseaux, would not send any
carriers to take us on to St. Salvador. What a Frenchman’s conduct had
to do with an Englishman’s affairs I could not conceive. He (Mambuka
Prata) said the carriers would not be forthcoming until he received a
book from the white man, or saw him himself. This last sounded like a
falsehood, as there was not a soul in all Vinda who could read a
single scrap, and, besides, our interpreters took with them a very
good book in the shape of a demijohn of rum and a tenth of powder, but
whether these had been delivered into the hands of the proper persons
was a question. Nchama, having been severely reprimanded, repaired to
his village, and did not make his appearance again until the day we
left Embomma.

_Friday, September 25th._――We left Embomma, and arrived in Porto da
Lentra at 1.15 on the morning of Saturday, September 26th. On the way
down the canoemen made several attempts to land at various villages,
but were forced to proceed for fear of Colt’s revolvers. They did very
well, and received six bottles of rum.

We left Porto da Lentra for Point Banana at 4.15 on the morning of
September 27th. We had exchanged our smaller but fine canoe for a
large one, and started with six hands and captain, but had scarcely
lost sight of Porto da Lentra when our canoemen went up a creek――they
said to get extra clothing. We were detained more than half an hour
waiting for them, until probably they had eaten their breakfast and
drunk their palm wine. We got them to start with great difficulty; but
at the very next creek they stopped again, and would have repeated the
dose at other places had we not had recourse to our friends in need,
the revolvers.

At the creek one man jumped on shore and we pushed off again; but a
few yards down we were hailed by a Missolongi canoe, the river-pirates
of this part of the Congo. This third time our canoemen stopped; and
we were obliged to face them with cocked revolvers and compel them to
go on. Down we glided, assisted more by the current than by our men.
Another creek, and the canoemen requested to stop again to eat, which
request was positively refused.

The river had been hitherto very calm, but at two o’clock the
sea-breeze began to blow hard; the tide was also slightly against us,
and this caused a swell in the river which wetted nearly all our
things. I was surveying at the time, and, fearing that the instruments
might get a soaking with salt water, I ordered the canoemen to put
back and return to Point Banana by means of a creek on the right of
the river. This appeared to the canoemen to be awfully hard work,
although they had only to pull back for about a quarter of a mile. The
Congoes are remarkable for their uselessness: they excel in eating,
drinking, sleeping, and talking, in a word, in satisfying their
sensual comforts, and what little sense they have is used for the
purpose of annoying those with whom they come in contact. More than
five times they were asked to make sail, and then gave a few strokes
with their paddles, and stopped and chatted again, put the canoe
broadside on to the billows, let her drift back, and again gave a few
more strokes.

In this way nearly an hour passed away, and we never reached the end
of the quarter-mile. They began to complain that the way by the creek
was too far, whilst just a short time before that they told us the
creek was the nearest. They now declared that they could proceed no
farther, and pulled the canoe in shore. Seeing that the whole bevy of
them, from the captain to the small boy, were all drunk from drinking
some rum they had brought with them, we could do nothing but submit to
this state of things, anything being preferable to trusting the canoe
with a lot of drunken hands, and getting ourselves and gear saturated
with salt water.

The crew were permitted to land. They lighted a fire, cooked, ate,
drank, quarrelled, and went to sleep. The padron, or captain, took
possession of the rum, and drank himself to sleep also; and when the
wind abated a little and the water became calmer, we awakened the
captain with difficulty, and he with greater difficulty his crew; but
the tide had gone down, and the canoe was high and dry on the bank.
All efforts to launch her into the water proved unavailing, especially
as the rum was still hard at work, and what little sense the Congoes
had was perfectly misapplied. In consequence we had to wait until the
tide again served, which did not take place till two o’clock the
following morning, when we tried again to start our hands, and with
great delay and noise managed to reach Point Banana at 4.15 a.m.

At six o’clock all our things were landed and comfortably housed
within Monsieur Parrat’s factory. Thank God! we were now at a
considerable distance from Yellalla and the triumvirate and avaricioua
triple ministers of the Banza Nculu, far away from the Banza Vivi and
its king, far away from the quarrelsome, covetous, gin-drinking,
noisy, and licentious old Gidi Mavonga, far away from that senseless
nincompoop the Prince Sudikil, and――praise be to Allah!――within hail
of Her Majesty’s ship _Griffon_.


     [7] This MS. consisted mainly of notes roughly jotted down
     by Burton in a memorandum book. I have thought it best to
     publish them as they stood, with no alterations except those
     necessary to make the essay coherent and legible.――W. H. W.



_THE INTERIOR OF BRAZIL_

1867



_THE INTERIOR OF BRAZIL_

1867


I had been in Brazil nearly two years, vegetating between Santos and
São Paulo, varied by an occasional expedition afield or a trip to Rio
de Janeiro, when I determined to put into action my long-cherished
plan of prospecting the great and wealthy province of Minas Gerães in
the interior, and then to go down the São Francisco, which is the
Brazilian Mississippi, from Sabará to the sea, and to visit _en route_
the Paulo Affonso rapids, the Niagara of Brazil. As my wife was very
anxious to go, I took her with me.

We left Rio on June 12th, 1867, and sailed across the incomparable
Bay, and then ascended to Petropolis. From Petropolis we made our real
start in a large char-à-banc, which held eight, in two and two, and
which was drawn by four mules. The mules started off in fine style;
being fresh and frisky they simply galloped along the mountain side.
It is not necessary for me to describe the first part of the journey,
which, for a few days, travelled along a well-known road, through a
splendid district of wooded mountains, broad rivers, and boulders of
rock; the vegetation was especially fine, even tropical. At Juiz de
Fora we abandoned our char-à-banc for the coach, whereby we travelled
to Barbacena, and here again we left the coach for the saddle, and
followed the bridle-road, if indeed it could be called a road.

I should weary if I were to describe the places we passed through
until we came to Logão Duroda, where the railway was in process of
making, and where they were just laying the first chain for the
exploration of the mountains and for the prolongation of the Dom Pedro
Secunda Railway. There was an inauguration ceremony, and my wife had
the honour of giving the first blow to the stock and breaking a bottle
of wine over it. After that we had a convivial gathering, and wound up
with a dinner in the good old English fashion. Next day we started off
again, and still riding through beautiful scenery, up and down
mountains, through shallow rivers and bits of virgin forests, from day
to day, we eventually arrived at Morro Velho, where we were most
hospitably received by the superintendent of the São Goa d’el Rey
Mining Company and Mrs. Gordon, and we spent some days in their most
comfortable home. Morro Velho is the queen of the Minas Gerães mines,
and a most interesting place, but, as we were going back to it, we
determined to press on to Ouro Preto, which is the capital of the
province, a most hilly town, for walking up and down the streets was
as difficult as climbing up ladders. We stayed here two days, and then
returned to Morro Velho. We had a long, muddy, rainy journey on the
way back, slipping backward two steps for every one forward, but at
last we arrived at the Gordons’ house again, and were warmly welcomed
as before. Here we tarried for a fortnight, and thoroughly explored
everything.

Among other things we explored the mine, which had the reputation of
being the largest, deepest, and richest gold-mine in Brazil. My wife
determined to go with me, and Mrs. Gordon, who had never before
ventured under grass, kindly consented to accompany her. Mr. Gordon
and I went down first in a bucket, or kibble, which was suspended over
the abyss. We found in it a rough wooden seat, comfortable enough. We
were advised by the pitman not to look downwards, as the glimmer of
the sparks and lights below was apt to cause giddiness and
seasickness. I did look down and felt none the worse. We touched and
tilted half over once against a cableway drum, but that was our only
contretemps. I could not but wonder at the mighty timbering which met
my eyes as it dilated in the darkness;――timber everywhere, all of the
best and hardest wood. The mighty mass, it might hardly be said, was
not without flaws, very palpable at second look. We made an easy
descent down the shaft, and a bunch of lighted tow, tied to the bucket
chain, showed us all its features. There was no “rattle his bones over
the stones,” and the drop lasted fifteen minutes. At the bottom the
kibble, or bucket, stood still, began to reel like a boat, and
descended perpendicularly until we stepped out. Presently Mrs. Gordon
and my wife, habited in brown holland trousers, belted blouses, and
miners’ caps, came down, delighted with the kibble travelling. The men
did everything to banish the ladies’ alarm, and spoke and cheered us
as we passed. The mine was utterly new to me, and most unlike the
dirty labyrinth of little clefts and filthy galleries down which I
have often crawled like a low reptile; the height suggested a cavern
or a huge stone-quarry.

