The Life and Adventures of Bruce, the African Traveller Part 22

After pa.s.sing the small island of Kurgos, where Bruce saw the first ruins he had met with since those of Axum in Abyssinia, he travelled for five days, when he reached the ferry on the great river Tacazze, Atbara, or Astaboras, which was about a quarter of a mile broad, and exceedingly deep. It was as clear as Bruce had seen it in Abyssinia, but its banks had lost their beauty, as it here flowed through a parched, desert, barren country; still its waters came from Abyssinia, a country yet fresh and dear in Bruce's recollection. "I reflected," he says, "with much satisfaction, upon the many circ.u.mstances the sight of this river recalled to my mind; but still the greatest was, that the scenes of these were now far distant, and that I was by so much more advanced towards home."

On the 26th, leaving the Nile about a mile on their left, they reached Goos, a very small village, which is, nevertheless, the capital of Barbar. Bruce and all his party here suffered from a disease in their eyes, caused by the simoom and the fine sand blowing across the desert.

An unexpected misfortune now happened to Idris, who was arrested for debt and carried to prison: "however," says Bruce, "as we were upon the very edge of the desert, and to see no other inhabited place till we should reach Egypt, I was not displeased to have it in my power to lay him under one other obligation before we trusted our lives in his hands, which we were immediately to do. I therefore paid his debt, and reconciled him with his creditors."

Bruce and his party having received all the a.s.surances possible from Idris that he would live and die in their service, boldly committed themselves to the desert. The party consisted of Ismael the Turk, two Greek servants besides Georgis, who was almost blind and useless, two Barbarins, that took care of the camels, Idris, and a young man, a relation of his; in all nine persons, eight only of whom were effective.

They were all well armed with blunderbusses, swords, pistols, and double-barrelled guns, except Idris and his lad, who had lances, the only arms they could use. Five or six naked wretches of the Tucorory joined the party at the watering-place, much against Bruce's will; for he knew that he should probably be reduced to the painful necessity of seeing them die of thirst before his eyes.

On the 9th of November, at noon, they left Goos for the sakia or watering-place, which is near a little village called Ha.s.sa. At half past three in the afternoon they came to the Nile, to lay in a store of water. They here filled four skins, which might contain altogether about a hogshead and a half. Their food consisted of twenty-two large goats'

skins stuffed with a powder of bread made at Goos, on purpose for such expeditions. It required a whole day to fill the skins, and soak them well in the water, in order to make an experiment, which was of the greatest consequence, whether they were water-tight.

"While the camels were loading," says Bruce, "I bathed, with infinite pleasure, for a long half hour in the Nile, and thus took leave of my old acquaintance, very doubtful if we should ever meet again." They now left the river, and slowly entering what may not unjustly be termed the gate of the great desert of Nubia (that valley of the shadow of death), they came to a bare spot of cemented gravel, of a very disagreeable whitish colour, mixed with small pieces of white marble, and pebbles like alabaster. At half past eight they stopped on a sandy plain without trees: they now found that the camels were too heavily laden, but they comforted themselves with the reflection that this would be remedied by the daily consumption of the provisions. The next day, after travelling six hours with great diligence, their misfortunes began, from a trifling circ.u.mstance which had not been attended to. Their shoes, which had long required repair, had now become absolutely useless; their feet were much inflamed by the burning sand, and the skin rubbed off in different places. Close before them was Hambily, a small rock, which being, nevertheless, too large to be covered by the moving sands, is of the utmost importance to the caravans as a landmark.

On the 14th, early in the morning, they continued their journey, and, after travelling about twenty-one miles, alighted among some acacia-trees, at a place called Waadi el Halbout. "We were here," says Bruce, "at once surprised and terrified by a sight, surely one of the most magnificent in the world. In that vast expanse of desert, from W.

to N.W. of us, we saw a number of prodigious pillars of sand at different distances, at times moving with great celerity, at others stalking on with a majestic slowness; at intervals we thought they were coming in a very few minutes to overwhelm us; and small quant.i.ties of sand did actually, more than once, reach us. Again they would retreat so as to be almost out of sight, their tops reaching to the very clouds.

