The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile by Samuel White Baker (best ebook reader for chromebook .txt) 📖

miserable, filthy, and unhealthy spot can hardly be imagined. Far

as the eye can reach, upon all sides, is a sandy desert. The town,

chiefly composed of huts of unburnt brick, extends over a flat hardly

above the level of the river at high water, and is occasionally flooded.

Although containing about 30,000 inhabitants, and densely crowded, there

are neither drains nor cesspools: the streets are redolent with

inconceivable nuisances; should animals die, they remain where they

fall, to create pestilence and disgust. There are, nevertheless, a few

respectable houses, occupied by the traders of the country, a small

proportion of whom are Italians, French, and Germans, the European

population numbering about thirty. Greeks, Syrians, Copts, Armenians,

Turks, Arabs, and Egyptians, form the motley inhabitants of Khartoum.

 

There are consuls for France, Austria, and America, and with much

pleasure I acknowledge many kind attentions, and assistance received

from the two former, M. Thibaut and Herr Hansall.

 

Khartoum is the seat of government, the Soudan provinces being under the

control of a Governor-general, with despotic power. In 1861, there were

about six thousand troops quartered in the town; a portion of these were

Egyptians; other regiments were composed of blacks from Kordofan, and

from the White and Blue Niles, with one regiment of Arnouts, and a

battery of artillery. These troops are the curse of the country: as in

the case of most Turkish and Egyptian officials, the receipt of pay is

most irregular, and accordingly the soldiers are under loose discipline.

Foraging and plunder is the business of the Egyptian soldier, and the

miserable natives must submit to insult and ill-treatment at the will of

the brutes who pillage them ad libitum.

 

In 1862, Moosa Pasha was the Governor-general of the Soudan. This man

was a rather exaggerated specimen of Turkish authorities in general,

combining the worst of Oriental failings with the brutality of a wild

animal. During his administration the Soudan became utterly ruined;

governed by military force, the revenue was unequal to the expenditure,

and fresh taxes were levied upon the inhabitants to an extent that

paralyzed the entire country. The Turk never improves. There is an Arab

proverb that “the grass never grows in the footprint of a Turk,” and

nothing can be more aptly expressive of the character of the nation than

this simple adage. Misgovernment, monopoly, extortion, and oppression,

are the certain accompaniments of Turkish administration. At a great

distance from all civilization, and separated from Lower Egypt by the

Nubian deserts, Khartoum affords a wide field for the development of

Egyptian official character. Every official plunders; the

Governor-general extorts from all sides; he fills his private pockets by

throwing every conceivable obstacle in the way of progress, and

embarrasses every commercial movement in order to extort bribes from

individuals. Following the general rule of his predecessors, a new

governor upon arrival exhibits a spasmodic energy. Attended by cavasses

and soldiers, he rides through every street of Khartoum, abusing the

underlings for past neglect, ordering the streets to be swept, and the

town to be thoroughly cleansed; he visits the marketplace, examines the

quality of the bread at the bakers’ stalls, and the meat at the

butchers’. He tests the accuracy of the weights and scales; fines and

imprisons the impostors, and institutes a complete reform, concluding

his sanitary and philanthropic arrangements by the imposition of some

local taxes.

 

The town is comparatively sweet; the bread is of fair weight and size,

and the new governor, like a new broom, has swept all clean. A few weeks

glide away, and the nose again recalls the savory old times when streets

were never swept, and filth once more reigns paramount. The town

relapses into its former state, again the false weights usurp the place

of honest measures, and the only permanent and visible sign of the new

administration is the local tax.

 

From the highest to the lowest official, dishonesty and deceit are the

rule—and each robs in proportion to his grade in the Government

employ—the onus of extortion falling upon the natives; thus, exorbitant

taxes are levied upon the agriculturists, and the industry of the

inhabitants is disheartened by oppression. The taxes are collected by

the soldiery, who naturally extort by violence an excess of the actual

impost; accordingly the Arabs limit their cultivation to their bare

necessities, fearing that a productive farm would entail an extortionate

demand. The heaviest and most unjust tax is that upon the “sageer,” or

water wheel, by which the farmer irrigates his otherwise barren soil.

 

The erection of the sageer is the first step necessary to cultivation.

On the borders of the river there is much land available for

agriculture; but from an almost total want of rain the ground must be

constantly irrigated by artificial means. No sooner does an enterprising

fellow erect a water wheel, than he is taxed, not only for his wheel,

but he brings upon himself a perfect curse, as the soldiers employed for

the collection of taxes fasten upon his garden, and insist upon a

variety of extras in the shape of butter, corn, vegetables, sheep, &c.

for themselves, which almost ruin the proprietor. Any government but

that of Egypt and Turkey would offer a bonus for the erection of

irrigating machinery that would give a stimulus to cultivation, and

multiply the produce of the country; but the only rule without an

exception is that of Turkish extortion. I have never met with any

Turkish official who would take the slightest interest in plans for the

improvement of the country, unless he discovered a means of filling his

private purse. Thus in a country where Nature has been hard in her

measure dealt to the inhabitants, they are still more reduced by

oppression. The Arabs fly from their villages on the approach of the

brutal tax-gatherers, driving their flocks and herds with them to

distant countries, and leaving their standing crops to the mercy of the

soldiery. No one can conceive the suffering of the country.

