EGYPT, THE SOUDAN AND CENTRAL AFRICA:I .
Ma traveller, even in these degenerate days, when nearly every region has been ransacked, and the most remote countries are dis- enchanted by the scientific annihilation of that distance which made • ex. gr.—Konstantinopolitanischerdudelsackspfeifergeselle. Here is a word as long as the sea-serpent—but, like it, having a head and tail, being what lawyers call "sum quid—not an up and down series of infatuated phome, as Professor Owen somewhat insolently asserts. Here is what the Bornnatural would have made of It—AConstantinopolitanbagpiperoutofhisapprenticeship. t Egypt, the Soudan and Central Africa, with Explorations from Khartoum on the Ifile to the Region, of the Equator ; being Sketches from Sixteen Years' TraveL By John Petherick, F.R.G.S., Her Britannic Majesty's Consul for the Soudan. Pub- Ilahedby William Blackwood and Sons.
them so charming to the untravelled hearts, occasionally returns from the land of his explorations or of his sojourn with something of the old romance and interest attaching to him, like Livingstone from Africa, Layard from Nineveh, and Gouger from Burmah. This ro- mance of reality is always welcome to us. The more the sham romance, the picturesque humbug, the poetical sentiment and sal volatile of modern thought, sicken or exasperate us, the more wil- lingly do we listen to men who have really fought or suffered, had adventures or "losses," and who come fresh from the healthy north with the fragrance of pine forests in their garments, or sun- tanned from burning deserts, where they have slain lions, shot eagles, seen crocodiles walk off with their friends, brought down elephants, surprised hippopotami, and astonished the natives in general, in districts where musket or rifle was never before heard. In spite of all our dandyism we are glad to put off, if it he only in fancy, the shiny boots of civilization, and sympathize with long- haired Achreans in their war-greaves, or with some rough wanderer in "old shoes and clouted," or some still less luxurious gad-about, who goes gloriously barefooted. Among these rough semi-sans-culottes we do not include Mr. Petherick, the author of a very delightful volume of travel on Egypt, the Soudan and Central Africa. Probably he has no desire to be ranked with these splendid Bohemians. But if we do not class him with such high-minded pedestrians, we give him a front rank among the civilized explorers of our own time; among the men who are cool, brave, sagacious, who have heads as well as hands, and hands as well as heads, and who know how to use them both. The gentleman whom we thus eulogize has been sixteenyears on his travels ; he has encountered manydangers ; heard strange stories, andconversed with strange companions; he has bearded lions, slain his eagle, cured serpent wounds, extracted elephants' teeth, been among cannibals, and contrived to agree with them, and get away whole, though if they had made mincemeat of him we can easily understand that he would upon principle have disagreed most tremendously with the man that ate him. But it is time to let Mr. Petherick speak for himself. Mr. Petherick, then, having entered the service of his Highness Mehemet All Pacha, Viceroy of Egypt, as mining engineer, arrived at Alexandria on 5th April, 1845. He at once proceeded to Cairo which he reached on the 7th, and on the following day was presented to his vice-regal employer, who saluted him by gently raising his right hand, and scrutinizing him severely with his searching dark eyes. Mehemet was staying at his favourite residence, Shubra, on the Nile, half an hour's drive from the city of Cairo. At this interview, he was sitting in a raised divan, in a beautiful kiosk, in his justly-cele- brated gardens. After welcoming his visitor, Mehemet informed hint that he had a manufactory at Boulak, which he wished him to see, where he intended to make guns and steam-engines, and feel himself independent of England, as soon as Mr. Petherick had found coals for him. The Pacha told him, moreover, that he had a French engineer, who was to proceed on the same mission as himself, adding, "There are no such inveterate enemies as the English and the French, and the greatest battles of our time have been fought between them. Now I want to get up a little fight in Egypt between you and the Frenchman, of which I hope to reap the advantage, and depend upon it the victor who first discovers coal shall be handsomely re- warded." Mr. Petherick heard the Pacha's laughing proposal, and prepared to accept the friendly challenge. Attended by an inter- preter, he first visited a pit in a petrified ..forest, about thirteen miles from Cairo, which Mehemet Alt requested him to examine. Our traveller soon returned with an unfavourabe report, and presenting himself in the evening to the Viceroy, whom he found playing a cards with three diamond-decorated, comfortable-looking, grey- Turks, he saw old Mehemet strike the table a blow with his fist, heard him exclaim, while fire darted from his eyes, and the cards went flying up, "I'll sink a thousand yards," made his salaam, and rising, left the old Turks nearly in the same state as the trees in the petrified forest.
