LITMIR.BIZ

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The foot-prints of the elephants, in places where the ground had been slightly softened by the rain, were often a foot deep, and from a foot and a half to two feet in length and breadth. Mr Werne regrets not obtaining a view of one of these giant brutes. The two-horned rhinoceros is also common in that region, and is said to be of extraordinary ferocity in its attacks upon men and beasts, and not unfrequently to come off conqueror in single combat with the elephant. "Suddenly the little Schaïgiës cavalry set up a great shouting, and every one handled his arms, anticipating an attack from the Arabs. But soon the cry of 'Asset! Asset!' (lion) was heard, and we gazed eagerly on every side, curious for the lion's appearance. The Bascha had already warned his chase-loving cavalry, under penalty of a thousand blows, not to quit their ranks on the appearance of wild beasts, for in that broken ground he feared disorder in the army and an attack from the enemy. I and my brother were at that moment with Melek Mahmud at the outward extremity of the left wing; suddenly a tolerably large lioness trotted out of a thicket beside us, not a hundred paces off. She seemed quite fearless, for she did not quicken her pace at sight of the army. The next minute a monstrous lion showed himself at the same spot, roaring frightfully, and apparently in great fury; his motions were still slower than those of his female; now and then he stood still to look at us, and after coming to within sixty or seventy paces – we all standing with our guns cocked, ready to receive him – he gave us a parting scowl, and darted away, with great bounds, in the track of his wife. In a moment both had disappeared." Soon after this encounter, which startled and delighted Dr Werne, and made his brother's little dromedary dance with alarm, they reached the banks of the great gohr, (the bed of a river, filled only in the rainy season,) known as El Gasch, which intersects the countries of Taka and Basa. With very little daring and still less risk, the Haddendas, who are said to muster eighty thousand fighting men, might have annihilated the Bascha's army, as it wound its toilsome way for nearly a league along the dry water-course, (whose high banks were crowned with trees and thick bushes,) the camels stumbling and occasionally breaking their legs in the deep holes left by the feet of the elephants, where the cavalry could not have acted, and where every javelin must have told upon the disorderly groups of weary infantry. The Arabs either feared the firearms, or dreaded lest their attack should be the signal for the instant slaughter of their Grand-Shech, who rode, in the midst of the infantry, upon a donkey, which had been given him out of consideration for his age, whilst the three other prisoners were cruelly forced to perform the whole march on foot, with heavy chains on their necks and feet, and exposed to the jibes of the pitiless soldiery. On quitting the Gohr, the march was through trees and brushwood, and then through a sort of labyrinthine swamp, where horses and camels stumbled at every step, and where the Arabs again had a glorious opportunity, which they again neglected, of giving Achmet such a lesson as they had given to his predecessor in the Baschalik. The army now entered the country of the Hallengas, and a six days' halt succeeded to their long and painful march.

      It would be of very little interest to trace the military operations of Achmet Bascha, which were altogether of the most contemptible description – consisting in the chasuas, or razzias already noticed, sudden and secret expeditions of bodies of armed men against defenceless tribes, whom they despoiled of their cattle and women. From his camp at the foot of Kassela-el-Lus, the Bascha directed many of these marauding parties, remaining himself safely in a large hut, which Mr Werne had had constructed for him, and usually cheating the men and officers, who had borne the fatigue and run the risk, out of their promised share of the booty. Sometimes the unfortunate natives, driven to the wall and rendered desperate by the cruelties of their oppressors, found courage for a stout resistance.