 

The general aspect of the Soudan is that of misery; nor is there a

single feature of attraction to recompense a European for the drawbacks

of pestilential climate and brutal associations. To a stranger it

appears a superlative folly that the Egyptian Government should have

retained a possession, the occupation of which is wholly unprofitable;

the receipts being far below the expenditure, “malgre” the increased

taxation. At so great a distance from the seacoast and hemmed in by

immense deserts, there is a difficulty of transport that must nullify

all commercial transactions on an extended scale.

 

The great and most important article of commerce as an export from the

Soudan, is gum arabic: this is produced by several species of mimosa,

the finest quality being a product of Kordofan; the other natural

productions exported are senna, hides, and ivory. All merchandise both

to and from the Soudan must be transported upon camels, no other animals

being adapted to the deserts. The cataracts of the Nile between Assouan

and Khartoum rendering the navigation next to impossible, the camel is

the only medium of transport, and the uncertainty of procuring them

without great delay is the trader’s greatest difficulty. The entire

country is subject to droughts that occasion a total desolation, and the

want of pasture entails starvation upon both cattle and camels,

rendering it at certain seasons impossible to transport the productions

of the country, and thus stagnating all enterprise. Upon existing

conditions the Soudan is worthless, having neither natural capabilities

nor political importance; but there is, nevertheless, a reason that

first prompted its occupation by the Egyptians, and that is in force to

the present day. THE SOUDAN SUPPLIES SLAVES. Without the White Nile

trade Khartoum would almost cease to exist; and that trade is kidnapping

and murder. The character of the Khartoumers needs no further comment.

The amount of ivory brought down from the White Nile is a mere bagatelle

as an export, the annual value being about 40,000 pounds.

 

The people for the most part engaged in the nefarious traffic of the

White Nile are Syrians, Copts, Turks, Circassians, and some few

EUROPEANS. So closely connected with the difficulties of my expedition

is that accursed slave trade, that the so-called ivory trade of the

White Nile requires an explanation.

 

Throughout the Soudan money is exceedingly scarce and the rate of

interest exorbitant, varying, according to the securities, from

thirty-six to eighty percent; this fact proves general poverty and

dishonesty, and acts as a preventive to all improvement. So high and

fatal a rate deters all honest enterprise, and the country must lie in

ruin under such a system. The wild speculator borrows upon such terms,

to rise suddenly like a rocket, or to fall like its exhausted stick.

Thus, honest enterprise being impossible, dishonesty takes the lead, and

a successful expedition to the White Nile is supposed to overcome all

charges. There are two classes of White Nile traders, the one possessing

capital, the other being penniless adventurers; the same system of

operations is pursued by both, but that of the former will be evident

from the description of the latter.

 

A man without means forms an expedition, and borrows money for this

purpose at 100 percent after this fashion. He agrees to repay the lender

in ivory at one-half its market value. Having obtained the required sum,

he hires several vessels and engages from 100 to 300 men, composed of

Arabs and runaway villains from distant countries, who have found an

asylum from justice in the obscurity of Khartoum. He purchases guns and

large quantities of ammunition for his men, together with a few hundred

pounds of glass beads. The piratical expedition being complete, he pays

his men five months’ wages in advance, at the rate of forty-five

piastres (nine shillings) per month, and he agrees to give them eighty

piastres per month for any period exceeding the five months advanced.

His men receive their advance partly in cash and partly in cotton stuffs

for clothes at an exorbitant price. Every man has a strip of paper, upon

which is written by the clerk of the expedition the amount he has

received both in goods and money, and this paper he must produce at the

final settlement.

 

The vessels sail about December, and on arrival at the desired locality,

the party disembark and proceed into the interior, until they arrive at

the village of some negro chief, with whom they establish an intimacy.

Charmed with his new friends, the power of whose weapons he

acknowledges, the negro chief does not neglect the opportunity of

seeking their alliance to attack a hostile neighbour. Marching

throughout the night, guided by their negro hosts, they bivouac within

an hour’s march of the unsuspecting village doomed to an attack about

half an hour before break of day. The time arrives, and, quietly

surrounding the village while its occupants are still sleeping, they

fire the grass huts in all directions, and pour volleys of musketry

through the flaming thatch. Panic-stricken, the unfortunate victims rush

from their burning dwellings, and the men are shot down like pheasants

in a battue, while the women and children, bewildered in the danger and

confusion, are kidnapped and secured. The herds of cattle, still within

their kraal or “zareeba,” are easily disposed of, and are driven off

with great rejoicing, as the prize of victory. The women and children

are then fastened together, the former secured in an instrument called a

sheba, made of a forked pole, the neck of the prisoner fitting into the

fork, secured by a cross piece lashed behind; while the wrists, brought

together in advance of the body, are tied to the pole. The children are

then fastened by their necks with a rope attached to the women, and thus

form a living chain, in which order they are marched to the headquarters

in company with the