Candle burning, the usual test, detected nothing abnormal in the
atmosphere; the ventilation was excellent. Of course, our feet were
wiped, and, physically speaking, they wanted wiping; the floor was
wet, the mud was slippery, and locomotion somewhat like an ascent of
the Pyramids, although the ground was pretty level.

It was a huge palace of darkness; the walls were either black as the
grave, or reflected in the slender rays of light a watery surface, or
were broken into monstrous projections, half revealing and half
concealing cavernous recesses. Despite the lamps, the night pressed
upon us, as it were, with a weight, and the only measure of distance
was a spark here and there, glimmering like a single star. Distinctly
nerve-testing was the gulf between the huge mountain sides, apparently
threatening every moment to fall. Through this Inferno gnomes glided
about in a ghostly fashion, half-naked figures enveloped by the mist.
Here dark bodies hung by chains in what seemed frightful positions;
there they swung like leopards from place to place; there they swarmed
up loose ropes like troglodytes; there they moved over scaffolding,
which even to look up at would make a nervous temperament dizzy.

Our visit to the mine amply repaid us; it was a place

     Where thoughts were many, and words were few.

But the fact will remain on our mental retina as long as our brains
will do their duty.

After a fortnight at Morro Velho I prepared to go to Sabará, there to
embark _en route_ to the coast. With a peculiar cat-like feeling I
bade adieu to the Gordons, with whom we had found an English home in
the Highlands of Brazil. My excellent compatriots, however,
accompanied me to break the shock of departure; my wife also, though,
as she had sprained her ankle badly, she was to return to Rio.

It was a long ride from Morro Velho and a tiring one, and we were glad
to enter the picturesque city of Sabará, where we found tolerable
lodgings. Here I completed my preparations for descending the Rio das
Velhas, and had to seek the aid of a store-keeper, who turned out to
be an extortioner. That, perhaps, was only to be expected; but I may
justly complain when, in addition to his extortionate charges, he sent
me down the river, a river like the Mississippi, in a raft whose
starboard canoe had a leak scarcely stopped up with Sabará clay.

The next day we all walked down to the upper landing-place, where the
ajojo, or raft, lay. I never saw such an old Noah’s ark, with its
standing awning, a floating gipsy “pal,” some seven feet high and
twenty-two long, and pitched like a tent upon two hollowed logs. The
river, I thought, must indeed be safe if this article can get down
without an accident.

All the notables of the place witnessed the process of embarkation. A
young English lady broke a bottle of wine with all possible grace upon
the bows, and duly christened the craft the _Eliza_ and two pairs of
slippers were thrown at my head. Many _vivas_ were given and returned,
and all my party embarked for a trial trip of a couple of miles. When
the fifteen souls came on board, they sank the raft some three palms,
and deluged the upper platform, making the headman, or pilot, very
nervous; already he began to predict swamping, “going down in a
jiffey,” and being dashed to pieces by the rapids. We shot past a
dangerous rock in mid-stream, and in a short time arrived at the
little village of Santo Antonio da Roça Grande, where animals were
waiting to carry home the non-voyagers, my wife included. They landed
here, but stood as the setting sun sank behind the mountains and waved
their farewells as they watched the raft turn the last corner and
float off into the far mysterious unknown. I confess to having felt an
unusual sense of loneliness as the kindly faces faded away in the
distance, and, by way of distraction, I applied myself to a careful
examination of my raft.

  [Illustration:
  SHOOTING THE RAPIDS ON THE RIO DAS VELHAS.        [_See Page 266._]

The ajojo, or, as it is called in other places, the “balsa,” here
represents the flat boat of the Mississippi. On the Rio das Velhas,
however, it had not yet become an institution, and at that time I was
the only traveller who had yet passed down by it from Sabará to the
rapids of Paulo Affonso. I need not describe it in detail; I will only
say that, though not of the safest description, it behaved itself,
under all the circumstances, well.

My crew numbered three――old Vieira and his sons. Two stood in the bows
with poles, which they preferred as being easier to use than paddles.
The paddles used in deep waters vary in shape every few hundred miles.
The men were mere landlubbers; they felt, or affected to feel, nervous
at every obstacle. They had been rowing all their lives, and yet they
knew not how to back water; curious to say, this was everywhere the
case down stream. They pulled with all their might for a few minutes
when the river was rapid, so as to incur possible risks, and when the
water was almost dead, they lay upon their oars and lazily allowed
themselves to be floated down. Thus, during the working day, between 7
a.m. and 5 p.m., very little way was made. They had no system, nor
would they learn any. The only thing energetic about them was the way
they performed upon the cow-horn, and with this they announced
arrival, saluted those on the banks, and generally enjoyed the noise.

My first stage was between Sabará and Santa Lusia. The stream was
deeply encased; the reaches were short, and we seemed to run at the
bluffs, where high ribs came down to the bed and cut the bottom into
very small bends. The most troublesome feature was the shallow places
where the bed broadened; we grounded with unpleasant regularity. This
part also abounded in snags. The tortuous bed, never showing a mile
ahead, prevented anything like waves, though the wind was in our
teeth. At this time of year we saw the Old Squaw’s River at its worst;
there was a minimum of water and a maximum of contrary wind. On the
other hand, it was the “moon of flowers”; the poor second growth
teemed with bunches of purple beauty, and the hill-tops were feathered
by palms.

At Jaguára the people cried, “You’ll never reach Trahiras,” deriding
the _Eliza_. Indeed, we seemed likely to waste much time. However, we
crept on surely, if slowly. As evening approached the weather waxed
cool and clear, and the excessive evaporation gave the idea of great
dryness; my books curled up, it was hardly possible to write, and it
reminded me of the Persian Gulf, where water-colours cannot be used
because the moisture is absorbed from the brush.

The first view of Santa Lusia was very pleasing; a tall ridge about a
mile from the stream was capped with two double-towered churches,
divided by fine, large, whitewashed houses and rich vegetation, with
palms straggling down to the water. Here I landed and made my way to
the hotel, which was a most tumble-down hole, and after supper
inspected Santa Lusia. It was formerly a centre of the gold diggings,
but at this time possessed nothing of interest.

The next morning was delicious, and the face of Nature was as calm as
if it could show no other expression. The sword-like rays of the sun,
radiating from the unseen centre before it arose in its splendour,
soon dispersed the thin mists that slept tranquilly upon the cool
river-bed. We shot the Ponte Grande de Santa Lusia to Cruvello and the
backwoods. The bridge was the usual long, crooked affair, with twelve
trusses, or trestles, in the water and many outside, showing that the
floods are here extensive. The girders are rarely raised high enough,
and an exceptional inundation sweeps them away, leaving bare poles
bristling in the bed and dangerous piles under water.

About two miles below Santa Lusia the water became deeper and the
country changed. The right, or eastern, side was rough and hilly, with
heights hugging the bed. Near the other bank the land was more level,
and the soil showed a better complexion, by which both sugar-cane and
timber profited. In another hour we sighted the first cotton
plantation, and right well it looked. There was indeed a mine of
neglected wealth in cotton and fish along, and in, this river, and the
more I saw of it the richer I found it. The hills were clothed with
thin brown-grey grass, looking in places as if they were frosty with
hoar, and always profusely tasselled.

Presently another bend showed certain white lines between the
river-fringe of trees, and this was the abode of the friaresses. We
made fast to a gap in the clay bank and landed. At first I was refused
even coffee, and there was no inn. I therefore sent my card and letter
to the reverend vicar, and he at once called upon me, ordered dinner,
and took me off to see the lions, of which the most interesting was
the sisterhood, or infirmary, of the friaresses before named. The
reverend mother, rather a pretty person, received us at the door,
kissed the padre’s hand, and led the way to the little college chapel,
white and gold with frescoed ceiling. We visited the dormitories; the
galleries were long, the room was large and airy. The infirmary
contained one sister and four invalid girls. The thirty-six reverend
women were dressed in white veils and petticoats, with black scapulars
in front, and over all a blue cloak. I spent the night at this place
on the raft; the moon and stars were unusually bright, and the night
was delightfully clear and cool.

We set out next morning at seven o’clock, and proceeded without much
adventure all that day and night, finally arriving at Jaguára, at
which hospitable place I spent pleasant days, whilst another crew was
engaged and arrangments for my reaching Diamantina were being
completed.

After a week at Jaguára I embarked again. There was very little to
record day by day of the voyage from Jaguára to Diamantina. The river
was ever changing: sometimes we passed picturesque cliffs; sometimes
we went through gorgeous forests; with masses of vegetation rolling
and bulging down the bank; sometimes the currents changed into rapids,
and the bed of the river was studded with islets of calcareous stone,
dangerous during half-flood.