      "An expedition took place to the mountains of Basa, and the troops brought back a large number of prisoners of both sexes. The men were almost all wounded, and showed great fortitude under the painful operation of extracting the balls. Even the Turks confessed that these mountaineers had made a gallant defence with lances and stones. Of our soldiers several had musket-shot wounds, inflicted by their comrades' disorderly fire. The Turks asserted that the Mograbins and Schaïgiës sometimes fired intentionally at the soldiers, to drive them from their booty. It was a piteous sight to see the prisoners – especially the women and children – brought into camp bound upon camels, and with despair in their countenances. Before they were sold or allotted, they were taken near the tent of Topschi Baschi, where a fire was kept burning, and were all, even to the smallest children, branded on the shoulder with a red-hot iron in the form of a star. When their moans and lamentations reached our hut, we took our guns and hastened away out shooting with three servants. These, notwithstanding our exhortations, would ramble from us, and we had got exceedingly angry with them for so doing, when suddenly we heard three shots, and proceeded in that direction, thinking it was they who had fired. Instead of them, we found three soldiers, lying upon the ground, bathed in their blood and terribly torn. Two were already dead, and the third, whose whole belly was ripped up, told us they had been attacked by a lion. The three shots brought up our servants, whom we made carry the survivor into camp, although my brother entertained slight hopes of saving him. The Bascha no sooner heard of the incident than he got on horseback with Soliman Kaschef and his people, to hunt the lion, and I accompanied him with my huntsman Sale, a bold fellow, who afterwards went with me up the White Nile. On reaching the spot where the lion had been, the Turks galloped off to seek him, and I and Sale alone remained behind. Suddenly I heard a heavy trampling, and a crashing amongst the bushes, and I saw close beside me an elephant with its calf. Sale, who was at some distance, and had just shot a parrot, called out to know if he should fire at the elephant, which I loudly forbade him to do. The beast broke its way through the brushwood just at hand. I saw its high back, and took up a safe position amongst several palm-trees, which all grew from one root, and were so close together that the elephant could not get at me. Sale was already up a tree, and told me the elephant had turned round, and was going back into the chaaba. The brute seemed angry or anxious about its young one, for we found the ground dug up for a long distance by its tusk as by a plough. Some shots were fired, and we thought the Bascha and his horsemen were on the track of the lion, but they had seen the elephant, and formed a circle round it. A messenger galloped into camp, and in a twinkling the Arnaut Abdin Bey came up with part of his people. The elephant, assailed on all sides by a rain of bullets, charged first one horseman, then another; they delivered their fire and galloped off. The eyes were the point chiefly aimed at, and it soon was evident that he was blinded by the bullets, for when pursuing his foes he ran against the trees, the shock of his unwieldy mass shaking the fruit from the palms. The horsemen dismounted and formed a smaller circle around him. He must already have received some hundred bullets, and the ground over which he staggered was dyed red, when the Bascha crept quite near him, knelt down and sent a shot into his left eye, whereupon the colossus sank down upon his hinder end and died. Nothing was to be seen of the calf or of the lion, but a few days later a large male lion was killed by Soliman Kaschef's men, close to camp, where we often in the night-time heard the roaring of those brutes."

      Just about this time bad news reached the Wernes. Their huntsman Abdallah, to whom they were much attached by reason of his gallantry and fidelity, had gone a long time before to the country of the Beni-Amers, eastward from Taka, in company of a Schaïgië chief, mounted on one of their best camels, armed with a double-barrelled gun, and provided with a considerable sum of money for the purchase of giraffes. On his way back to his employers, with a valuable collection of stuffed birds and other curiosities, he was barbarously murdered, when travelling, unescorted, through the Hallenga country, and plundered of all his baggage. Sale, who went to identify his friend's mutilated corpse, attributed the crime to the Hallengas. Mr Werne was disposed to suspect Mohammed Ehle, a great villain, whom the Bascha at times employed as a secret stabber and assassin. This Ehle had been appointed Schech of the Hallengas by the Divan, in lieu of the rightful Schech, who had refused submission to the Turks. Three nephews of Mohammed Din (one of them the same youth who had escorted the Wernes safely back to camp when they were in peril of their lives in the Haddenda country) came to visit their unfortunate relative, who was still a prisoner, cruelly treated, lying upon the damp earth, chained to two posts, and awaiting with fortitude the cruel death by impalement with which the Bascha threatened him. Achmet received the young men very coldly, and towards evening they set out, greatly depressed by their uncle's sad condition, upon their return homewards. Early next morning the Wernes, when out shooting, found the dead bodies of their three friends. They had been set upon and slain after a gallant defence, as was testified

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