Brave Men and Women Part 41

Master, far Thy dear sake I bear my anguish now, And in Thy blessed cross partake Whose sign is on my brow.

For Thy dear sake I toil Who didst so toil for me; O more than balm, or wine, or oil, The cheer that comes from Thee.

For Thy dear sake I live A servant unto all, And know that Thou wilt surely give Thyself as coronal.

For Thy dear sake I watch And keep my flag unfurled, Until her golden gleam I catch, Sweet evening of the world.

Conclusion,

True worker with the Lord, He labors not for hire; Co-partner in the sure reward, What can he more desire?

Sometimes his eyes are dim, All signs he can not spell; Yet he endures as seeing Him Who is invisible.

The work he ought is bliss, The highest thing to crave; And all his life is found in this Memorial for his grave:

_A worker with the Lord_, _He sought no other name_, _And found therein enough reward_, _Enough, enough of fame_.

XLVI.

ALVIN S. SOUTHWORTH

CROSSING THE NUBIAN DESERT.

This gentleman, a member of the American Geographical Society, has furnished, in the columns of _The Sunday Magazine_, the following picture of his experience in crossing the most perilous of the African deserts:

Those who have not actually undergone the hardships of African travel almost always believe that the most dangerous desert routes are found in the Great Sahara. Such is not the fact. The currency given to this popular delusion is doubtless due to the immensity of the arid waste extending from the Mediterranean to the Soudan, and which is deceptive in its imagined dangers because of its large area. All travelers who have made the transit of the Nubian Desert from Korosko, situated between the First and Second Cataracts, southward across the burning sands of the Nubian Desert, a distance of 425 miles, concur in the statement that it is an undertaking unmatched in its severity and rigors by any like journey over the treeless and shrub-less s.p.a.ces of the earth. "The Flight of a Tartar Tribe," as told by De Quincey, in his matchless descriptive style, carrying his readers with him through scenes of almost unparalleled warfare, privation, and cruelty, until the remnant of the Asiatic band stands beneath the shadow of the Chinese Wall to receive the welcome of their deliverer, but imperfectly portrays the physical suffering that must be endured in the solitude of the most dangerous of African deserts. Let me, therefore, briefly record my life in the Nubian Desert, at a time when I was filled with the hopes and ambitions which led Bruce, in the last century, to the fountains of the Blue Nile, and but a few years since guided Speke and Grant, Sir Samuel Baker, and Stanley to the great basin of the major river, and determined the general geography of the equatorial regions.

It was in the middle of January, after a pleasant journey up the Nile from Lower Egypt, on board a luxuriously fitted up "dahabeah," that I arrived at Korosko, a Nubian village about a thousand miles from the Mediterranean. The ascent of the Nile was simply a prolonged feast in this comfortable sailing-craft, with the panorama of imposing temples and gigantic ruins relieving the dreary monotony of the river-banks. The valley of this ancient stream, from the First Cataract, where it ceases to be navigable, to Cairo, is remarkable alone to the traveler for its vast structures and mausoleums. The _sikeahs_ and _shadofs_, which are employed to raise water from the river, in order that it may be used for irrigation, suggest that no improvement has been made in Egyptian farming for four thousand years. But the smoke curling away from tall chimneys, and the noise of busy machinery in the midst of extensive fields of sugarcane, remind us that Egypt has become one of the greatest sugar-producing powers of the East. From the site of ancient Memphis to Korosko, comprising about six degrees of lat.i.tude, the soil under cultivation rarely extends beyond the distance of a mile into the interior, while to eastward and westward is one vast, uninhabited waste, the camping-ground of the Bedouins, who roam from river to sea in predatory bands, leading otherwise aimless lives. Thinly populated, and now without the means of subsisting large communities, Upper Egypt can never become what it was when, as we are taught, the walls of Thebes inclosed 4,000,000 of people, and the Nile was bridged from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e. Turning from this strange land, I encamped on the border of the Nubian Desert, and prepared to set out on camel-back toward the sources of the Nile.

