The March to Magdala

Sir Robert Napier was fully alive to the extreme importance of this question of wharfage, for in his memorandum of September 12th he recommended that planking, tressles, piles, and materials to construct wharves should be forwarded with the 1st Brigade. “There cannot,” he proceeded, “be too many landing-places to facilitate debarkation, and on such convenience will depend the boats being quickly cleared, and the stores removed from them dry. It would be advisable that a considerable number of empty casks should be forwarded to be used as rafts, or to form floating-wharves for use at low water, particularly should the shores shelve gently. Spars to form floating shears should also be forwarded.” Thus Sir Robert Napier, himself an engineer, had long before foreseen the extreme importance of providing the greatest possible amount of landing accommodation; and yet three months after this memorandum was written, and two months after the arrival of the pioneer force at Zulla, an unfinished pier was all that had been effected, and Colonel Wilkins, the officer to whom this most important work had been specially intrusted, was quietly staying up at Senafe with Colonels Merewether, Phayre, and Field. A second pier was not completed until the end of February, and consequently many vessels remained for months in harbour before their cargoes could be unloaded, at an expense and loss to the public service which can hardly be over-estimated.

We had quite a small excitement here this afternoon. I was writing quietly, and thinking what a hot day it was, when I heard a number of the soldiers running and shouting. I rushed to the door of my tent and saw a troop of very large monkeys trotting along, pursued by the men, who were throwing stones at them. Visions of monkey-skins flashed across my mind, and in a moment, snatching up revolvers and sun-helmets, three or four of us joined the chase. We knew from the first that it was perfectly hopeless, for the animals were safe in the hills, which extended for miles. However, the men scattered over the hills, shouting and laughing, and so we went on also, and for a couple of hours climbed steadily on, scratching ourselves terribly with the thorn-bushes which grow everywhere – and to which an English quickset-hedge is as nothing – and losing many pounds in weight from the effect of our exertions. Hot as it was, I think that the climb did us all good. Indeed, the state of the health of everyone out here is most excellent, and the terrible fevers and all the nameless horrors with which the army was threatened in its march across the low ground, turn out to be the effect of the imagination only of the well-intentioned but mischievous busybodies who have for the last six months filled the press with their most dismal predictions. I have heard many a hearty laugh since I have been here at all the evils we were threatened would assail us in the thirteen miles between Annesley Bay and this place. We were to die of fever, malaria, sunstroke, tetse-fly, Guinea-worm, tapeworm, and many other maladies. It is now nearly three months since the first man landed, and upon this very plain there are at present thousands of men, including the Beloochee regiment and other natives, hundreds, taking Europeans only, of officers, staff and departmental, with the conductors, inspectors, and men of the transport, commissariat, and other departments. From the day of the first landing to the present time there has not been one death, or even an illness of any consequence, among all these men upon this plain of death. As for the two companies of the 33d, their surgeon tells me that the general state of their health is better than in India, for that there has not been a single case of fever or indisposition of any kind in the five days since they landed, whereas in India there were always a proportion of men in hospital with slight attacks of fever. All this is most gratifying, and I believe that all the other dangers and difficulties will, when confronted, prove to have been equally exaggerated. The difficulties of the pass to the first plateau, 7000 feet above the sea, have already proved to be insignificant. There are only four miles of at all difficult ground, and this has already been greatly obviated by the efforts of the Bombay Sappers. The December rains have not yet begun, but yesterday and to-day we have heavy clouds hanging over the tops of the mountains. The rain would be a very great boon, and would quite alter the whole aspect of the country. The whole country, indeed, when not trampled upon, is covered with dry, burnt-up herbage, presenting exactly the colour of the sand, but which only needs a few hours’ rain to convert it into a green plain of grass, sufficient for the forage of all the baggage-animals in the camp.

