The Mammoth Book of Travel in Dangerous Places (36 page)

“Better not, sir,” says Pagan.

“Go on,” said I, “or I’ll tell him myself.”

So Pagan did. It was a sad blow to the chief.

“Thief town, this highly respectable town of Egaja! a town whose moral conduct in all matters (Shedule) was an example to all towns, called a thief town! Oh, what a wicked
world!”

I said it was; but I would reserve my opinion as to whether Egaja was a part of the wicked world or a star-like exception, until I had experienced it myself. We then discoursed on many matters,
and I got a great deal of interesting fetish information out of the chief, which was valuable to me, because the whole of this district had not been in contact with white culture; and altogether I
and the chief became great friends.

Just when I was going in to have my much-desired tea, he brought me his mother – an old lady, evidently very bright and able, but, poor woman, with the most disgusting hand and arm I have
ever seen. I am ashamed to say I came very near being sympathetically sick in the African manner on the spot. I felt I could not attend to it, and have my tea afterwards, so I directed one of the
canoe-shaped little tubs, used for beating up the manioc in, to be brought and filled with hot water, and then putting into it a heavy dose of Condy’s fluid, I made her sit down and lay the
whole arm in it, and went and had my tea. As soon as I had done I went outside, and getting some of the many surrounding ladies to hold bushlights, I examined the case. The whole hand was a mass of
yellow pus, streaked with sanies, large ulcers were burrowing into the fore-arm, while in the arm-pit was a big abscess. I opened the abscess at once, and then the old lady frightened me nearly out
of my wits by gently subsiding, I thought dying, but I soon found out merely going to sleep. I then washed the abscess well out, and having got a lot of baked plantains, I made a big poultice of
them, mixed with boiling water and more Condy in the tub, and laid her arm right in this; and propping her up all round and covering her over with cloths I requisitioned from her son, I left her to
have her nap while I went into the history of the case, which was that some forty-eight hours ago she had been wading along the bank, catching crawfish, and had been stung by “a fish like a
snake”; so I presume the ulcers were an old-standing palaver. The hand had been a good deal torn by the creature, and the pain and swelling had been so great she had not had a minute’s
sleep since. As soon as the poultice got chilled I took her arm out and cleaned it again, and wound it round with dressing, and had her ladyship carried bodily, still asleep, into her hut, and
after rousing her up, giving her a dose of that fine preparation,
pil. crotonis cum hydrargi,
saw her tucked up on her own plank bedstead for the night, sound asleep again. The chief was
very anxious to have some pills too; so I gave him some, with firm injunctions only to take one at the first time. I knew that that one would teach him not to take more than one for ever after,
better than I could do if I talked from June to January. Then all the afflicted of Egaja turned up, and wanted medical advice. There was evidently a good stiff epidemic of the yaws about; lots of
cases of dum with the various symptoms; ulcers of course galore; a man with a bit of a broken spear head in an abscess in the thigh; one which I believe a professional enthusiast would call a
“lovely case” of filaria, the entire white of one eye being full of the active little worms and a ridge of surplus population migrating across the bridge of the nose into the other eye,
under the skin, looking like the bridge of a pair of spectacles. It was past eleven before I had anything like done, and my men had long been sound asleep, but the chief had conscientiously sat up
and seen the thing through. He then went and fetched some rolls of bark cloth to put on my plank, and I gave him a handsome cloth I happened to have with me, a couple of knives, and some heads of
tobacco and wished him good-night; blockading my bark door, and picking my way over my sleeping Ajumba into an inner apartment which I also blockaded, hoping I had done with Egaja for some
hours.

AMONG THE SUDANESE

James Bruce

(1730–94)

Bruce reached the source of the Blue Nile in 1771, a century before the search for the source of the White Nile became headline news. His descriptions of the cruelties and
orgies at Gondar, the Ethiopian capital, were greeted with disbelief; so was his account of the Sudanese rulers, and their queens, at Sennar. Of independent means and gigantic physique,
“Yagoube”, as he was called in Africa (or “The Abyssinian” as he became in his native Scotland), was later shown to be an accurate observer as well as the eighteenth
century’s most intrepid traveller.

T
he drum beat a little after six o’clock in the evening. We then had a very comfortable dinner sent us, camels flesh stewed with an herb of a
viscous slimy substance, called bammia. After having dined, and finished the journal of the day, I fell to unpacking my instruments, the barometer and thermometer first, and, after having hung them
up, was conversing with Adelan’s servant when I should pay my visit to his master. About eight o’clock came a servant from the palace, telling me now was the time to bring the present
to the king. I sorted the separate articles with all the speed I could, and we went directly to the palace. The king was then sitting in a large apartment, as far as I could guess, at some distance
from the former. He was naked, but had several clothes lying upon his knee, and about him, and a servant was rubbing him over with very stinking butter or grease, with which his hair was dropping,
as if wet with water. Large as the room was, it could be smelled through the whole of it. The king asked me, if ever I greased myself as he did? I said, Very seldom, but fancied it would be very
expensive. He then told me that it was elephant’s grease, which made people strong, and preserved the skin very smooth. I said, I thought it very proper, but could not bear the smell of it,
though my skin should turn as rough as an elephant’s for the want of it. He said, “If I had used it, my hair would not have turned so red as it was, and that it would all become white
presently, when that redness came off. You may see the Arabs driven in here by the Daveina, and all their cattle taken from them, because they have no longer any grease for their hair. The sun
first turns it red, and then perfectly white; and you’ll know them in the street by their hair being the colour of yours. As for the smell, you will see that cured presently.”