In conjunction with the local officials I began the necessary preparations, which involved the selection of forty-two camels, three donkeys, and nineteen servants. My ample provision and preparation consisted of the camels' feed--durah and barley, stowed in plaited saddle-bags; filling the goatskins with water, each containing an average of five gallons. Eighty were required for the journey. Three sheep, a coup-full of chickens, a desert range, a wall-tent, with the other supplies, made up over 10,000 pounds of baggage as our caravan, entering the northern door of the barren and dreary steppe, felt its way through a deep ravine paved with boulders, shifting sands, and dead camels. We soon left the bluffs and crags which form the barrier between the Nile and the desolate land beyond, and then indeed the real journey began.

Our camp apparatus was quite simple, consisting of a few plates, knives and forks, blankets and rugs, a kitchen-tent, and a pine table; and this outfit formed the nucleus of our nomadic village, not omitting the rough cooking-utensils. I recall now one of these strange scenes in that distant region, under the cloudless sky, beneath the Southern Cross. A few feet distant from my canvas chateau was my aged Arab cook, manipulating his coals, his tongs, and preparing the hissing mutton, the savory pigeons and potatoes. The cook is the most popular man on such an expedition, and is neither to be coaxed nor driven. The baggage-camels were disposed upon the ground, a few yards distant, eating their grain and uttering those loud, yelping, beseeching sounds--a compound of an elephant's trumpet and a lion's roar--which were taken up, repeated by the chorus, and re-echoed by the hills. These patient animals, denuded of their loads and water, the latter having been corded in mats, became quiet only with sleep. Add to these scenes and uproar the deafening volubility of twenty Arabs and Nubians, each shouting within the true barbaric key, the seven-eighths nudity of the blacks, the elaborate and flashing wear of the upper servants, and the small asperities of this my menial world--all of these with a refreshing breeze, a clear atmosphere, the air laden with ozone and electric life, the sky inviting the serenest contemplation, with the great moon thrice magnified as it rose, and I recall an evening when I was supremely content.

Piloted by the carca.s.ses of decayed camels, we took up our route in the morning, led by our guide, and soon emerged on the sublimest scenery of the desert. Our line of travel lay through the center of grand elliptical amphitheaters, which called to mind the Coliseum at Rome and the exhumed arena at Pompeii. These eroded structures, wrought by the hand of nature at some remote period, were floored over by hard, gravelly sand, inclosed by lofty, semi-circular sides, and vaulted only by the blue sky, and are among the grandest primitive formations I have ever seen. From the maroon shade of the sand to the dark, craggy appearance of the terraced rocks, there is as much variety as can be found in landscape without verdure and in solitude without civilization.

These amphitheaters are linked together by narrow pa.s.sages; and so perfect were the formations, that four doorways, breaking the view into quadrants, were often seen. The view broadened and lengthened day by day, until our journey lay through a plain of billowing sand. Then the sun grew fierce and intolerable. The lips began to crack, the eyebrows and mustache were burned to a light blonde, the skin peeled, and the tongue became parched, while the fine sand, ever present in the hot wind, left its deposits in the delicate membranes of the eye. It is thus that a period of ten hours in the saddle, day after day, under the scorching sun, takes the edge off the romance of travel, and calls to one's mind the green lawn, the sparkling fountain, and the beauties of a more tolerable zone.

We were making about thirty miles a day, sleeping soundly at night, when the ever-watchful hyena, and occasionally a troop of wild a.s.ses, would pay us their nocturnal visits, and upon the fourth morning we began to approach the sh.o.r.es of the Mirage Seas. These atmospheric phenomenas on the Nubian Desert are not only very perfect imitations of real lakes, but have on many occasions inveigled expeditions away, to perish of heat and thirst. A little time before my expedition to Central Africa a body of Egyptian troops crossing this desert found their water almost at a boiling point in the skins, and nearly exhausted. They beheld, a few miles distant, an apparent lake overshadowed by a forest, and bordered with verdure and shrubbery. Although told by the guide that it was an illusion, they broke ranks, started off in pursuit of the sheet of water, chasing the aerial phantom, although it receded with the pace of their approach. At last they sunk down from thirst and fatigue, and died! Twelve hours on the Nubian Desert without water means a certain and terrible death; and even to this day, having been near such an end, with all of its indescribable anguish, I seldom raise a gla.s.s of water to my lips that I do not recall a day when I lay upon the burning sand, awaiting with impatience the moment that should snap asunder the vital cord and give peace to my burning body.