The most dangerous experience was when we shot the rapids at Cachoeira
Grande. People crowded down to the yellow bank to stare and to
frighten us about them, and the dialogue was somewhat in this style:――

“Do you know the rapids?” we inquired.

“We know them!”

“Will you pilot us?”

“We will not pilot you!”

“For money?”

“Not for money!”

“And why?”

“Because we are afraid of them!”

This was spoken as the juniors ran along the bank like ostriches or
the natives of Ugogo.

Luckily for us, for the Cachoeira Grande was no joke, we found, just
before we came to the rapids, on the right bank a small crowd keeping
holiday. The men carried guns in their hands, and wore pistols and
daggers under their open jackets; the women were in full dress,
brilliant as rainbows, with blood-red flowers in their glossy,
crows’-wing hair. Of the dozen, not one was fairly white. Here we
picked up a pilot or two who came on board. They were men of few
words; they saluted us civilly and pushed off.

The beginning of the end was the little rapid of the Saco Grande, or
“Big Bend,” where the river bed, turning sharply from south-east to
north-west, made parallel reaches. To avoid the rock-pier on the left
we floated stern foremost down along the right bank, and managed the
rapid with some difficulty. Presently we turned to the east-south-west,
and faced the dreaded Cachoeira Grande, which is formed by another
sharp bend in the bed, winding to the north-east. The obstacles were
six very flat projections of dark stone on the right bank and four on
the left, and cunning is required to spiral down between them. We
began by passing the port of No. 1, then we made straight for No. 2 to
the left; here, by pushing furiously up stream, the _Eliza_ was forced
over to the right, was swung round by main force of arm, and was
allowed to descend, well in hand, to within a few feet of No. 4, which
rises right in the front. Finally, leaving this wrecker to starboard,
we hit the usual triangle-head, with plenty of water breaking off both
arms. The descent occupied sixteen minutes.

After many congratulations our friends the pilots made a show of
taking leave to do some important business, which proved on inquiry to
mean “doing compliments.” As the dangers were not yet over, I produced
a keg of restilo; it was tasted, and pronounced very hot in the mouth,
and the Major――that is, myself――became so irresistible that they all
swore they would accompany me to the Rio de São Francisco, or
anywhere. The poles were twirled again and wielded with a will. We
left to port broken water and an ugly stone, a hogsback; then we
crossed to scrape acquaintance with a sunken mass in front.

The end was the Cachoeira das Gallinhas, to which we presently came.
We gave a wide berth to a rock well on the right bank and stuck to the
left side. Here was a narrow gate, formed by two rock-piers projecting
from the shores, and in such places “cordelling” was advisable. The
men sprang into the water with loud cries, and pulled at the hawser
till the current had put us in proper position. They then pushed off
and sprang on board before we could make much way. The “Rapid of the
Hens” occupied us nine minutes.

A second dram of the “wild stuff” was then given and our friends the
pilots blessed us fervently; they prayed for us, and unintelligibly
invoked for us the protection of the Virgin and all the saints. They
landed with abundant tripping and stumbling, carrying with them many
dollars and a bottle of the much-prized restilo. I had every reason to
be grateful to them, for they saved me an immense amount of trouble;
but, shortly afterwards, reports of certain “little deaths,” in which
they had been actively concerned, showed me that they were not exactly
lambs.

After this we proceeded easily down the river to Bom Successo, from
which point I intended to visit Diamantina City. I had to land here
and make my way to Diamantina on mule-back, not an easy journey,
involving, as it did, a day and a night. Diamantina, or the Diamond
City, was peculiarly situated, almost precipitous to the east and
south-west, while the northern part was a continuation of the broken
prairie-land. I stayed here as the guest of Sr. João Ribeiro, a
diamond merchant, and wealthy and hospitable. I spent at this place
three days and thoroughly inspected it. The impression left upon me
was most agreeable; the men were the frankest, and the women the
prettiest and most amiable, of any it had been my fortune to meet in
Brazil; nothing could exceed their hospitality. I will not describe my
visit to the diamond diggings, as I have done so fully elsewhere, and
this brief sketch must be mainly devoted to my voyage down the river.
I will only say that I found it most interesting, and, so far from the
diamonds being exhausted, it seemed to me that they were only at the
beginning of a supply which might be described as inexhaustible.

On the eleventh day I returned to Bom Successo with great regret, and
at 9.30 a.m. on September 7th I dismissed my trooper and his mules,
and pushed out of the creek down the river towards Coroa do Gallo. I
met with several small troubles, such as low sandbanks, snags, and
stones, but managed to push through to the Coroa do Gallo, where I
spent the night. The previous day had been burning hot, but when we
set forth the weather had become temperate, and, indeed, on all this
journey there was nothing much to complain of on account of the
climate. We drifted on day after day through a soft and balmy
atmosphere, disturbed ever and anon by gusts of wind and vapours;
sometimes distant sheet lightning flashed from the mists massing
around the horizon, the smoke of the prairie fires rose in columns,
and they might have been mistaken for the fumes of a steamer by night.
Those that were near glowed like live coals, whilst the more distant
gleamed blue.

I landed and stayed a day or two at Guaicuhy, but there was nothing
very important to record. I was strongly advised to visit the rapids
of the Pirapora, which are said to be, after the Casca d’Anta at the
beginning and the Paulo Affonso at the end, the important feature upon
the Rio de São Francisco. The word means a “fish leap,” and is applied
to places on more than one Brazilian river. With a flush of joy I
found myself upon this glorious stream of the future, whose dimensions
here measure seven hundred feet. I had seen nothing to compare with it
since my visit to the African Congo.

Two new men were hired to guide us in the “tender” canoe, as we wished
to shoot the rapids. We eyed curiously the contrasts of the new stream
with that which we had lately left. Here the water was of a
transparent green; the river seemed to break even from the stiff clay,
which was in places caving in. After nine hours of hard work we
doubled a wooded projection from the left bank, and sighted the
Cachoeira of the Pirapora. The Pirapora differed from anything I had
yet viewed; it was, in fact, partly a true fall, divided into two
sections, and we trembled to think what the Paulo Affonso might be.
Glad to stretch our cramped limbs, we landed on the right bank, and
proceeded to inspect the rapids from above. The upper rapid, six feet
high, seemed more formidable than the lower of about seven feet. Near
the right bank these form true falls; they are also garnished by
little ladders, miniature cascades rushing furiously down small,
narrow, tortuous, channels, between the teeth of jagged stone-saws,
and tumbling over dwarf buttresses. Thus the total height between the
upper and the lower “smooths” is thirteen feet. Above the break the
stream narrows to 1,800 feet, whilst below it broadens to 3,500 feet.
During the dry weather the fair-way, if it may be so called, is a thin
sheet of water near the western bank: no raft, however, can pass;
canoes must be unladen and towed up. Without a good pilot there is
imminent risk.

A storm was gathering, and as we began the descent lightning flashed
from the east and south, and from all the horizon, followed by low
rumblings of thunder. Presently our cranky canoe was struck by the
gale, one of the especial dangers of the São Francisco. The east wind
was heard roaring from afar, and as it came down upon the stream,
white waves rose after a few minutes, subsiding as easily when the
gale had blown itself out. My men preferred the leeward bank, upon
which the blast broke, leaving the water below comparatively dead, and
thus they escaped the risk of falling trees. The surface of the
central channel being now blocked by the furious wind, a backwater
during our ascent bore us swiftly down. It was very dark at 7.30, when
we landed and climbed the steep and slippery bank. The thunder growled
angrily and heavy rain fell, fortunately upon a tight roof. This was
the first wet weather that I had experienced since July 21st.

The Pirapora had been on the São Francisco my terminus _ad quem_, and
now it was _a quo_, the rest of the voyage being down stream. When we
started in the morning the weather was still surly from the effects of
last night’s scolding, but the air was transparent and clear; the
books no longer curled with drought, and a dose from the quinine
bottle was judged advisable. We were evidently at the break of the
rainy season. It was noon before the _Eliza_ was poled off from the
bank of the Guaicuhy, and turned head downwards into the great stream.
We drifted on from day to day until we arrived at São Romao, a
God-forgotten place, which I explored; but it was not particularly
hospitable, so I returned at evening and spent the night on the
_Eliza_, lighted the fire, drew down the awning, and kept out as much
of the drifting rain and cold, shifting wind as possible. It was not
easy to sleep for the babel of sounds, for the Romanenses were
decidedly ill-behaved and uncivilised, and made night hideous with
their orgies.