There the tops often separated from their bodies; and these, once disjoined, dispersed in the air, and did not appear more. Sometimes they were broken near the middle, as if struck with a large cannon-shot.

About noon they began to advance with considerable swiftness upon us, the wind being very strong at north. Eleven of them ranged alongside of us about the distance of three miles. The greatest diameter of the largest appeared to me at that distance as if it would measure ten feet.

They retired from us with a wind at S.E., leaving an impression upon my mind to which I can give no name, though surely one ingredient in it was fear, with a considerable deal of wonder and astonishment. It was in vain to think of flying; the swiftest horse or fastest sailing ship could be of no use to carry us out of this danger, and the full persuasion of this riveted me as if to the spot where I stood, and let the camels gain on me so much in my state of lameness, that it was with some difficulty I could overtake them.

"This stupendous sight caused Idris to repeat his prayers, or rather incantations; for, except the names of G.o.d and Mohammed, all the rest of his words were mere gibberish and nonsense. Ismael, the Turk, violently abused him for not praying in the words of the Koran, maintaining, with great apparent wisdom, that nothing else could stop these moving sands."

They this day proceeded very slowly, their feet being sore and greatly swelled. "The whole of our company," says Bruce, "were much disheartened (except Idris), and imagined that they were advancing into whirlwinds of moving sand, from which they should never be able to extricate themselves; but, before four o'clock in the afternoon, these phantoms of the plain had all of them fallen to the ground and disappeared." In the evening they came to Waadi Dimokea, where they pa.s.sed the night much disheartened; and their fear was not diminished on awaking in the morning, by finding that one side was perfectly buried in the sand that the wind had blown over them in the night.

From this day, subordination, though not entirely extinct, was rapidly declining; all was discontent, murmuring, and fear. The water had greatly diminished, and that terrible death by thirst began to stare them in the face, owing, in a great measure, to their own imprudence.

Ismael, who had been left sentinel over the skins of water, had slept so soundly that a Tucorory had opened one of the skins that had not been touched, in order to serve himself out of it at his own discretion; hearing somebody stir, however, and fearing detection, he withdrew as speedily as possible, without tying up the mouth of the girba, which was found in the morning with scarce a quart of water in it.

On the 15th, the same moving pillars of sand presented themselves, only they seemed to be more in number and less in size. They came several times in a direction close upon them. "They began," says Bruce, "immediately after sunrise, like a thick wood, and almost darkened the sun. His rays shining through them for near an hour, gave them an appearance of pillars of fire. Our people now became desperate; the Greeks shrieked out, and said it was the day of judgment. Ismael p.r.o.nounced it to be h.e.l.l; and the Tucorories, that the world was on fire. I asked Idris if ever he had before seen such a sight; he said he had often seen them as terrible, though never worse; but what he feared most was that extreme redness in the air, which was a sure presage of the coming of the simoom. I begged and entreated Idris that he would not say one word of that in the hearing of the people, for they had already felt it at Imhanzara, in their way from Ras el Feel to Teawa, and again at the Acaba of Gerri, before we came to Chendi, and they were already nearly distracted at the apprehension of finding it here."

At half past four o'clock in the afternoon they left Waadi Dell Aned.

The sands scarcely showed themselves this day, and only at a great distance in the horizon. This was, however, a comfort but of short duration. Bruce observed that Idris took no notice of it, but warned him and the servants that, upon the coming of the simoom, they should fall on their faces, with their mouths upon the earth, so as not to inhale the outward air as long as they could hold their breath. They alighted at six o'clock at a small rock called Ras el Seah, or El Mout, which signifies _death_. It is surrounded with sand, is without trees or herbage, and the poor camels fasted all that night.