While I have been writing this the Beloochees and a company of Bombay Sappers and Miners have marched into camp, with their baggage and camels. The Beloochees are a splendid regiment – tall, active, serviceable-looking men as ever I saw. Their dress is a dark-green tunic, with scarlet facings and frogs, trousers of a lighter green, a scarlet cap, with a large black turban around it; altogether a very picturesque dress. The Sappers and Miners are in British uniform. Both these corps go on early to-morrow morning to Upper Sooro. I have not decided yet whether I shall accompany them, or go on by myself this evening.

A letter has just come down from Colonel Merewether saying that all is going on well at Senafe. The King of Tigré has sent in his adhesion, and numbers of petty chiefs came in riding on mules, and followed by half-a-dozen ragged followers on foot, to make their “salaam.” I do not know that these petty chiefs, who are subjects of the King of Tigré, are of much importance one way or another, but their friendship would be useful if they would bring in a few hundred head of bullocks and a few flocks of sheep. It is, I understand, very cold up there, and the troops will have need of all their warm clothing.

Upper Sooro, December 13th.

I must begin my letter by retracting an opinion I expressed in my last, namely, that the defile would probably turn out a complete bugbear, as the fevers, guinea-worm, and tetse flies have done. My acquaintance with most of the passes of the Alps and Tyrol is of an extensive kind, but I confess that it in no way prepared me for the passage of an Abyssinian defile. I can now quite understand travellers warning us that many of these places were impracticable for a single horseman, much less for an army with its baggage-animals. Had not Colonel Merewether stated in his report that the first time he explored the pass he met laden bullocks coming down it, I should not have conceived it possible that any beast of burden could have scrambled over the terrible obstacles. Even now, when the Bombay Sappers have been at work for three weeks upon it, it is the roughest piece of road I ever saw, and only practicable for a single animal at once. It is in all twelve miles; at least, so it is said by the engineers, and we took, working hard, seven hours to do it; and I found that this was a very fair average time. A single horseman will, of course, do it in a very much shorter time, because there are miles together where a horse might gallop without danger. I remained at Koomaylo until the afternoon, as it was too hot to start till the sun was low. Nothing happened during the day, except the arrival of the Beloochees and Bombay Engineers. The soldiers had two or three more chases after the monkeys, of which there are extra ordinary numbers. I need hardly say that they did not catch any of them: a dog, however, belonging to one of the soldiers seized one for a moment, but was attacked with such fury by his companions that it had to leave its hold and beat a precipitate retreat. I have just been watching a flock or herd – I do not know which is the correct term – of these animals, two or three hundred in number, who have passed along the rocks behind my tent, at perhaps thirty yards’ distance. They have not the slightest fear of man, and even all the noise and bustle of a camp seem to amuse rather than alarm them. They are of all sizes, from the full-grown, which are as large as a large dog, down to tiny things which keep close to their mothers, and cling round their necks at the least alarm. The old ones make no noise, but step deliberately from rock to rock, sitting down frequently to inspect the camp, and indulge in the pleasure of a slight scratch. These full-sized fellows have extremely long hair over the head and upper part of the body, but are bare, disagreeably so, towards the caudal extremity. The small ones scamper along, chattering and screaming; they have no mane or long hair on the head. The old monkeys, when they do make a sound, bark just like a large dog. In the afternoon an enormous number of locusts came down the pass, and afforded amusement and diet to flocks of birds, who were, I observed, rather epicures in their way, for on picking up many of the dead bodies of the locusts, I found that in every case it was only the head and upper part of the thorax which had been eaten. I shall accept this as a hint; and in case of the starvation days with which this expedition is threatened – in addition to innumerable other evils – really coming on, I shall, when we are driven to feed on locusts, eat only the parts which the birds have pointed out to me as the tit-bits. I am happy to say that there is no probability of our being driven to that resource at present; for on our way here yesterday I passed considerable quantities of native cattle, and any quantity is procurable here, and as for goats they are innumerable. We bought one this morning for our servants for the sum of a rupee. The commissariat have made up their minds that all servants and followers must be Hindoos, and therefore abstainers from meat, and so issue no meat whatever in their rations – nothing, indeed, except rice, grain, a little flour, and a little ghee. Now, the fact is that the followers are generally not Hindoos. Many of the body-servants are Portuguese, Goa men; and the horse-keepers are frequently Mussulmans, or come from the north-west provinces, where they are not particular. Even the mule-drivers are Arabs, Egyptians, and Patans, all of whom eat flesh. It thus happens that the whole of our five servants are meat-eaters, and it is fortunate that we are able to buy meat from the natives for them, especially as they have really hard work to do; and in the cold climate we shall enter in another day or two meat is doubly necessary.