We set out again next day, furling the awning, through the drenching
rain. We had a day of wind and water, and then another of very hot
sun, and so we went on to Januaria, where I met with frank and ready
hospitality. After staying here a night, we took the water again, and
proceeded through a small hurricane to Carunhanha, where also I was
well received, but had to sleep on board the raft――another night of
devilry. Cold wind from the north rushed through the hot air,
precipitating a deluge in embryo; then the gale chopped round to the
south, and produced another, and fiercer, down-pour. A treacherous
lull, and all began again, the wind howling and screaming from the
east. The thunder roared and the lightning flashed in all directions;
the stream rose in wavelets, which washed over the _Eliza_, and shook
her by the bumping of the “tender” canoe. We did not get much sleep
that night.

I will not further describe my voyage day after day in the _Eliza_.
Suffice it to say, at Varzéa Redonda, a wretched village just before
we came to the Paulo Affonso, I dismantled the _Eliza_ and paid off
the crew. I was asked to stay on land, but, as I wished to see
everything settled, I slept on board, and regretted my resolution. The
night was furious, and the wind raised waves that nearly beat the old
raft to pieces. My men, having reached the end of their work, had the
usual boatman’s spree――hard drinking, extensive boasting, trials of
strength, and quarrelling, intermixed with singing, shouting,
extemporising verses, and ending in the snores and snorts of Bacchic
sleep. I found them very troublesome; but the next morning they shed
tears of contrition. I saw them disappear without regret; the only
face, indeed, that I was sorry to part from was that of the good old
pilot.

The next step was to procure animals and men to take me to the Great
Rapids. I had great difficulty in getting these, and when the party
was made up it consisted of the worst men, the worst mules, and the
worst equipments I had ever seen in Brazil. In two days and two nights
I arrived at Paulo Affonso, the King of the Rapids.

I shall never forget my first approach to it. In the distance we heard
a deep, hollow sound, soft withal, like the rumbling of a distant
storm, but it seemed to come from below the earth, as if we trod upon
it. After another mile the ground appeared to tremble at the eternal
thunder. A little later we came upon the rapids. Paulo Affonso has
well been called the Niagara of Brazil.

The quebrada, or gorge, is here two hundred and sixty feet deep; in
the narrowest part it is choked to a minimum breadth of fifty-one
feet. It is filled with what seems not water but froth and milk, a
dashing and dazzling, a whirling and churning surfaceless mass, which
gives a wondrous study of fluid in motion. Here the luminous whiteness
of the chaotic foam-crests, hurled in billows and breakers against the
blackness of the rock, is burst into flakes and spray that leap
half-way up the immuring trough. Then the steam boils over and
canopies the tremendous scene. In the stilly air of dull, warm grey,
the mists surge up, deepening still more the dizzy fall that yawns
under our feet.

The general effect of the picture, and the same may be said of all
great cataracts, is the realised idea of power――of power tremendous,
inexorable, irresistible. The eye is spell-bound by the contrast of
this impetuous motion, this wrathful, maddened haste to escape, with
the frail stedfastness of the bits of rainbow, hovering above, with
the “Table Rock,” so solid to the tread, and with the placid, settled
stillness of the plain and hillocks, whose eternal homes seem to be
here. Magic, I may observe, is in the atmosphere of Paulo Affonso; it
is the natural expression of the glory and the majesty, the splendour
and the glamour of the scene, which Greece would have peopled with
shapes of beauty, and which in Germany would be haunted by choirs of
flying sylphs and dancing Undines.

I sat over the cataract until convinced it was not possible to become
one with the waters; what at first seemed grand and sublime had at
last a feeling of awe, too intense to be in any way enjoyable. The
rest of the day I spent in camp, where the minor troubles of life soon
asserted their power. The sand raised by the strong and steady
trade-wind was troublesome, and the surface seething in the sun
produced a constant drought. We were now at the head of the funnel,
the vast ventilator which guides the gale to the Rio de São Francisco.
At night the sky showed a fast-drifting scud, and an angry blast
dispersed the gathering clouds of blood-thirsty mosquitos. Our lullaby
was the music of Paulo Affonso.

The next day I visited the falls again and explored them thoroughly,
going down from the heights above to the base beneath, from which the
finest view of the falls was to be obtained. It was a grand climax to
my voyage down the São Francisco.

My task was done; I won its reward, and my strength passed from me.
Two days of tedious mountain riding led to the Porto das Piranhas, and
from here I descended the lower Rio de São Francisco more leisurely,
and, when that was done, I finally returned _viâ_ Rio de Janeiro to
Santos (São Paulo), _alias_ the Wapping of the Far West, and took up
my consular duties once again.



_THROUGH SYRIA TO PALMYRA_

1870



_THROUGH SYRIA TO PALMYRA_

1870


I am “_partant pour la Syrie_,” and though it is comparatively near,
we find the journey long. We take steamer to Alexandria, and there
await the first vessel going northwards. We embark in a foreign
steamer, much preferring the Russian, and after passing, perhaps
without sighting, the base of the Nile Delta and the northern terminus
of the Suez Canal, we run rapidly up the coast of the Holy Land. We
are near enough to see certain of its features, and to feel a
throbbing of the heart. Here is Ascalon, the “Bride of Syria,” still
redolent of the days of the lion-hearted king and of the right royal
Saláh-el-Din. There is Jaffa, the Joppa ever full of the memories of
St. Peter. We touch there, but we may not land unless the sea is of
the calmest. Now we steam along the site of Cæsarea, the busy city of
Herod Agrippa, converted into the most silent waste of ruins that it
has ever been our fate to look upon. There we cast anchor for a few
days, at the second station, Hazfa, opposite St. Jean d’Acre, that
“Key of Palestine” from the days of the Crusaders to the times of
Bonaparte, Sir Sydney Smith, and Sir Charles Napier. From this point
we swerve rapidly past the brown headland of Carmel, type of excellent
beauty to the Hebrew poet, past the white Scala Tyrivrum, whose
_promontorium album_ might be a fragment of the white cliffs of
Albion, past the bright little town of Tyre, a phœnix rising a third
time from its ashes, and past Sidon and Lebanon, memorial names
engraved upon our childish hearts too deeply for time or change ever
to erase them from the memory of the man. So memorial, indeed, are all
these regions that the traveller must keep watch and ward upon
himself, under penalty of suffering from what I may call “Holy Land on
the brain.” The essence of it consists in seeing all things, not as
they are, but as they ought to be; for instance, “hanging gardens” at
Damascus, “Roman bridges” in Saracenic arches, and “beautiful blush
marble” in limestone stained with oxide. It wrings the hearts of its
friends when sighting the Plain of Esdraelon, and in gazing upon a
certain mound it exclaims:

     What hill is like to Tabor’s hill in beauty and in grace?

This clairvoyance, or idealism, which makes men babble of green fields
where only dust meets the eye of sense is by no means an obscure
disorder of the brain; on the contrary, it is rather aggressive and
violent, whilst writers of guides and handbooks appear abnormally
exposed to it. Hence those who prepare for a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land must temper information and description with many a grain of
salt, or they will undergo no little disappointment. Ideal pleasures
ever excel those of reality; but in this case there is an extra and
inordinate supply of ideality.

We disembark at the hopeless, wind-lashed roadstead of Beyrut, within
the limits of the Land of Promise, but never yet included in the Land
of Possession. The trim little harbour-town, seated upon its sloping
amphitheatre, converted into “_Colossia Julia Augusta Felix Berytus_”
must have been a local Pompeii in the fourth and fifth centuries, and
its feminine bust was found associated with the medallions of
Alexandria and Halicarnassus. During those ages the Roman and Egyptian
galleys jostled one another in the inner port, which now looks like a
dock; their palaces and villas covered the slopes with pillars and
colonnades; paradises and gardens contrasted with proud fanes rising
upon well-wooded and well-watered peaks around――fanes dedicated to
gods and goddesses now remembered only by the classical dictionaries.
In those days, students of philosophy and theology, of law and
language, flocked to Berytus from the most distant lands. But the
terrible earthquake of A.D. 551, which laid waste a pleasant site,
seems to have been the turning-point of its destinies; the roadstead
apparently became shallow, and, despite a noted miracle in the eighth
century, Beyrut saw her glory depart for many a generation. At last,
in the beginning of the nineteenth century, it had sunk to its lowest,
and the petty port, placed under the unimportant Pashalate of Sidon,
numbered barely five hundred souls.