Allowing the Viceroy time to cool down, we will give Mr. Pethe- rick's sketch of the effendi, or interpreter, who attended him to the pit, in a recent calcareous formation, where, says our author, there was no more probability of finding coal than on the top of the Pyramids. In earlier life, the effendi was one of many boys forcibly put to school by Mehemet AIL Subsequently sent to England to learn mining and mineralogy, but not finding those studies mach to his liking, the young fellow (they spell it fellah in Egypt) took to beer and spirit-drinking, and made some progress in those branches of "polite education." -He also learned to speak English, bat not perhaps to read it, for, preferring the light and portable library of a late Oriental poet, his only books" seem to have been "woman's looks." So much did the juvenile Egyptian admire the English ladies, that he ended by marrying an English girl. Nor was this all ; but previous to his marriage he adopted Christianity, and he assured Mr. Petherick that he attended scrupulously to his religious duties, and accompanied his wife every Sunday to the Protestant church. Unfor- tunately, "the religious ideas of the effendi turned out to be rather elastic.' On the death of his English wife (the melancholy event happened about two years after the visit to the beds of blue marl), the inconsolable widower and exemplary Protestant returned to his former faith, and married a couple of Mahommedan girls.
On the 19th May, Mr. Petherick was sent for by the Viceroy-- the cooling process being then completed. Questioned as to the route he intended to take, the Englishman at once selected Arabia
Petrrea as his destination, and French rival had decided on proceedinm° to Upper Egypt. Firmans were issued ; heads made re- sponsible and slightly apprehensive of "a top up in the air and a
cold bath ;" Mr. Petherick embarked, on the 2nd of June, in a sickly and superannuated steamer, and, after a run of forty-eight hours, reached Tar, once an important emporium, now a tumble-down Arab fishing-village. Here, yielding to the solicitations of persons who were most of them suffering from partial or total blindness, he enacted the Medecin malgri lui, doctoring them with vinegar dis- guised with a little eau-de-cologne. After that he had a see-saw, and then an amble on a dromedary of a superior description, and then his first experience of a " khamoren" or simoon. Mr. Petherick spent nearly three months among the Bedouins of Sinai, and in one of his expeditions in this region of primitive rock, superposed at times by chalk or new red sandstone, he collected from a stratum of marl in the oolite sufficient carbonaceous matter to boil a cup of coffee. Daring this little excursion Mr. Petherick found his fists very useful. On one occasion, he thrashed Salah, the chief of the Mazein, because he would not go on, and, on another, he routed a guard of eight men, who kept him awake at night, planting an emphatic right- hander on the temple of one of them, because he would not go of Somewhat later we find our consular pugilist seizing a stout stick, and laying about on the heads and shoulders of his own crew, three of whom, when a crazy ferry-boat had capsized, just ahead of them, would persist in hauling in a donkey in preference to a woman with an infant in her hand. Mr. Petherick laid about the stick with a will, and thus found a way to save eleven women out of fifteen. The other jenny-asses seem to have been left to their fate.