A mirage certainly presents an incomparable scenic effect. Once in its midst, you are encompa.s.sed by an imponderable mirror. It reflects the rocks, the mountains, the stray mimosa trees, and reproduces by inverted mirage every prominent object of the extended landscape. It has the blue of polished platinum, and lies like a motionless sea, stretching away from the craggy bluffs. Sometimes during the noonday heat it dances within a few yards of the caravan, and gives motion to every object within its area, changing the waste to the semblance of rolling seas peopled with the semblance of men.

Attacked by semi-blindness, with a blistering nose, and lips almost sealed to speech because of the agony of attempted articulation, I found the fifth day brought me to the extreme of suffering, when a terrific simoon burst over the desert, gathering up and dispersing the sands with indescribable fury. My mouth and nostrils were filled with earthy atoms, and my eyes were filled with irritating particles. The storm grew so dense and awful that it became a tornado, and we were soon enveloped in total darkness. All routes of travel were obliterated, and destruction threatened my command. These sand spouts are frequent, making a clean swathe, burying alike man and beast, and often they blow for weeks.

During the approach of one of those death-dealing simoon's I noted a sublime phenomenon. To southward were fine equi-distant sand spouts, rising perpendicularly to a great height, and losing their swelling capitals in the clouds. They seemed to stand as majestic columns supporting the vault of the sky, and the supernatural architecture was further heightened by mirage-lakes, whose waters seemed to dash against the pillars as the green of doom-palms waved through the colonnade. The spectacle appeared like the ruin of a supernal pantheon once reared by the banks of the Nile, whose welcome and real waters greeted my eye after a fourteen days' journey, which I trust I may never be called upon to repeat.

XLVII.

A FORBIDDEN TOPIC.

WHICH SOME PEOPLE PERSIST IN INTRODUCING.

Why don't they stop it? Why do some people persist, spite of my hopes and prayers, my silent tears and protestations, in asking if "I'm well,"

when I'm before their eyes apparently the personification of health?

Why am I of that unfortunate cla.s.s of beings who are afflicted with friends ("Heaven defend me from such friends") who appear to take a fiendish delight in recounting to me my real or (by them) imagined ill-looks; who come into my presence, and scrutinizing me closely, inquire, with what looks to me like a shade of anxiety, "Are you sick?"

and if I, in astonishment, echo, "Sick? why, no; I never felt better in my life," observe, with insulting mock humility, "O, excuse me; I thought you looked badly," and turn again to other subjects.

But I do not flatter myself they are done with me. I know their evil-working dispositions are far from satisfied; and, presently they renew the attack by asking, still more obnoxiously, "My dear, are you sure you are quite well today? you certainly are pale;" and if I, thus severely cross-questioned, am induced to admit, half sarcastically, and, perhaps, just to note the effect, that I have--as who has not--a little private ache somewhere about me (that, by the way, I considered was only mine to bear, and therefore n.o.body's business but my own, and which may have been happily forgotten for a few moments), I have removed the barrier, given the opportunity desired, and the flood rushes in. "I knew you were not well," they cry, triumphantly. "Your complexion is very sallow; your lips are pale; your eyes look dull, and have dark rings under them; and surely you are thinner than when I saw you last"--concerning all which I may have doubts, though I have none that a frantic desire is taking possession of me to get away, and investigate these charges; and when, finally, I am released from torture, I fly to my good friend, the mirror; and, having obtained from it the blissful rea.s.surance that these charges are without foundation in my features, I feel like girding on my armor and confronting my disagreeable ex-callers and all their kind with a few pertinent (or impertinent) questions.