Sir Charles Napier, the sailor, changed all that. In the autumn of
1840 he made Beyrut his headquarters, whence he and his gallant crews
ranged the hill country around and blockaded the ports, till the
career of Ibrahim Pasha was unfortunately cut short. Thereupon the hat
began at once to take precedence of the turban, even of the green
turban. The headquarters of the Pashalate were transferred from Sidon
to Beyrut; European merchants established country houses; missionaries
opened schools for both sexes; the different consular corps contended
for the construction of roads and the abatement of nuisances; whilst
the port was regularly visited by four lines of steamers. Briefly,
Beyrut became the only Europeanised place in Syria, and she will
probably remain so for many years.

The old part of the city still retains some marks of Orientalism; the
old part, with its alleys, wynds, and closes, its wretched lanes, its
narrow and slippery thoroughfares, resembling unroofed sewers, is
peculiarly sombre and Syrian, full of dead men’s bones and all
uncleanliness. Nothing can be meaner than the Customs House, where
millions of piastres annually change hands. Of the stately buildings
which once adorned it no traces remain but three granite monolithic
columns, still towering above modern misery. But the new town which
surrounds the ancient archery is Levantine――that is to say, almost
Italian; the points of difference being a scatter of minarets and a
sprinkling of tropical vegetation, which tells you that you are
somewhat nearer the sun. There are houses and hospitals large enough
each to lodge its battalions; piano and bugle sounds catch the ear;
the carriage is taking the place of the horse and the mule――here, as
in South America, a sure sign of civilisation; and Orientalism is
essentially at a discount. You must not think of Beyrut as an Eastern
city.

Life is easy and death is easier in these sub-tropical regions. Men do
little during six days, and carefully rest on the seventh. For eight
months they saunter through the tepid air of the Mediterranean
seaboard; the other four are spent upon “the mountain” (_i.e._
Lebanon), whose pure, light air is a tonic. The little world of Beyrut
rises rather late, and its business hours are but before the noontide
breakfast, for here, as amongst the classics, the meals are two per
diem. They would be called by our grandfathers dinner and supper; we
say breakfast and dinner. Then a little more work precedes a drive or
a ride: the stroll is not unknown, the constitutional is. The evenings
are spent either in a _café_ or in visits, where whist at times puts
in an appearance, and a profound stillness, like that of Lime Street,
City, begins to reign about 10 p.m. The theatre has not been imported,
although an enterprising Syrian Christian――Moslems cannot originate
such things――has, after a visit to Italy, written several comedies in
the classical style, unfortunately adopting the French rhymed couplet.
The tea party, the little music, and the _soirée dansante_, flourish
in what the Beyrutines are pleased to call the “Paris of Syria.” The
_jeunesse dorée_, in patent leather boots, “boiled shirts,” fold
collars, white ties, and lemon-coloured gloves, loves to don the
sables which the English gentleman affects. When he goes forth to make
merry, he enters gloves in hand; he prefers round dances to square,
and he imitates Europe very literally. But as the Romans kept up the
time-honoured and homely eggs as the end of their richest banquets, so
the “golden youth” of Beyrut prefers the ugly and unpleasant fez or
tarbush. For the rest, young Syria’s ambition is to marry a European
wife, and he does not always get the best of _that_ bargain.

In these lands Society still preserves the fragmentary nature which
belonged to the ancient world. Beyrut, the port, at the time whereof I
write, is distant a single day’s ride from Damascus, the capital of
Syria, yet there is no trace of sympathy between the two, and the
inland say of the seaboard city:

     Its sun cracks [wood or teak],
     And its water is salt,
     And its falls are cloud de Paris [dirty of lead].

Again Damascus jeers:

     Perish Beyrut, for the reason that her heat resembles Sakar [the
       eighth hell].
     No flowing of milk is found in her, though her sons are [stupid
       as] cows.

Whereto Beyrut retorts:

     At Aleppo man is a dandy and vain,
     At Shan [Damascus] he is niggard and mean,
     And the Nizri [Egyptian] is simply a rascal.

Whilst “the lying of Damascus” is an illustration in the mouth of
every Beyrutine. We have a rhyme of the kind touching one――

     Sir Vicary Gibbs,
     The inventor of fibs.

But Damascus says of herself, when describing a man who has became
civilised: “He hath been Damascus’d.” These sharp sayings, indeed, are
not confined to the capital and the port. As of old upon the
Sorrentine Plains, to speak of no other place, every town had a
nickname, a rhyme, or a tale attached to it, which “kinder ryled up”
the inhabitants, so it is the case throughout modern Syria. Thus of
Jerusalem men say, as of Meccah:

     Her soil is sacred, her sons are soiled.

Of Tiberias, a town built of basalt:

     Her stones are black, and her people are Jews.

Of the Naw’arinah, or people of the Auranitis (the great Hauran
Valley), we are told that:

     They thrice bewildered the Apostle of Allah [Mohammed].

The modern inhabitants of ancient Heliopolis, where Burckhardt found
the handsomest woman in Syria, is dubbed:

     A Ba’albak bear.

The Halbem village near Damascus is a standing joke with the witty
citizens on account of the huge woollen turbans, the loud voice, and
the peculiar dispositions of the people. They make “kass,” or
lamp-wicks, for Damascus, and it is said that on one occasion, when
their shaykh was imprisoned, they threatened, by withholding the
supply, to keep the city in total darkness. Also, as a bride was being
led home, mounted on an ass, when the doorway was found too low, the
popular voice said that her head should be cut off, till some local
wise man of Gotham suggested that she might dismount.

Beyrut in my day was connected with Damascus by the only carriageable
road in the Holy Land, which was supposed to boast of two others, the
Jaffa-Jerusalem and the Alexandretto-Aleppo. These two, however, are
utterly unfit for wheels, the reason being that they were laid out by
native engineers and administered by the Turks, a nation that has
succeeded in nothing but destruction. The distance is forty-seven and
a half geographical miles, prolonged to sixty by the old road and to
seventy-two by the new one.[8]

We could travel to Damascus by night coach or by day diligence,
preferring the latter, which enables us to see the land. At 4 a.m. we
leave the harbour-town, and we shall reach our destination at 6 p.m.
The section between the Mediterranean and Damascus, the sea and the
Euphrates Desert, is an epitome of Syria, which has been described to
be an epitome of the whole world; a volume might be easily written
upon what is seen during that day’s journey. After a couple of miles
through suburbs, cemeteries, and scattered villas, orchards of
mulberry and olive, lanes hedged with prickly pear and dense clumps of
young stone-pines, the road begins to ascend the westward, or
maritime, slope of the Lebanon. It works gradually towards the left
bank of the great gorge called Wady Hammánah, in one of whose hamlets
Lamartine lived and wrote. After some twelve miles from the Beyrut
Plain, we reach the watershed of the Jurd, or Highlands of the
Lebanon. Here we are about 5,500 feet above sea-level, and feel
immensely relieved, in fine weather at least, from the damp heat of
the malarious seaboard, which robs the stranger of appetite and rest.
The view, too, is charming: a glimpse of sparkling sea, a well-wooded
sandstone region, and a long perspective of blue and purple chain and
peak, cut and torn by valley, gorge, and ravine, scarring both flanks
of the prism. Looking eastward, we sight for the first time that
peculiar basaltic bed which gives rise to the Jordan, the Orontes, and
the Litani (a river of Tyre). It appears to be a volcanic depression
sunk in the once single range of secondary limestone, and splitting it
into two parallel chains, the Libanus and the Anti-Libanus. Viewed
from above it is a Spanish viga, a plain of wondrous wealth and
fertility, whilst the surface appears smooth as a lake. It is,
however, in places dangerously swampy, and though raised some 2,500 to
3,000 feet above sea-level, it is an unwholesome and aguish site,
alternately very hot and very cold, curiously damp and distressingly
dry. And the same may be said of Damascus, which has to the east the
scorching desert, and to the west mountains, mostly snowy: it is no
wonder that the old author called it the “windy.” But the climate of
Damascus is complicated by perhaps the worst and hardest water in
Syria, by the exceeding uncleanliness of the place, and by the habits
of the population. To say that man can exist there at all speaks
volumes in his favour.

Rapidly we run down the eastern, or landward, counterslope of the
Lebanon, remembering the anti-Jacobin couplet:

     And down thy slopes romantic Ashdown glides
     The Derby dilly carrying six insides.

Before its lowest folds we find the fifth station, Shtóra; here, as it
is now 10 a.m., we breakfast. We at once realise what will be the bill
of fare in the interior. Bread? perhaps. Potatoes? possibly. Beef or
veal? impossible. Pig? ridiculous. Little, in fact, but lean kid and
lamb, mutton, and fowls whose breast-bones pierce their skins. Wine?
yes――dear and bad. Beer or porter, seltzer or soda? decidedly no. In
the winter game is to be had, woodcock and wild duck, hares and
gazelles; but the diet is held to be heating and bilious. Vegetables,
however, are plentiful, and, during the season, fruit is abundant,
with the usual drawback in half-civilised lands: wall fruit is all but
unknown, and, with the exception of the excellent grapes and the
unwholesome apricots, each kind lasts only a few days.