On the 16th, at half past ten in the forenoon, they left El Mout. "Our men," says Bruce, "if not gay, were, however, in better spirits than I had seen them since we left Goos. One of our Barbarins had even attempted a song; but Hagi Ismael very gravely reproved him, by telling him that singing in such a situation was a tempting of Providence. There is, indeed, nothing more different than active and pa.s.sive courage. Hagi Ismael would fight, but he had not strength of mind to suffer. At eleven o'clock, while we contemplated with great pleasure the rugged top of Chiggre, to which we were fast approaching, and where we were to solace ourselves with plenty of good water, Idris cried out, with a loud voice, 'Fall upon your faces, for here is the simoom!' I saw from the southeast a haze come, in colour like the purple part of the rainbow, but not so compressed or thick. It did not occupy twenty yards in breadth, and was about twelve feet high from the ground. It was a kind of blush upon the air, and it moved very rapidly, for I scarce could turn to fall upon the ground, with my head to the northward, when I felt the heat of its current plainly upon my face. We all lay flat on the ground, as if dead, till Idris told us it was blown over. The meteor or purple haze which I saw was indeed pa.s.sed, but the light air that still blew was of a heat to threaten suffocation. For my part, I found distinctly in my breast that I had imbibed a part of it, nor was I free of an asthmatic sensation till I had been some months in Italy at the baths of Poretta, near two years afterward.[36]

"A universal despondency had taken possession of our people. They ceased to speak to one another, and when they did it was in whispers, by which I easily guessed their discourse was not favourable to me, or else that they were increasing each other's fears by vain suggestions calculated to sink each other's spirits still farther, but from which no earthly good could possibly result. I called them together, and both reprimanded and exhorted them in the strongest manner I could. I bade them attend to me, who had nearly lost my voice by the simoom, and desired them to look at my face, so swelled as scarcely to permit me to see, my neck covered with blisters, my feet swelled and inflamed, and bleeding with many wounds. In answer to the lamentation that the water was exhausted, and that we were upon the point of dying with thirst, I ordered each man a gourd full of water more than he had the preceding day, and showed them, at no great distance, the bare, black, and sharp point of the rock Chiggre, wherein was the well at which we were again to fill our girbas, and thereby banish the fear of dying by thirst in the desert. I believe I never was at any time more eloquent, and never had eloquence a more sudden effect. They all protested and declared their concern chiefly arose from the situation they saw me in; that they feared not death or hardship, provided I would submit to their direction in taking proper care of myself. They entreated me to use one of the camels, and throw off the load that it carried, that it might ease me of the wounds in my feet, by riding at least part of the day. This I positively refused to do, but recommended to them to be strong of heart, and to spare the camels for the last resort, if any should be taken ill and unable to walk any longer.

"This phenomenon of the simoom, unexpected by us, though foreseen by Idris, caused us all to relapse into our former despondency. It still continued to blow, so as to exhaust us entirely, though the blast was so weak as scarcely would have raised a leaf from the ground. At twenty minutes before five the simoom ceased, and a comfortable and cooling breeze came by starts from the north, blowing five or six minutes at a time, and then falling calm. We were now come to the Acaba, the ascent before we arrived at Chiggre, where we intended to have stopped that night; but we all moved on with tacit consent, nor did one person pretend to say how far he guessed we were to go." At thirteen minutes past eight they alighted in a sandy, barren plain, covered with loose stones. They were now only a quarter of a mile due north from the well, which is in the narrow gorge forming the southern outlet of this small plain. Though they had travelled thirteen hours and a quarter this day, it was but a slow pace, the wretched camels being famished as well as tired, and lamed by the sharp stones with which the ground in all places was covered. The country, for three days past, had been dest.i.tute of herbage of any kind, entirely desert, and abandoned to moving sands; which might be said to "sweep it with the besom of destruction."