I want to ask them if it does them any particular good to go and sit in people's houses by the hour, watch their every look and action, and harrow up their feelings by such gratuitous information? I want to ask them if they suppose our eyesight is not so sharp as theirs? And I take great pleasure in informing them, and in politely and frigidly requesting them to remember, that, so far as my observation goes, when people are ill, or looking ill, they are not so blind, either to feelings or appearances, as not to have discovered the fact; that, indeed, they must be exceptions to the general rule of half-invalids if they do not frequently and critically examine every lineament of their face, and secretly grieve over their increasing imperfections; consequently, ye provokingly observant ones, when you meet them and find them not looking well, even find yourselves in doubt as to whether they are looking quite as well as when you last saw them, and are sure you shall perish unless you introduce what Emerson declares "a forbidden topic" in some form--at least give your friends the benefit of the doubt; tell them they are looking _better_ than usual, and, my word for it, they _will_ be by the time they hear that; for if there is anything that will make a person, especially a woman look well, and feel better, it is the knowledge that some one thinks she does.

But if she is thin, remember there is nothing fat-producing in your telling her of the fact; or if her eyes are dull, they will not brighten at the certainty that you know it, unless with anger that your knowledge should be conveyed in such a fashion; and if she is pale, telling her of it will not bring the color to her face, unless it be a blush of shame for your heartless ill-breeding.

So much for the cla.s.s who appear purposely to wound one's feelings. Then there is another cla.s.s who accomplish the same result with no such intention, who do it seemingly from pure thoughtlessness, but who should none the less be held accountable for their acts.

One of these unlucky mortals, who would not willingly cause any one a single heartache, lately met a gentleman friend of ours, who is, 't is true--and "pity 'tis 'tis true"--in very delicate health, and thus accosted him:

"I tell you, my man, unless you do something for yourself, right off, you won't be alive three months from now!"

"Do something!" As if he had not just returned from a thousand mile journey taken to consult one of the most eminent physicians in the country, to whom he paid a small fortune for services that saved his life; and as if he were not constantly trying every thing he possibly can to help and save himself! Nevertheless, after this blunt prophecy, he did something more, something he is not in the habit of doing. He went home utterly miserable, related the circ.u.mstances to his wife (whose murderous inclinations toward his officious fellow-man were forgivable), a.s.sured her that were his appearance so horrifying to casual acquaintances he must indeed be a doomed man; and, spite of her efforts, always directed to the contrary, got the blues, and conscious of having done every thing else, began contemplating death as the only remedy still untried.

Now, to me, such carelessness seems criminal. The gentleman addressed was attending to his extensive business, was more cheerful than half the men who are considered in perfect health, and was, for him, really looking, as well as feeling, finely; and to give him such startling intelligence, when he was so totally unprepared for it, was inflicting misery upon him that one human being has no right to inflict upon another; he has no right to advise a friend to do an indefinite "something," unless he knows what will help or cure him; he has no right to verbally notice his condition, and particularly when he meets him doing his duty in active business life.

People should "think before they speak," that if their friends or acquaintances are ill, for that very reason they are generally discouraged enough, and need all the gladsome aid and comfort those about them can possibly give; and it is their simple duty to give it.

Said a mother to me once, when urging me to call upon her invalid daughter, "And when you come, do not tell her she looks badly; tell her she looks better, and you hope soon to see her well. Every one who comes in exclaims about her terrible aspect, and it drives me almost distracted to note its ill effect on her."

"Why, how can people be so heedless?" cried I. "Do they not know that even truth is not to be spoken at all times? When I come I'll give her joy, you may be sure;" and I did, though my heart ached the while, for I feared, all too truly, her days on earth were numbered; but I had my reward in her changed, happy countenance and the grat.i.tude of her sorrowing mother.

Therefore, if you are not the enviable possessor of one of those "merry hearts that doeth good like a medicine," both to yourself and to those with whom you come in contact, at least avoid wounding these by dwelling upon their infirmities. Even should you see your friends in the last stages of a long illness; though their cheeks are terrifying in their hollowness, and their eyes resemble dark caverns with faint lights at the far ends, and all their other features prove them soon to be embraced by the king of terrors, not only in sweet mercy's name do not speak of it, but, unless compelled to do so, except by your softened tones, make no sign that you notice it; remember you can not smooth their way to the tomb by descanting upon their poor emaciated bodies, and there is just a chance that they may recollect you a trifle more kindly when they have cast them off, like worn-out garments, if you now talk on pleasanter themes--themes with which they are not already so grievously familiar.--GALE FOREST, _in The Christian Union_.