After breakfast we spin by a straight road――such as old Normandy knew
and modern Canada still knows――the breadth of the valley. It is laid
out in little fields, copiously irrigated. The little villages which
stud the plain are, like those of Egypt, not of Syria, built on
mounds, and black with clay plastered over the wicker-work. Every mile
or so has some classical ruin: on our right a Báal temple; to our left
Chalcis ad Belum; whilst six hours of slow riding northwards, or up
the valley, place you at immortal Báalbak, which the Greeks still call
Heliopolis.

A rising plane and a bend to the right land us at the first of the
Anti-Libanus. Instead of ascending and descending this range, as we
did with the Lebanon prism, we thread a ravine called by the Druzes
the Valley of Silk, from their favourite article of plunder. An easy
up-slope leads to Sahlat Judaydah, the dwarf plateau about 3,600 feet
high, where the watershed changes from west to east; farther on to the
wild gorge Wady el Karn (“of the Thorn”), so called from its rich
ribbings and the wreathing and winding of the bed. We find a stiff
climb or a long zigzag at the Akabat el Tin (the Steep of Lime).

The descent of the steep ends with the Daurat el Billau (Zigzag of the
Camel Thorn), and thence we fall into the Sahrat el Dimas, so called
from a village which may have borrowed a name from the penitent thief.
This Sahara has been described with prodigious exaggeration in order
to set off by contrast the charms of the so-termed “sublime Gorge of
Abana,” to which it leads. Measuring some ten kilometres, it is
undoubtedly a rough bit of ground, dry as dust in the summer, and in
winter swept by raving winds and piled with sleet and snow. At its
eastern end the Sahara at once dips into a deep, lateral gorge, which
feeds, after rains, the Barada Valley, and here we remark that curious
contrast of intense fertility with utter, hopeless barrenness which
characterises inner Spain. Life is in that thick line of the darkest
and densest evergreen, which, smiling under the fierce and fiery
sun-glare, threads the side of the valley, in the wholesome perfume of
the wild plants, and in the gush and murmur of waters making endless
music. Death is represented by the dull grey formation standing up in
tombstones, by the sterile yellow lime-rock, and by the chalk,
blinding white; and the proportion of good to bad is as one to twenty.
This verdure is, the Arabs say, a cooling to the eye of the beholder;
it is like the aspect of the celadon-coloured sea that beats upon the
torrid West African shores. With the author of that charming book
“Eothen,” “you float along (for the delight is as the delight of
bathing) through green, wavy fields and down into the cool verdure of
groves and gardens, and you quench hot eyes in shade as though in
deep, rushing waters.”

The beginning of the end is at the tenth and last station, El Hamah,
meaning the Head of the Valley, and we halt here for a cup of coffee.
The next place of note is Dummar; here we cross the Barada torrent.
This place is, despite its low site and hot and cold air, a favourite
for villas; and certain wealthy Damascus usurers have here built large
piles, as remarkable for the barbarity of their outer frescoes as for
the tawdry decoration of the interior. The witty Damasceines call them
“traps,” because they are periodically let to high officials for other
considerations than hire. And now, with its slate-coloured stream,
garnished with weirs on our right, the valley becomes broader and more
important; the upper cliff’s are tunnelled into cut caves, Troglodyte
dwellings and sepulchres of the ancients; seven veins at high levels
and at low levels branch off from the main artery; and, after passing
a natural gateway formed by two shield-like masses of rock, we suspect
that Damascus is before us.

The first sight of Damascus was once famous in travel. But then men
rode on horseback, and turned, a little beyond Damascus, sharply to
the left of the present line. They took what was evidently the old
Roman road, and which is still, on account of its being a short cut,
affected by muleteers. Now it is nothing but an ugly climb up
sheet-rock and rolling stones, with bars and holes dug by the armed
hoof of many a generation. They then passed through El Zaarub (the
Spout); this is the old way, sunk some ten feet deep in the rock till
it resembles an uncovered tunnel, and polished like glass by the
traffic and transit of ages. At its mouth you suddenly turn a corner
and see Damascus lying in panorama, a few hundred feet below you. “A
flint set in emeralds” is the Damascus citizen’s description of what
El Islam calls, and miscalls, the “smile of the Prophet” (Mohammed).
Like Stambul, it is beautiful from afar, as it is foul and sore
within, morally and physically. The eye at once distinguishes a long
head, the northern suburb “El Salituzzah”; a central nucleus,
crescent-shaped and fronting the bed of the Barada; and a long tail,
or southern suburb, “El Maydan.” These three centres of whitewashed
dwellings and skyline, fretted with dome and minaret, are surrounded
and backed by a mass of evergreen orchard, whose outlines are sharply
defined by irrigation, whilst beyond the scatter of outlying villages,
glare the sunburnt yellow and the parched rich brown of the desert,
whose light blue hillocks define the eastern horizon.

The prosaic approach by the French road shows little beyond ruins and
graveyards: Damascus outside is a mass of graveyards, the “Great” and
“Little Camps” of Constantinople, only without their cypresses; whilst
within it is all graveyards and ruins, mixed with crowded and steaming
bazaars. This world of graves reminds one of Job’s forlorn man
dwelling “in desolate cities, and in houses which no man inhabiteth,
which are ready to become heaps.” The Barada in olden times had its
stone embankment; the walls are now in ruins. On our right is a ruined
bridge once leading to a large coffee-house, both also in ruins. As we
advance we pass other ruins. But though it was prophesied that
Damascus should be a “ruinous heap,” her position forbids
annihilation. The second of Biblical cities, she has been destroyed
again and again; her houses have been levelled with the ground, and
the Tartar has played hockey with the hearts of her sons. Still she
sits upon the eastern folds of the Anti-Libanus and on her
gold-rolling river, boldly overlooking the desert at her base.
Damascus, not Rome, deserves, if any does, to be entitled the Eternal
City.

I passed twenty-three months (October 1st, 1869, to August 20th,
1871), on and off, at this most picturesque and unpleasant of
residences. It was then in the transitional state, neither of Asia nor
of Europe. To one who had long lived in the outer East, a return to
such an ambiguous state of things was utterly disenchanting. Hassan,
digging or delving in long beard and long clothes, looks more like an
overgrown baby than the romantic being which your fancies paint him.
Fatima, with a coloured kerchief (not a nose-bag) over her face,
possibly spotted for greater hideousness, with Marseilles gloves and
French bottines of yellow satin, trimmed with fringe and bugles,
protruding from the white calico which might be her winding-sheet, is
an absurdity: she reminded me of sundry “kings” on the West African
shore, whose toilet consists of a bright bandanna and a chimney-pot
hat, of the largest dimensions, coloured the liveliest sky-blue.

The first steps to be taken at Damascus were to pay and receive
visits, to find a house, to hire servants, to buy horses, and, in
fact, to settle ourselves. It proved no easy matter. Certain persons
had amused themselves with spreading a report that my pilgrimage to
Meccah had aroused Moslem fanaticism, and perhaps might cost me my
life. They, as well as I, knew far better, so I was not surprised at
the kind and even friendly reception given to me by Emir Abdel Kadir,
of Algerine fame, and by the Dean of the great Cathedral el Amahi, the
late Shaykh Abdahah el Halati. And I remember with satisfaction that,
to the hour of my quitting Damascus, the Moslems never showed for me
any but the most cordial feeling.

Other British consuls had been of a stay-at-home disposition, seeing
nothing beyond the length of their noses. I was of a roving one, and
determined to see all I could, and penetrate to the inner heart of
Syria. To be shut up in Damascus was to be in prison; the breath of
the desert was liberty. I soon wandered afield. One of my earliest
excursions was to Palmyra. Until the spring of 1870 a traveller
visiting Syria for the express purpose, perhaps, of seeing Palmyra,
“Tadmor in the Wilderness,” after being kept waiting for months at
Damascus, had to return disappointed. Only the rich could afford the
large Bedouin escort, for which even six thousand francs and more have
been demanded. Add to this the difficulties, hardships, and dangers of
the journey, the heat of the arid desert, want of water, chances of
attack, the long forced marches by night and hiding by day, ending
with a shabby halt of forty-eight hours at a place for which so many
sacrifices had been made, and where a fortnight is the minimum
required.