Chiggre is a small narrow valley, about half way across the great desert of Nubia, and surrounded with barren rocks. The wells are ten in number, and the narrow gorge by which they are approached is not ten yards broad. The springs, however, are very abundant. Wherever a pit is dug five or six feet deep, it is immediately filled with water. The princ.i.p.al pool is about forty yards square and five feet deep; but the best-tasted water was in the cleft of a rock, about thirty yards higher, on the west side of this narrow outlet.

The eagerness with which Bruce and his party rushed to these wells can scarcely be imagined; for no one would believe the effect which the sight of water under such circ.u.mstances produces on the human frame, unless he had himself experienced the burning thirst of the desert.

The springs were exceedingly foul, having been visited by animals of many descriptions. It was impossible to drink without putting a piece of a cotton girdle over the mouth, to keep out, by filtration, the filth of the putrid substances with which they were filled. Bruce saw a number of partridges on the face of the bare rock, but he did not dare shoot at them, for fear of being heard by wandering Arabs that might be in the neighbourhood; for Chiggre is a haunt of the Bishareen of the tribe of Abou Bertran, who, though they do not make it a station, because there is no pasture, nor can anything grow there, yet find it one of their most valuable places of refreshment, on account of the great quant.i.ty of water.

Bruce's first attention was to the camels, to whom he gave that day a double feed of dora, that they might drink sufficient for the rest of their journey, should the wells in the way prove scanty of water. He then bathed in a large pool of very cold water, in a cave covered with rock, and inaccessible to the sun in any direction. All the party seemed to be greatly refreshed except the Tucorory, one of whom died about an hour after his arrival, and another early the next morning.

With the corpses of his companions at his side, with dangers of every sort before him, lame and exhausted, Bruce, as usual, deliberately unpacked his instruments, to determine, notwithstanding the piercing glare of the sun and the weakness of his eyes, the longitude and lat.i.tude of Chiggre. Regularly, at noon, he had described, in a rough manner, his course through the day, carrying always a compa.s.s, with a needle of five inches radius, round his neck. His ink was fixed to his girdle, and his notes were written on very long, narrow strips of drawing paper, cut for the purpose.

But subordination was now at an end, and Bruce had great difficulty in persuading his own servants to a.s.sist him in setting up his large quadrant, in order that he might determine the situation of the place.

On the 17th they left Chiggre. Ismael and Georgis, the blind Greek, had complained of shivering all night, and Bruce began to be very apprehensive that some violent fever was to follow. Their perspiration had not returned since their coming out of the cold water. The day, however, was insufferably hot, and their complaints insensibly vanished.

A little before eleven they were again terrified by an army of sand pillars, whose march was constantly south. At one time a number of these pillars faced to the east, and seemed to be coming directly upon them; but Bruce began now to be reconciled to this phenomenon, and the magnificence of its appearance seemed in some measure to indemnify them for the panic it had first occasioned: it was otherwise, however, with the simoom, for they all were firmly persuaded that another pa.s.sage of that purple meteor would cause their deaths.

At half past four they alighted in a vast plain, bounded on all sides by low sandy hills, which seemed to have been just produced. These hillocks were from seven to thirteen feet high, formed into perfect cones, with very sharp points and well-proportioned bases. The sand was of an inconceivable fineness, having been the sport of hot winds for thousands of years. "There could be no doubt," says Bruce, "that the day before, when it was calm, and we suffered so much by the simoom between El Mout and Chiggre, the wind had been raising pillars of sand in this place, called Umdoom; marks of the whirling motion of the pillars were distinctly seen in every heap, so that here again, while we were repining at the simoom, Providence was busied keeping us out of the way of another scene, where, if we had advanced a day, we had all of us been involved in inevitable destruction."