We pass lightly over the return to Cairo, the stay at Luxor, the entrance on the Desert, the Arab sword-danpe„ the bivouac near the tomb of Sheikh Shadh, for whom specially "God ..created coffee," the night journey after leaving Cosseir, the misadventure of the guide when the whole party seized and buried his whip, the badge of his office, and" chanted an extempore death-song over one Ahmed, who in his day had ,been guide, but was so now no more." After pe- netrating into the territories of the Bishari, and traversing Wadi Araba, our traveller arrived once more at Cairo, with the unpleasing intelligence that he had not succeeded in discovering coal. In January, 1847, Mr. Petherick received instructions from the Pacha to proceed to Kordofan and report upon some iron mines. Khartoum is the capital of that part of the Soudan dependent upont., em- bracing the provinces of Dongola, Berbera, KhartoumF,jgannaar, Fazogli, Tika, and Kordofan. Of the government, political and mill Lary, of the social life, pastoral, agricultural, and trading, or com- mercial, Mr. Petherick gives us an interesting account. We shall mention only that while our author blames the short-sighted and ruinous policy of an avaricious and despotic government, he appears to be of opinion that life, on the whole, passes easily in the Soudan. During his visit here in 1857, Said Pacha ordered the abolition of slavery, and liberated vast numbers from bondage. Thus the army is no longer recruited by slaves, nor are they received by his govern- mentin liquidation of the imposts of his subjects. There is much curious information in this book respecting the Hassanych, the account of the marriage-auction, where the young girls are put up to the highest bidder, a practice which Mr. Petherick sarcastically, but truly, says largely prevails amongst the higher classes in Europe, is very amusing. The grand question here seems to be how many days in the week the marriage-tie is to be strictly observed by the bride, whose great beauty and whose important family connexions preclude the possibility of the mother imposing on her daughter a strict matri- monial promaety for more than two days in the week. This singular chaffering usually ends in the bride's party consenting, for various considerations, that the marriage shall hold good for four days in the week, while for the remaining three the fair—we mean the dark—ex- pectant of matrimony "shall be perfectly free to act as she may think proper." An exceedingly pleasant arrangement for her hus- band Kardofax, an important province of the Soudan, receives adequate illustration from our author. It was invaded by the viceroy's son- in-law, the Defterdar, in 1821, when Ismail advanced into Nubia and .Sennaar. The heroic defence of the poor natives, who were as- tounded by the magic-like action of the Turkish artillery, is touch- ingly and spiritedly described. All their valour of course went for nothing. The Defterdar conquered. Of the rapacity of this bar- barous chief Mr. Petherick says much, though he says that much in but few words. His cruelty seems at least to have equalled his ra- pacity. Several instances of it are given, such as tearing off the hand of a man who had struck another, with an iron instrument of his own invention, and when the sufferer exclaimed, "How can I work in this state !'" having his tongue cut out, because "he did not know how to use it." Again, at the feast of Bairam, when servants cus- tomarily received presents from their masters, a score of the Defter- dar's grooms imprudently asked him for new shoos. He verbally granted their request. The next day Um; shoes were nailed to the soles of their feet. So numerous were the complaints made of these almost incredible atrocities, that Mehemet Mi Pacha, weary of hear- ing them, "is said to have put an end to the life of his monster son. rn-law by poison."
We wish we could accompany Mr. Petherick in his wanderings through the mimosa-bush and among tamarind-trees, hearing the camel-men sing to their noiselessly moving charger in the dark night, or watching the light reach us "as if propelled by fits and starts from some great power behind," as our author describes it, in that delicately-sketched "morning scene," with the mountains of Djebel-Ira in the far distance. Were time and space not limited, we or, among various-coloured eagles, at that pre-eminent one, with the " rich sky-blue breast and long light-brown wings tipped with black." But we must turn away from these and many other sights, the most memorable of all, perhaps, being Mr. Petherick himself in the neigh- bourhood of the white ants. One night lie remained at a house in- fested by these "destructive atoms." In the morning, when drawing on his boots, his "foot went through the bottom of one, the sole had entirely disappeared as if cut off by a knife." The white ants had breakfasted on it.
We must not forget that Mr. Petherick, when he was with the Djour tribe, heard of, perhaps saw, that singular fly, the tsetse, which, we believe, Dr. Livingstone first introduced to European notice. Our author describes it as less than our domestic bee, and says that its sting is so deadly as to compel the Djour to cultivate more ground than is absolutely needed, in order to exchange the surplus crops with their neighbours, the Dinkas, for cattle, to make up for those destroyed by the tsetse. We wish Mr. Petherick had given us more details about this extraordinary insect. It is not clear to us, indeed, that he has ever seen it; but if he has, we should have been glad to have the report of an observant and interrogative mind on this some- what mysterious cattle-killer.
Mr. Petherick continues for some few years in the employ of Mehemet Ali Pacha. On his patron's death, he left "the service of the Egyptian Government, and took advantage of the abolition of the monopoly of the produce of the Soudan to establish himself in the gnm-arabic trade.' In 1853, when that trade had become paralyzed by native competition, he determined to visit the far interior, the high road to which was the White Nile. Accordingly, he set off, in a commodious boat, with a crew of twelve men, twenty Arabs, and two Dinka interpreters, on the 19th November, 1853. With a strong favouring breeze he passed barren mounds of drift sand, fertile, low, flat islands bearing melons and beaus, then an Arab village, then more rich islands, then Walled Shallai, where he went to market, and then "the waving donrra-fields of his' old friends the liassanyeh, which constitute the granary of the "White Nile." The entire pas- sage was accomplished without any incidents worthy of note. Making fast at some Dinka villages situated on the southern bank of the Sobat, our voyager, accompanied by an interpreter and half a dozen armed men, went on shore, and displaying a variety of beads, cowrie-shells, and copper bracelets, succeeded in securing and carry- ing off numerous tusks. Leaving an establishment of ten men and a stock of merebandize to continue barter trade, oar enterprising traveller then returned direct. to Khartoum.