We had intended to start at three o’clock, but it was four before our baggage was fairly disposed upon the backs of the four baggage-animals – two strong mules and two ponies – and we were in the saddles of our riding-horses. Our route, after leaving the wells, ran, with of course various turnings and windings, in a south-westerly direction. The way lay along the bottom of the valley, a road being marked out by the loose stones being removed to a certain extent, and laid along both sides of the track. The valley for the first seven or eight miles was very regular, of a width of from 200 to 300 yards. Its bottom, though really rising gradually, appeared to the eye a perfect flat of sand, scattered with boulders and stones, and covered with the thorny jungle I have spoken of in a previous letter. This scrub had been cleared away along the line of road, or there would have been very little flesh, to say nothing of clothes, left upon our bones by the time we came to our journey’s end. Backward and forward, across the sandy plain, as the spurs of the hills turned its course, wound the bed of the torrent – I should think that we crossed it fifty times. It is probable that on occasions of great floods the whole valley is under water. To our left the hills, though rocky and steep, sloped somewhat gradually, and were everywhere sprinkled with bushes. On the right the mountain was much more lofty, and rose in many places very precipitously. Sometimes the valley widened somewhat, at other times the mountains closed in, and we seemed to have arrived at the end of our journey, until on rounding some projecting spur the valley would appear stretching away at its accustomed width. Altogether, the scenery reminded me very much of the Tyrol, except that the hills at our side were not equal in height to those which generally border the valleys there.