Since the beginning of the last century the Porte has had in view a
military occupation of the caravan route between Damascus and the
Euphrates. “The Turk will catch up your best hare on the back of a
lame donkey,” say the Arabs, little thinking what high praise they
award to the conquering race. The _cordon militaire_ was to extend
from Damascus, _viâ_ Jayrud, Karyatayn, Palmyra, and Sukhnah, to Daye
on the great rim. The wells were to be commanded by block houses, the
roads to be cleared by movable columns, and thus the plundering
Bedouin, who refuse all allegiance to the Sultan, would be kept,
perforce, in the dan, or desert, between the easternmost offsets of
the Anti-Libanus and the pitch uplands of Nijd. This project was
apparently rescued from the fate of good intentions by Osman Bey, a
Hungarian officer who had served the Porte since 1848. He moved from
Hamah with a body of some 1,600 men――enough to cut his way through
half the vermin in Araby the Unblest. Presently, after occupying
Palmyra, building barracks, and restoring the old Druze Castle, he
proceeded eastward to Sukhnah, whence he could communicate with the
force expected to march westward from Baghdad. The welcome
intelligence was hailed with joy: Palmyra, so long excluded from the
Oriental tour, lay open to the European traveller; half a step had
been taken towards a Euphrates Valley Railway; at Damascus men
congratulated themselves upon the new line of frontier, which was
naturally expected to strengthen and to extend the limits of Syria;
and the merchant rejoiced to learn that his caravan would be no longer
liable to wholesale plunder.

A fair vision, doomed soon to fade! After six months or so of
occupation, Osman Bey, whose men were half starving, became tired of
Palmyra, and was recalled to Damascus. The garrison was reduced to two
hundred men under a captain, whose only friend was the raki bottle,
and the last I saw of the garrison was his orderly riding into Hauran,
with the huge, empty demijohns dangling at his saddle-bow. The Bedouin
waxed brave, and, in the spring of 1871, I was obliged to send
travellers to Palmyra by a long circuit, _viâ_ the north and the
north-west.[9]

A certain official business compelled me to visit Karyatayn, which is
within jurisdiction of Damascus, and my wife resolved to accompany me.
In this little enterprise I was warmly seconded by the Vicomte de
Perrochel, a French traveller and author, who had twice visited
Damascus in the hope of reaching Tadmor, and by M. Ionine, my Russian
colleague. The Governor-General, the Field Marshal commanding the army
of Syria, and other high officials, lent us their best aid. We engaged
a pair of dragomen, six servants, a cook, and eight muleteers; twelve
mules and eight baggage-asses to carry tents and canteen, baggage and
provisions; and we rode our own horses, being wrongly persuaded not to
take donkeys――on long marches they would have been a pleasant change.
We were peculiarly unfortunate in the choice of head dragoman, a
certain Anton Wardi, who had Italianised his name to Riza. Originally
a donkey-boy at Beyrut, he made, by “skinning” sundry travellers, some
80,000 francs in ten years. He was utterly spoiled by his French
friends, M. de Sauley and M. de Perrochel; he had also dragomaned the
then Princess Amadeo, who, in return for his mean conduct, had
promised him, and afterwards sent him, greatly to the disgust of every
Italian gentleman, the Order of the Rose. This “native gentleman,” the
type of the ignoble _petit bourgeois_ of Syria, had been trusted
without any contract having been made. He charged us a hundred francs
per diem, and the others each fifty francs and forty francs. When the
bill was produced for settlement, it proved to be a long list of _des
extras_: everything was _un extra_; two bottles of cognac, reported
broken, appeared as _des extras_; even the water-camels were _des
extras_. The fact was, he had allowed, when galloping about the
country, some francs to fall from his pocket, and he resolved that
_les extras_ should replace them.

We altogether regretted the assistance of Mohammed, Shaykh of the
Mezrab tribe, who had systematically fleeced travellers for a score of
years. He demanded two napoleons a head for his wretched camels,
sending a score when only one was wanted; like all other chiefs, he
would not guarantee his protégés, either in purse or person, against
enemies, but only against his own friends; he allowed them but two
days at Palmyra; he made them march twenty, instead of fifteen, hours
between Karyatayn and their destination; he concealed the fact that
there are wells the whole way, in order to make them hire camels and
buy water-skins; and, besides harassing them with night marches, he
organised sham attacks, in order to make them duly appreciate his
protection. I rejoice to say that Mohammed’s occupation has since
gone; his miserable tribe was three times plundered within eighteen
months, and, instead of fighting, he fell back upon the desert. May
thus end all who oppose their petty interests to the general good――all
that would shut roads instead of opening them! With a view of keeping
up his title to escort travellers, he sent with us a clansman upon a
well-bred mare and armed with the honourable spear. But M. de
Perrochel hired the mare; the crestfallen man was put upon a
baggage-mare, and the poor spear was carried by a lame donkey.

Armed to the teeth, we set out in a chorus of groans and with general
prognostications of evil. Ours was the first party since M. Dubois
d’Angus was dangerously wounded, stripped, and turned out to die of
hunger, thirst, and cold, because he could not salary the inevitable
Bedouin. It would, doubtless, have been the interest of many and the
delight of more to see us return in the scantiest of costumes;
consequently a false report generally flew abroad that we had been
pursued and plundered by the Bedouin.

The first night was passed under canvas near a ruined khan in the
fifth valley plain east of the Syrian metropolis. The weather became
unusually cold the next morning when we left the foggy lowland and
turned to the north-east in order to cross the ridgy line of hills,
which, offsetting from the Anti-Libanus, runs from Damascus toward the
desert, and afterwards sweeps round to Palmyra. The line of travel was
a break in the ridge. Then, gently descending, we fell into a northern
depression, a section of that extensive valley in the Anti-Libanus,
which, under a variety of names, runs nearly straight north-east (more
exactly, 60°), to Palmyra. Nothing can be simpler than the geography
of the country. The traveller cannot lose his way in the Palmyra
Valley without crossing the high and rugged mountains which hem it in
on both sides, and, if he is attacked by raiders, he can easily take
refuge, and laugh at the Arab goatees. During the time of our journey
the miserable little robber clans Shitai and Ghiyas had completely
closed the country five hours’ riding to the east of Damascus, whilst
the Sorbai and the Anergah bandits were making the Merj a battlefield
and were threatening to burn down the peaceful villages. Even as we
crossed the pass we were saddened by the report that a troop of
Bedouin had the day before murdered a wretched peasant within easy
sight of Damascus. This state of things was a national scandal to the
Porte, which, of course, was never allowed to know the truth.

We resolved to advance slowly, to examine every object, and to follow
the most indirect paths. Hence our march to Palmyra occupied eight
days; we returned, however, in four with horses that called loudly for
a week’s rest. The regular stations are as follows:――

                                        Hours.
     1. Damascus to Jayrud                 9
     2. Jayrud to Karyatayn            10-11
     3. Karyatayn to Agu el Waah           8
     4. Agu el Waah to Palmyra             9

On the second day we dismissed our escort, one officer and two
privates of irregular cavalry, who were worse than useless, and we
slept at the house of Daas Agha, hereditary Chief of Jayrud. A noted
sabre, and able to bring one hundred and fifty lances into the field,
he was systematically neglected by the authorities, because supposed
to be friendly with foreigners. Shortly after my departure he
barbarously tortured two wretched Arabs, throwing them into a pit full
of fire, and practising upon them with his revolver. Thereupon he was
at once taken into prime favour, and received a command.

Daas Agha escorted us from Jayrud with ten of his kinsmen mounted upon
their best mares. In the upland valley we suffered severely from cold,
and the sleety sou’wester which cut our faces on the return was a
caution.

At Karyatayn, which we reached on the fifth day, Osman Bey, who was
waiting for rations, money, transport, in fact, everything, offered us
the most friendly welcome, and I gave official protection to Shaykh
Faris, in connection with the English post at Baghdad. The former
detached with us eighty bayonets of regulars and twenty-five sabres of
Irregulars, commanded by two officers. This body presently put to
flight anything in the way of Bedouin; a war party of two thousand men
would not have attacked us; and I really believe that a band of thirty
Englishmen armed with carbines and revolvers could sweep clean the
Desert of the Euphrates from end to end.

At Karyatayn we hired seventeen camels to carry water. This would have
been a complete waste of money had we gone, like other travellers, by
the Darb el Sultain, or High Way. Some three hours’ ride to the right,
or south, of the road amongst the hills bounding the Palmyra Valley is
a fine cistern (Ibex Fountain), where water is never wanting. There
is, however, a still more direct road _viâ_ the remains of an aqueduct
and a river in the desert. This short cut from Karyatayn to Palmyra
may be covered in twenty-four hours of camel walking, fifteen of horse
walking, and twelve by dromedary or hard gallop. Travellers would
start at 6.30 or 7 a.m., and encamp after being out from twelve to
thirteen hours; but this includes breakfast and sundry halts,
sometimes to inspect figures, real or imaginary, in the distance, at
other times to indulge in a “spurt” after a gazelle or a wild boar.