On the 18th they left Umdoom at seven in the morning, their course being N., a little inclined to W. At nine o'clock Idris pointed to some sandy hillocks, where the ground seemed to be more elevated than the rest; and he told Bruce that one of the largest caravans which ever came out of Egypt was there buried with sand, to the number of some thousands of camels. At five o'clock in the evening they alighted at an Oasis called Terfowey, full of trees and gra.s.s. As soon as they had chosen a proper place where the camels could feed, they unloaded the baggage, and sent the men to clean the well and wait the filling of the skins. They then lighted a large fire, for the nights felt excessively cold, though the thermometer was at 53; and that degree of cold occasioned Bruce inexpressible pain in his feet, which were now swelled to a monstrous size, inflamed, and excoriated. The camels were always fastened by the feet, and the chain secured by a padlock, lest they should wander in the night, or be stolen or carried off. While Bruce was occupied in deep thought, he heard the chain of the camels clink, as if somebody was unloosening them, and then, by the gleam of the fire, he distinctly saw a man pa.s.s swiftly by, stooping as he went along, his face almost close to the ground. A little time after this he heard another clink of the chain, as if from a sharp blow, and immediately after a movement among the camels. He instantly rose, and called out in a threatening tone in Arabic. Mohammed, Idris's nephew, hearing Bruce's voice, came running up from the well to see what was the matter. They went down together to the camels, and, upon examination, found that the links of one of the chains had been broken, but the opening was not large enough to let the whole link through. A hard blue stone was also driven through a link of one of the chains of another camel, and left sticking there, the chain not being entirely broken through; they saw, besides, the print of a man's feet on the sand; and they found that several articles belonging to the party had been stolen. This sufficiently showed the presence of hidden enemies.

"Our situation," says Bruce, "was one of the most desperate that could be figured. We were in the middle of the most barren, inhospitable desert in the world, and it was with the utmost difficulty that, from day to day, we could carry wherewithal to a.s.suage our thirst. We had with us the only bread it was possible to procure for some hundred miles; lances and swords were not necessary to destroy us; the bursting or tearing of a girba, the lameness or death of a camel, a thorn or sprain in the foot, which might disable us from walking, were as certain death to us as a shot from a cannon. There was no staying for one another; to lose time was to die, because, with the utmost exertion our camels could make, we scarce could carry along with us a scanty provision of bread and water sufficient to keep us alive."

That desert, which did not afford inhabitants for the a.s.sistance or relief of travellers, contained, nevertheless, more than sufficient for destroying them; for large tribes of Arabs (two or three thousand encamped together) were cantoned wherever there was water enough to supply their numerous herds of cattle, and Bruce fully expected that in the morning he should be attacked by these merciless robbers.

He therefore briefly addressed his people, who uttered a loud cry, "G.o.d is great! let them come!" but, when the day broke, no Arabs appeared; all was still: Bruce, however, took Ismael and two Barbarins along with him, to see who these neighbours could be. They soon traced in the sand the footsteps of the man who had been at their camels; and, following them behind the point of a rock which seemed calculated for concealing thieves, they saw two ragged, old, dirty tents, pitched with gra.s.s cords.

The two Barbarins entered one of them, and found a naked woman there.

"Ismael and I ran," says Bruce, "briskly into the largest, where we saw a man and a woman, both perfectly naked, frightful, emaciated figures, not like the inhabitants of this world. The man was partly sitting on his hams; a child, seemingly of the age to suck, was on a rag at the corner, and the woman looked as if she wished to hide herself. I sprang forward upon the man, and, taking him by the hair of the head, pulled him upon his back on the floor; setting my foot upon his breast, and pointing my knife to his throat, I said to him sternly, 'If you mean to pray, pray quickly, for you have but this moment to live.' The fellow was so frightened he scarce could beg us to spare his life; but the woman, as it afterward appeared, the mother of the sucking child, did not seem to copy the pa.s.sive disposition of her husband; she ran to the corner of the tent, where was an old lance, with which, I doubt not, she would have sufficiently distinguished herself, but it happened to be entangled with the cloth of the tent, and Ismael felled her to the ground with the b.u.t.t-end of his blunderbuss, and wrested the lance from her. A violent howl was set up by the remaining woman, like the cries of those in torment. 'Tie them,' said I, 'Ismael; keep them separate, and carry them to the baggage till I settle accounts with this camel-stealer, and then you shall strike their three heads off, where they intended to leave us miserably to perish with hunger; but keep them separate.' While the Barbarins were tying the woman, the one that was the nurse of the child turned to her husband and said, in a most mournful, despairing tone of voice, 'Did I not tell you you would never thrive if you hurt that good man? did I not tell you this would happen for murdering the aga?'"