At half-past six it had become so dark that we could no longer follow the track, and the animals were continually stumbling over the loose stones, and we were obliged to halt for half-an-hour, by which time the moon had risen over the plain; and although it was some time longer before she was high enough to look down over the hill-tops into our valley, yet there was quite light enough for us to pursue our way. In another three-quarters of an hour we came upon a sight which has not greeted my eyes since I left England, excepting, of course, in my journey through France – it was running water. We all knelt down and had a drink, but, curiously enough, although our animals had been travelling for nearly four hours enveloped in a cloud of light dust, they one and all refused to drink; indeed, I question if they had ever seen running water before, and had an idea it was something uncanny. This place we knew was Lower Sooro, not that there was any village – indeed, I begin to question the existence of villages in this part of the world, for I have not yet seen a single native permanent hut, only bowers constructed of the boughs of trees and bushes. But in Abyssinia it is not villages which bear names; it is wells. Zulla, and Koomaylo, the Upper and Lower Sooro, are not villages, but wells. Natives come and go, and build their bowers, but they do not live there. I fancy that when there is a native name, and no well, it is a graveyard which gives the name. We passed two or three of these between Koomaylo and Sooro, all similar to those I have already described. From Lower to Upper Sooro is a distance of four miles. It is in this portion of the road that the real difficulties of the pass are situated, and I never passed through a succession of such narrow and precipitous gorges as it contains. The sides of these gorges are in many places perfectly perpendicular, and the scenery, although not very lofty, is yet wild and grand in the extreme, and seen, as we saw it, with the bright light and deep shadows thrown by the full moon, it was one of the most impressive pieces of scenery I ever saw. The difficulty of the pass consists not in its steepness, for the rise is little over three hundred feet in a mile, but in the mass of huge boulders which strew its bottom. Throughout its length, indeed, the path winds its way in and out and over a chaos of immense stones, which look as if they had but just fallen from the almost overhanging sides of the ravine. Some of these masses are as large as a good-sized house, with barely room between them for a mule to pass with his burden. In many places, indeed, there was not room at all until the Bombay Sappers, who are encamped about half-way up the pass, set to work to make it practicable by blasting away projecting edges, and in some slight way smoothing the path among the smaller rocks. In some places great dams have been formed right across the ravine, owing to two or three monster boulders having blocked the course of the stream, and from the accumulated rocks which the winter torrents have swept down upon them. Upon these great obstacles nothing less than an army of sappers could make any impression, and here the engineers have contented themselves by building a road up to the top of the dam and down again the other side. We were three hours making this four-mile passage, and the labour, the shouting, and the difficulties of the way, must be imagined. Of course we had dismounted, and had given our horses to their grooms to lead. Constantly the baggage was shifting, and required a pause and a readjustment. Now our tin pails would bang with a clash against a rock one side; now our case of brandy – taken for purely medicinal purposes – would bump against a projection on the other. Now one of the ponies would stumble, and the other nearly come upon him; now one of the mules, in quickening his pace to charge a steep ascent, would nearly pull the one which was following, and attached to him, off his feet; then there would be a fresh alarm that the ponies’ baggage was coming off. All this was repeated over and over again. There were shouts in English, Hindostanee, Arabic, and in other and unknown tongues. Altogether it was the most fatiguing four miles I have ever passed, and we were all regularly done when we got to the top. I should say that the water had all this time tossed and fretted between the rocks, sometimes hidden beneath them for a hundred yards, then crossing and recrossing our path, or running directly under our feet, until we were within a few hundred yards of Upper Sooro, when the ravine widening out, and the bottom being sandy, the stream no longer runs above the surface. Altogether it was a ride to be long remembered, through that lonely valley by moonlight in an utterly unknown and somewhat hostile country, as several attempts at robbery have been made by the natives lately upon small parties; and although in no case have they attacked a European, yet everyone rides with his loaded revolver in his holster. A deep silence seemed to hang over everything, broken only by our own voices, except by the occasional thrill of a cicada among the bushes, the call of a night-bird, or by the whining of a jackal, or the hoarse bark of a monkey on the hills above.

It was just eleven o’clock when we arrived at Upper Sooro. An officer at once came to the door of his tent, and with that hospitality which is universal, asked us to come in and sit while our tent was being pitched. We accepted, and he opened for us a bottle of beer, cool, and in excellent condition. Imagine our feelings. Brandy-and-water would have been true hospitality, but beer, where beer is so scarce and so precious as it is here, was a deed which deserves to be recorded in letters of gold. I forbear to name our benefactor. The Samaritan’s name has not descended to us; the widow who bestowed the mite is nameless. Let it be so in the present case. But I shall never cease to think of that bottle of beer with gratitude.

My tent was now pitched; my servant procured some hot water and made some tea; and having taken that and some biscuit, and having seen that the horses were fed, I slightly undressed, lay down upon my water-proof sheet, and lighted a final cigar, when to my horror I observed many creeping things advancing over the sheet towards me. Upon examination they turned out to be of two species – the one a large red ant, the other a sort of tick, which I found on inquiring in the morning are camel-ticks. They are a lead colour, and about the size of sheep-ticks, but they do not run so fast. This was, indeed, a calamity, but there was nothing to be done. I was far too tired to get up and have my tent pitched in another place; besides, another place might have been just as bad. I therefore wrapped myself as tightly as I could in my rug, in hopes that they would not find their way in, and so went to sleep. In the morning I rejoiced greatly to find that I had not been bitten; for they bite horses and men, raising a bump as big as a man’s fist upon the former, and causing great pain and swelling to the latter.

I describe thus minutely the events of every day, because the life of most officers and men greatly resembles my own, and by relating my own experience I give a far more accurate idea of the sort of life we are leading in Abyssinia than I could do by any general statements.