James Bruce, engraving. Courtesy of the Mansell Collection.

After having rubbed him abundantly with grease, they brought a pretty large horn, and in it something scented, about as liquid as honey. It was plain that civet was a great part of the
composition. The king went out at the door, I suppose into another room, and there two men deluged him over with pitchers of cold water, whilst, as I imagine, he was stark naked. He then returned,
and a slave anointed him with this sweet ointment; after which he sat down, as completely dressed, being just going to his women’s apartment, where he was to sup. I told him I wondered why he
did not use rose-water, as in Abyssinia, Arabia, and Cairo. He said, he had it often from Cairo, when the merchants arrived; but as it was now long since any came, his people could not make more,
for the rose would not grow in his country, though the women made something like it of lemon flower.

His toilet being finished, I then produced my present, which I told him the king of Abyssinia had sent him, hoping that, according to the faith and custom of nations, he would not only protect
me while here, but send me safely and speedily out of his dominions into Egypt. He answered, There was a time when he could have done all this, and more, but those times were changed. Sennaar was
in ruin, and was not like what it once was. He then ordered some perfumed sorbet to be brought for me to drink in his presence, which is a pledge that your person is in safety. I thereupon
withdrew, and he went to his ladies.

It was not till the 8th of May I had my audience of Shekh Adelan at Aira, which is three miles and a half from Sennaar; we walked out early in the morning, for the greatest part of the way along
the side of the Nile, which had no beauty, being totally divested of trees, the bottom foul and muddy, and the edges of the water, white with small concretions of calcareous earth, which, with the
bright sun upon them, dazzled and affected our eyes very much.

We then struck across a large sandy plain, without trees or bushes, and came to Adelan’s habitation; two or three very considerable houses, of one storey, occupied the middle of a large
square, each of whose sides was at least half of an English mile. Instead of a wall to inclose this square, was a high fence or impalement of strong reeds, canes, or stalks of dora (I do not know
which), in fascines strongly joined together by stakes and cords. On the outside of the gate, on each hand, were six houses of a slighter construction than the rest; close upon the fence were sheds
where the soldiers lay, the horses picqueted before them with their heads turned towards the sheds, and their food laid before them on the ground; above each soldier’s sleeping-place, covered
only on the top and open in the sides, were hung a lance, a small oval shield, and a large broad-sword. These, I understood, were chiefly quarters for couriers, who, being Arabs, were not taken
into the court or square, but shut out at night.

Within the gate was a number of horses, with the soldiers barracks behind them; they were all picqueted in ranks, their faces to their masters barracks. It was one of the finest sights I ever
saw of the kind. They were all above sixteen hands high, of the breed of the old Saracen horses, all finely made, and as strong as our coach horses, but exceedingly nimble in their motion; rather
thick and short in the forehand, but with the most beautiful eyes, ears, and heads in the world; they were mostly black, some of them black and white, some of them milk-white, foaled so, not white
by age, with white eyes and white hoofs, not perhaps a great recommendation.

A steel shirt of mail hung upon each man’s quarters, opposite to his horse, and by it an antelope’s skin, made soft like shamoy, with which it was covered from the dew of the night.
A head-piece of copper, without crest or plumage, was suspended by a lace above the shirt of mail, and was the most picturesque part of the trophy. To these was added an enormous broad-sword, in a
red leather scabbard; and upon the pummel hung two thick gloves, not divided into fingers as ours, but like hedgers’ gloves, their fingers in one poke. They told me, that, within that
inclosure at Aira, there were 400 horses, which, with the riders, and armour complete for each of them, were all the property of Shekh Adelan, every horseman being his slave, and bought with his
money. There were five or six (I know not which) of these squares or inclosures, none of them half a mile from the other, which contained the king’s horses, slaves, and servants. Whether they
were all in as good order as Adelan’s I cannot say, for I did not go further; but no body of horse could ever be more magnificently disposed under the direction of any Christian power.

Adelan was then sitting upon a piece of the trunk of a palm-tree, in the front of one of these divisions of his horses, which he seemed to be contemplating with pleasure; a number of black
people, his own servants and friends, were standing around him. He had on a long drab-coloured camblet gown, lined with yellow sattin, and a camlet cap like a head-piece, with two short points that
covered his ears. This, it seems, was his dress when he rose early in the morning to visit his horses, which he never neglected. The Shekh was a man above six feet high, and rather corpulent, had a
heavy walk, seemingly more from affectation of grandeur, than want of agility. He was about sixty, of the colour and features of an Arab, and not of a Negro, but had rather more beard than falls to
the lot of people in this country; large piercing eyes, and a determined, though, at the same time, a very pleasing countenance. Upon my coming near him, he got up; “You that are a
horseman,” says he without any salutation, “what would your king of Habesh give for these horses?” “What king,” answered I, in the same tone, “would not give any
price for such horses, if he knew their value?” “Well,” replies he, in a lower voice, to the people about him, “if we are forced to go to Habesh, as Baady was, we will carry
our horses along with us.” I understood by this he alluded to the issue of his approaching quarrel with the king.

We then went into a large saloon, hung round with mirrors and scarlet damask; in one of the longest sides, were two large sofas covered with crimson and yellow damask, and large cushions of
cloth of gold, like to the king’s. He now pulled off his camlet gown and cap, and remained in a crimson satin coat reaching down below his knees, which lapped over at the breast, and was girt
round his waist with a scarf or sash, in which he had stuck a short dagger in an ivory sheath, mounted with gold; and one of the largest and most beautiful amethysts upon his finger that ever I
saw, mounted plain, without any diamonds, and a small gold earring in one of his ears.