After a long discussion with these people, many of Bruce's party were exceedingly desirous to kill them: and Hagi Ismael was so enraged, that he begged he might have the preference in cutting off one of their heads; but Bruce, animated by Christian feelings, thus addressed his people: "It has appeared to me, that often, since we began this journey, we have been preserved by visible instances of G.o.d's protection, when we should have lost our lives if we had gone by the rules of our own judgment only. We are, it is true, of different religions, but we all worship the same G.o.d; and, therefore, my determination is to spare the life even of this man, and I will oppose his being put to death by every means in my power."

"It was easy to see," continues Bruce, "that fear of their own lives only, and not cruelty, was the reason they sought that of the Arab. They answered me, two or three of them at once, 'that it was all very well; what should they do? should they give themselves up to the Bishareen, and be murdered? was there any other way of escaping?' 'I will tell you, then,' says Bruce, 'since you ask me, what you should do: you shall follow the duty of self-defence and self-preservation as far as you can do it without a crime. You shall leave the women and the child where they are, and with them the camels, to give them and their child milk; you shall chain the husband's right hand to the left of some of yours, and you shall each of you take him by turns till we shall carry him into Egypt. Perhaps he knows the desert and the wells better than Idris; and if he should not, still we have two hybeers instead of one; and who can foretell what may happen to Idris more than to any other of us? But as he knows the stations of his people, and their courses at particular seasons, that day we meet one Bishareen, the man that is chained with him and conducts him shall instantly stab him to the heart, so that he shall not see, much less triumph, in the success of his treachery. On the contrary, if he is faithful, and informs Idris where the danger is and where we are to avoid it, keeping us rather by scanty wells than abundant ones, on the day I arrive safely in Egypt I will clothe him anew, as also his women, give him a good camel for himself, and a load of dora for them all. As for the camels we leave here, they are she ones, and necessary to give the women food. They are not lame, it is said; but we shall lame them in earnest, so that they shall not be able to carry a messenger to the Bishareen before they die with thirst in the way, both they and their riders, if they should attempt it.'"

Universal applause followed this speech; Idris, above all, expressed his warmest approbation. The man and the women were sent for, and had their sentence repeated to them. Having expected death, they all cheerfully subscribed to the conditions; and the woman declared she would as soon see her child die as be the cause of any harm befalling them; and that, if a thousand Bishareen should pa.s.s, she well knew how to mislead them all, and that none of them should follow till they were far out of danger.

Bruce accordingly sent two Barbarins to lame the camels effectually, but not so as to injure them past recovery. After which, for the nurse and the child's sake, he took twelve handfuls of the bread which was their only food, and which, indeed, they could scarcely spare, and left it to this miserable family.