Upper Sooro is a large commissariat dépôt, exceedingly well managed by Conductor Crow. It is a new basin of five hundred yards long by two hundred across, a widening out of the pass. It is selected for that reason, as it is the only place along the line near water where a regiment could encamp. Owing to its elevation above the sea the temperature is very pleasant, except for two or three hours in the middle of the day. Another agreeable change is that the thorny bushes have disappeared, and a tree without prickles, and which attains a considerable size, has taken their place.

At seven o’clock this morning the Beloochees began to arrive, having started at midnight. The advanced guard were therefore exactly the same time doing the distance that we were. Their baggage, however, has been dropping in all day, for it was loaded on camels, and most of these animals stuck fast in the narrow passages of the pass, and had to be unloaded to enable them to get through; and this happened again and again. The pass, in fact, is not, as yet, practicable for camels; mules can manage it, but it is a very close fit for them, and it will be some time yet before camels can pass with their burdens. I suppose after to-day’s experience camels will not be again employed this side of Koomaylo until the pass has been widened. Some of the poor animals were stuck fast for a couple of hours before they could be extricated. There are now a hundred of them lying down within fifty yards of my tent. I consider the camel to be the most ridiculously-overpraised animal under the sun. I do not deny that he has his virtues. He is moderately strong – not very strong for his size, for he will not carry so much as a couple of good mules; still he is fairly strong, and he can go a long time without water – a very useful quality in the desert, or on the sea-shore of Abyssinia. But patient! Heaven save the mark! He is without exception the most cantankerous animal under the sun. When he is wanted to stand up, he lies down; when he is wanted to lie down, he will not do it on any consideration; and once down he jumps up again the moment his driver’s back is turned. He grumbles, and growls, and roars at any order he receives, whether to stand up or lie down; whether to be loaded or to have his packs taken off. When he is once loaded and in motion he goes on quietly enough; but so does a horse, or a donkey, or any other animal. After having made himself as disagreeable as possible, there is small praise to him that he goes on when he cannot help it. I consider the mule, which people have most wrongfully named obstinate, to be a superior animal in every respect – except that he wants his drink – to the much-bepraised camel.

A messenger passed through here yesterday from Abyssinia. He was bringing letters from Mr. Rassam to Colonel Merewether. He reports that Theodore is continuing his cruelties, and killing his soldiers in numbers. Under these circumstances one can hardly feel surprised at the news that, in spite of his efforts, he is unable to increase his army beyond seven or eight thousand men. He is still at Debra Tabor.

Camp, Senafe, December 16th.

I arrived here only half-an-hour since, and find that the post is on the point of starting. I therefore have only time to write a few lines to supplement my last letter, which was sent from Sooro. All description of the pass between that resting-place and Senafe I must postpone to my next letter, and only write to say that there is no particular news here. The messenger from Mr. Rassam arrived in the camp yesterday. He states that the King of Shoa’s men are between Theodore and Magdala, and that there is every hope that they will take the latter place, and liberate the prisoners. The reports about the King of Tigré are, to a certain extent, founded on fact. He has professed the greatest friendship, but there are sinister reports that he really means mischief, and for two or three days the pickets have been doubled. It is not thought that there is any foundation for the report of his intention to attack us. The situation of this camp is very pleasant – upon a lofty table-land, seven thousand feet above the sea, and with a delightfully bracing wind blowing over it, and reminding one of Brighton Downs in the month of May. At night I am told that the thermometer goes down below freezing-point. The camp is situated in a slight hollow or valley in the plain; through its centre flows a stream, which when the camp was first formed was knee-deep, but has greatly fallen off since, so much so that reservoirs are being formed and wells sunk in case the supply should cease. Short as the time is before the post goes, I might have sent you more intelligence were it not that Colonels Merewether and Phayre are both absent upon some expedition in the surrounding country, and I am therefore unable to draw any news from any official source. The health of everyone up here is excellent, and the horses are suffering less from the disease which has almost decimated them in the lower ground. There are plenty of cattle brought in for sale, but unfortunately the authorities have no money to buy them with.