We chose, however, the little-known Baghdad, or eastern, road. The
next day we rested at a large deserted khan, and on the eighth we made
our entrance into Palmyra, where we were hospitably received by Shaykh
Faris. Our muleteers, for the convenience of their cattle, pitched
their tents close to, and east of, the so-called Grand Colonnade, a
malarious and unwholesome site. They should have encamped amongst the
trees at a threshing-floor near three palms. Travellers may be
strongly advised not to lodge in the native village, whose mud huts,
like wasps’ nests, are all huddled within the ancient Temple of the
Sun, or they may suffer from fever or ophthalmia. The water of Tadmor
is sulphurous, like Harrogate, the climate is unhealthy, and the
people are ragged and sickly. May there, as in most parts of the
northern hemisphere, is the best travelling-season, and in any but a
phenomenal year the traveller need not fear to encounter, as we did,
ice and snow, siroccos and furious sou’westers.

If asked whether Palmyra is worth all this trouble, I should reply
“No” and “Yes.” No, if you merely go there, stay two days, and return,
especially after sighting noble Báalbak. Certainly not for the Grand
Colonnade of weather-beaten limestone, by a stretch of courtesy called
marble, which, rain-washed and earthquake-shaken, looks like a system
of galleries. Not for the Temple of the Sun, the building of a Roman
emperor, a second-rate affair, an architectural evidence of Rome’s
declining days. Yes, if you would study the site and the environs,
which are interesting and only partially explored, make excavations,
and collect coins and relics, which may be bought for a song.

The site of Palmyra is very interesting; she stands between the
mountains and the sea; like Damascus, she sits upon the eastern slope
of the Anti-Libanus, facing the wilderness, but unhappily she has a
dry torrent bed, the Wady el Sayl, instead of a rushing Barada. She is
built upon the shore cape, where the sandy sea breaks upon its nearest
headlands. This sea is the mysterious Wilderness of the Euphrates,
whose ships are camels, whose yachts are high-bred mares, and whose
cock-boats are mules and asses. She is on the very threshold of the
mountains, which the wild cavalry cannot scour, as they do the level
plain. And her position is such that we have not heard the last of the
Tadmor, or, as the Arabs call her, Tudmur. Nor will it be difficult to
revive her. A large tract can be placed under cultivation, where there
shall be protection for life and property; old wells exist in the
ruins; foresting the highlands to the north and west will cause rain;
and the aqueducts in the old days may easily be repaired.

I am unwilling to indulge in a description of the modern ruin of the
great old depôt, which has employed so many pens. But very little has
been said concerning the old tomb-towers, which have taken at Palmyra
the place of Egyptian pyramids. Here, as elsewhere in ancient Syria,
sepulture was extramural, and every settlement was approached by one
or more Viâ Appia, much resembling that of ancient Rome. At Palmyra
there are, or, rather, were, notably two: one (south-west) upon the
high road to Damascus; the other, north-west of the official or
monumental city, formed, doubtless, the main approach from Hauran and
Hamah. The two are lined on both sides with those interesting
monuments, whose squat, solid forms of gloomy and unsquared sandstone
contrast remarkably with the bastard classical and Roman architecture,
meretricious in all its details, and glittering from afar in white
limestone. Inscriptions in the Palmyrian character prove that they
date from about A.D. 2 and 102; but they have evidently been restored,
and this perhaps fixes the latest restoration. It is highly probable
that the heathen method of burial declined under the Roman rule,
especially after A.D. 130, when the Great Half-way House again changed
its name to Adrianopolis. Still, vestiges of the old custom are found
in the Hauran and in the Druze Mountain west of the great valley,
extending deep into the second century, when, it is believed,
Gassanides of Damascus had abandoned their heathen faith for
Christianity. I found in the tombs, or cells, fragments of mummies,
and these, it is suspected, were the first ever brought to England.
Almost all the skulls contained date-stones, more or less, and a peach
stone and an apricot stone were found under similar circumstances. At
Shathah we picked up in the mummy-towers almond shells with the sharp
ends cut off and forming baby cups.

There are three tomb-towers at Palmyra still standing, and perhaps
likely to yield good results. The people call them Kasr el Zaynah
(Pretty Palace), Kasr el Azin (Palace of the Maiden), and Kasr el Arus
(Palace of the Bride). They number four and five stories, but the
staircases, which run up the thickness of the walls, are broken, and
so are the monolithic slabs which form the lower floors. Explorers,
therefore, must take with them ropes and hooks, ladders which will
reach to eighty feet, planks to act as bridges, and a short crowbar.
We had none of these requirements, nor could the wretched village
provide them. I have little doubt that the upper stories would be
found to contain bones, coins, and pottery, perhaps entire mummies.

The shortness of our visit allowed me only a day and a half to try the
fortune of excavation at Palmyra. It was easy to hire a considerable
number of labourers at two and a half piastres a head per diem――say
6_d._――when in other places the wages would be at least double.
Operations began (April 15th) at the group of tomb-towers bearing
west-south-west from the great Temple of the Sun: I chose this group
because it appeared the oldest of the series. The fellahs, or
peasants, know it as Kusin Ahi Sayl (Palaces of the Father of a
Torrent); and they stare when told that these massive buildings are
not royal residences but tombs. Here the tombs in the several stages
were easily cleared out by my forty-five coolies, who had nothing but
diminutive picks and bars, grain-lugs and body-cloths, which they
converted into buckets for removing sand and rubbish. But these cells
and those of the adjoining ruins had before been ransacked, and they
supplied nothing beyond skulls, bones, and shreds of mummy cloth,
whose dyes were remarkably brilliant.

The hands were then applied to an adjoining mound: it offered a
tempting resemblance to the undulations of ground which cover the
complicated chambered catacombs already laid open, and into one of
which, some years ago, a camel fell, the roof having given way. After
reaching a stratum of snow-white gypsum, which appeared to be
artificial, though all hands agreed that it was not, we gave up the
task, as time pressed so hard. The third attempt laid open the
foundation of a house, and showed us the well, or rain-cistern,
shaped, as such reservoirs are still in the Holy Land, like a
soda-water bottle. The fourth trial was more successful; during our
absence the workmen came upon two oval slabs of soft limestone, each
with its kit-cat in high relief. One was a man with straight features,
short, curly beard, and hair disposed, as appears to have been the
fashion for both sexes, in three circular rolls. The other was a
feminine bust, with features of a type so exaggerated as to resemble
the negro. A third and similar work of art was brought up, but the
head had been removed. It would be hard to explain the excitement
caused by these wonderful discoveries; report flew abroad that gold
images of life-size had been dug up, and the least disposed to
exaggeration declared that chests full of gold coins and ingots had
fallen to our lot.

On the next morning we left Palmyra, and, after a hard gallop which
lasted for the best part of four days, we found ourselves, not much
the worse for wear, once more at Damascus.


     [8] Burton writes of Syria in 1870. The journey from Beyrut
     to Damascus has now been made easy by the opening of the
     railway. The line rises some four thousand feet, crosses two
     ranges of mountains on the Lebanon, and passes through some
     beautiful scenery. After traversing the Plain of Bakaa
     through the Anti-Lebanon, the railway enters the Yahfâfeh,
     continuing to Sûk Wady Barada, the ancient Abila, where is
     seen the rock-cut aqueducts made by Zenobia to convey the
     water of the Abana to Palmyra; then, passing the beautiful
     fountain of Fijeh and the remains of an old temple, the
     train follows the River Abana until it arrives at
     Damascus.――W. H. W.

     [9] The journey from Damascus to Palmyra can now be made in
     five days _viâ_ Mareau Said and Niah――the pleasantest route,
     passing by much water, and averaging six to seven hours
     riding a day. But Palmyra is still under the care of
     rapacious shayks, and great care has to be observed in
     arranging for a tour to that city of grand ruins. Things are
     a little better than they were in Burton’s day, but there is
     still danger.――W. H. W.



_Printed by Hasell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._



Transcriber’s Note:

Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like
this_. Footnotes were renumbered sequentially and were moved to the
end of the chapter. Final stops missing at the end of sentences and
abbreviations were added. Duplicate words at line endings or page
breaks were removed.

Inconsistent hyphenation and misspelled words were not changed.

At the end of the phrase “They took up comfortable positions on the
cut-throat em,” the last portion of the word beginning with “em” is
not printed in the original; “embankment” is assumed.



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