With these precautions, on the 20th, at eleven o'clock, they left the well at Terfowey, after having warned the women that their chance of seeing their husband again depended wholly upon his and their faithful conduct. They then took their prisoner with them, his right hand being chained to the left hand of one of the Barbarins. They had scarcely got into the plain when they felt great symptoms of the simoom; and about a quarter before twelve, their prisoner first, and then Idris, cried out, "The simoom! the simoom!" "My curiosity," says Bruce, "would not suffer me to fall down without looking behind me. About due south, a little to the east, I saw the coloured haze as before. It seemed now to be rather less compressed, and to have with it a shade of blue. The edges of it were not defined as those of the former, but like a very thin smoke, with about a yard in the middle tinged with those colours. We all fell upon our faces, and the simoom pa.s.sed with a gentle ruffling wind. It continued to blow in this manner till near three o'clock; so we were all taken ill that night, and scarcely strength was left us to load the camels and arrange the baggage. This day one of our camels died, partly famished, partly overcome with extreme fatigue; so that, incapable as we were of labour, we were obliged, for self-preservation's sake, to cut off thin slices of the fleshy part of the camel, and hang it in so many thongs upon the trees all night, and after upon the baggage, the sun drying it immediately, so as to prevent putrefaction."

At half past eight in the evening they alighted at a brackish well called Naibey, in a bare, sandy plain, where there were a few straggling acacia-trees. They found near the well the corpse of a man and two camels; it was apparently long since that their deaths had taken place, for the camels were so dried up that their remains would weigh but a very few pounds; no vermin had touched them, for in this whole desert there is neither worm, fly, nor anything that has in it the breath of life.

On the 21st, at six in the morning, having filled the girbas with water, they set out from Naibey. The first hour of the journey was among sharp-pointed rocks, which, it was easy to foresee, would very soon disable the camels. At about eight they had a view of the desert to the westward as before, and saw that the sands had already begun to rise in immense twisted pillars, which darkened the heavens. The rising of these so early in the morning was a sure sign of a hot day, of a calm about midday, and of its being followed by two hours of the poisonous wind, which Bruce and his suffering companions dreaded more than any affliction that could a.s.sail them.

The moving columns were this day more magnificent than any they had yet seen, being thicker, and containing more sand; and, the sun shining through them, they appeared as if spotted with stars of gold.

"The simoom," says Bruce, "with the wind at southeast, immediately follows the wind at north, and the usual despondency that always accompanies it. The blue meteor, with which it began, pa.s.sed over us about twelve, and the ruffling wind that followed it continued till near two. Silence, and a desperate kind of indifference about life, were the immediate effect upon us; and I began now, seeing the condition of my camels, to fear we were all doomed to a sandy grave, and to contemplate it with some degree of resignation. At half past eight in the evening we alighted in a sandy flat, where there was great store of bent gra.s.s and trees, which had a considerable degree of verdure, a circ.u.mstance much in favour of our camels. We determined to stop here, to give them an opportunity of eating their fill where they could find it."

On the 22d, at six o'clock, as they were crossing this sandy flat, one of the Tucorory was seized with phrensy or madness. He rolled upon the ground, moaned, and refused to continue his journey, or to rise from where he lay. It was death to stop with him; and as each man was barely able to support his own sufferings, and could not partic.i.p.ate in those of others, the wretched maniac was left to die among the thirsting sands, under the scorching sun which had already deprived him of his reason. In the evening the party reached Umarack, where another of the camels died, completely worn out and exhausted.

"I here began," says Bruce, "to provide for the worst. I saw the fate of our camels approaching, and that our men grew weak in proportion; our bread, too, began to fail us, although we had plenty of camel's flesh in its stead; our water, though in all appearance we were to find it more frequently than in the beginning of our journey, was nevertheless brackish, and scarcely served the purpose to quench our thirst; and, above all, the dreadful simoom had perfectly exhausted our strength, and brought upon us a degree of cowardice and languor that we struggled with in vain. I therefore, as the last effort, began to throw away everything weighty I could spare, or what was not absolutely necessary, such as all sh.e.l.ls, fossils, minerals, and petrifactions that I could get at, the counter-cases of my quadrant, telescopes, and clock, and several such like things.

"Our camels were now reduced to five, and it did not seem that these were capable of continuing their journey much longer. In that case, no remedy remained but that each man should carry his own water and provisions. Now, as no one man could carry the water he should use between well and well, and it was more than probable that that distance would be doubled by some of the wells being found dry; and, if that were not the case, yet, as it was impossible for a man to carry his provisions who could not walk without any burden at all, our situations seemed to be most desperate."