In October, 1854, Mr. Petherick prepared to follow up his dis- coveries in the interior. Traversing the territory of the Lau, he reached the inhospitable region of Wadj Koing. Here he met with an old negro who had been a great traveller in his day. He had been_ among the tribes lying south, and he came back, himself lying all the thirty-two points of the compass. He had seen, he said, people with four eyes, two in front and two behind, so that they could walk back- wards as well as forwards ; among people with eyes under their arm, so that they had to raise them when they -wanted to see. Feeling ancomfortable among them, he proceeded still farther south. He found there people with faces similar to monkeys, and tails a yard long. And the last tribe he visited, after years of travel, were dwarfs, whose ears reached to the ground, and were so wide, that when they lay down one served as a mattress and the other for a covering. Such was this traveller's deposition—the black African Munchausen !
Time flies and space contracts. We therefore refer the reader to Mr. Petherick's own admimbly,written and animated pages for the account of his sojourn among the Wadj Koing, by whom he was at- tacked at night, by whom his men were reported to be murdered, and he himself was proclaimed a sorcerer and rain-hinderer. When he protested against their peculiar physical views, and told them that the Supreme Being alone could exercise any power over the elements, they treated it as a capital joke, and were only the more convinced that he endeavoured to conceal from them his great powers. In another expedition Mr. Petherick found himself among the Neam Nam, who like, or not unlike, the Cyclops in the Greek play, promised "not to insult them but feast on them." These cannibals had no trade, but they had a pretty natural costume of bark fibres, wore leather sandals, and were fond of ornaments. How Mr. Pethe- rick charmed them, morally as well as supernaturally, how he blew up "Drinoo," as well as the pipe that lie smoked; how the Neam Nam gloried in cannibalism, murdering and eating up all their old and moribund relations ; bow our traveller killed or helped to till giraffes, antelopes, wild boars, panthers, and immense serpents, closing with a herd of eighteen elephants, whose tusks proved a rich prize, though one of their assailants was "touched at the massacre how this soft-hearted gentleman conveyed his share of ivory and his general collections over the numerous cataracts of Nubia and Don- gola, down to the river to Egypt, leaving Khartoum 1st March, Cairo two months after, and finally returning to England July, 1859, may be read in his own unpretending, but really masterly, narrative. After a sojourn in England of about two years, Mr. Petherick is again
on the point of starting for his African home, where he trusts, III conformity with the views of the Royal Geographical Society, and
with the kind permission of the Foreign Office, to be enabled to meet Captains Spoke and Grant in the regions of the equator, on their homeward journey from Zanzebar, and by supplying them with boats at Gondocoro, to assist them down the Nile to Khartoum. We learn, from a prospectus issued by the President and Council of the society should follow our guide more closely, and do more than glance at the lost mentioned, that to render Mr. Petherick's services available it is large speckled vulture that fell by his rifle, or at the gazelle moving necessary to raise the sum of 20001. Subscriptions, accordingly, are timidly in the bush, or the vulture staring at us as we passed along, received at the Royal Geographical Society, 15, Whitehall-place,
S.W., and at Messrs. Biddulph, Cocks, and Co's., 43, Charing-cross. To carry out the proposed expedition Mr. Petherick is pronounced by the President and Council the fitting man. Judging from his book, we should say there can be no doubt about the fitness of R.B.M. Consul at Khartoum. A man who can blow up and knock down, as Mr. Petherick can, who knows something of the language of the negro tribes, who will undertake to reach Grondokoro—the seat of an ivory mart one thousand nine hundred miles above Alex- andria—in November next, and, lastly, who can write such an excel- lent book of travel as that entitled Egypt, the Soudan and Central .etfrica, deserves the applause, which costs nothing, and the pe- cuniary support, which does not cost mach, of a generous and enter- prizing British Public
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