The Bishareen alone, existing in his native element, seemed to keep up his strength, and was in excellent spirits. He had attached himself in a particular manner to Bruce, and, with a part of a very scanty rag which he had round his waist, he neatly made a wrapper to defend Bruce's feet during the day; but the pain occasioned by the cold in the night was scarcely bearable. Bruce offered to free his left hand, which was chained to some one of the company night and day, but the man constantly refused, saying, "Unchain my hands when you load and unload your camels; but keep me to the end of the journey as you began with me: then I cannot misbehave, and lose the reward which you say you are to give me."

Proceeding on their journey, they saw large strata of fossil salt everywhere upon the surface of the ground; and this dismal scene was not much enlivened by pa.s.sing the body of a man who had been murdered, stripped naked, and was lying on his face unburied. A wound in the hind sinew of his leg was apparent; and he was, besides, thrust through the back with a lance, and had two sword-wounds in the head. During the next day they saw many dead bodies of the Tucorory, who had been scattered by the Bishareen, and left to perish with thirst. In a small pool of water at which they now arrived, they found a small teal or widgeon. The Turk Ismael was preparing to shoot at it with his blunderbuss; but Bruce desired him to refrain, being desirous to ascertain, by its flight, something as to the probable distance of the Nile; he therefore obliged it to take wing. The bird flew straight west, rising as he flew (a melancholy proof that his journey was a long one), till at last, being very high, he vanished from their sight, without seeking to approach the earth: from which it was but too evident that the Nile was yet far removed from them.

This night Georgis and the Turk Ismael were both so ill and so desponding that they had resolved to pursue their journey no farther, but submit to their destiny, as they called it, and stay behind to die.

It was with the utmost difficulty Bruce could persuade them to lay aside this resolution; and the next morning he promised they should ride by turns upon one of the camels, a thing that no one had yet attempted.

"After travelling for nearly three days," says Bruce, "we had an unexpected entertainment, which filled our hearts with a very short-lived joy. The whole plain before us seemed thick-covered with green gra.s.s and yellow daisies. We advanced to the place with as much speed as our lame condition would suffer us; but how terrible was our disappointment when we found the whole of that verdure to consist in senna and coloquintida, the most nauseous of plants, and the most incapable of being subst.i.tuted as food for man or beast! We were now very near a crisis one way or the other. Our bread was consumed, so that we had not sufficient for one day more; and, though we had camel's flesh, yet, by living so long on bread and water, an invincible repugnance arose either to smell or taste it. As our camels were at their last gasp, we had taken so sparingly of water, that, when we came to divide it, we found it insufficient for our necessities, if Syene was even so near as we conceived it to be.

"Georgis had lost one eye, and was nearly blind in the other. Ismael and he had both become so stiff by being carried that they could not bear to set their feet to the ground; and I may say for myself, that, though I had supported the wounds in my feet with a patience very uncommon, yet they were arrived at a height to be perfectly intolerable, and, as I apprehended, on the point of mortification. The bandage which the Bishareen had tied about the hollow of my foot was now almost hidden by the flesh swelling over it. Three large wounds on the right foot and two on the left continued open, whence a quant.i.ty of lymph oozed continually. It was also with the utmost difficulty we could get out the rag by cutting it to shreds with scissors. The tale is both unpleasant and irksome. Two soles which remained from our sandals, the upper leathers of which had gone to pieces in the sand near Goos, were tied with a cotton cloth very adroitly by the Bishareen. But it seemed impossible that I could walk farther even with his a.s.sistance, and therefore we determined to throw away the quadrant, telescope, and timekeeper, and save our lives by riding the camels alternately. But Providence had already decreed that we should not terminate this dangerous journey by our own ordinary foresight and contrivance, but owe it entirely to his visible support and interposition.