The March to Magdala

Scindee, April 5th.

When I wrote from Santarai we were twenty-five miles in a direct line from Magdala. After marching thirty-five miles we are at exactly the same distance. In fact, we have marched along the base of a triangle, of which Magdala forms the apex. We have been obliged to do this to arrive at the one practicable point for crossing the tremendous ravine of the Djedda. For the whole of this distance we have marched along a nearly level plateau ten thousand feet above the sea. The sun by day has been exceedingly hot, the wind at night piercingly cold, and we have had heavy thunderstorms of an afternoon. The extremes of temperature are very great, and it is indeed surprising that the troops preserve their health as they do. I have seen the thermometer register 145° at eleven o’clock, and go down to 19° at night. The plateau land has been bare and monotonous in the extreme, not a single shrub, however small, breaks the view, and the only variety whatever has been, that whereas in most places the soil is a black friable loam, at others it is so covered with stones of all sizes that the soil itself is scarcely visible, and travelling is difficult and painful in the extreme. Our first march was twelve miles in length to Gazoo, which is the name of a stream running for nearly the whole distance parallel to our line of march. At Gazoo, the very serious news reached us that the arrangements for the native transport had broken down, and that no supplies were on their way up. This was what I had, when we started from Lât for our rush forward, foreseen was exceedingly likely to happen, and our position at once became a very precarious one. We had only six days’ provision remaining. Magdala was five days’ march distant. It was now certain that no fresh supplies could possibly arrive until long after those we have with us are exhausted. It is hardly probable that we shall find any provisions upon our way, for to-morrow we shall come upon Theodore’s track, and it is said that he has burnt and plundered the whole country in the neighbourhood of his line of route. It is very doubtful whether we shall obtain enough food for our animals; even now, when in a cultivated country which has not been ravaged, forage is very scarce, and the animals are upon the very shortest allowance which will keep life together. The prospect, therefore, was gloomy indeed, and there was a rumour that the Chief had made up his mind to halt, and to send the whole of the animals back to bring up provisions. This idea, however, if it was ever entertained, was abandoned; those energetic officers, Major Grant and Captain Moore, were sent back to endeavour to arrange the hitch in the native carriage; the ration of biscuit was reduced from a pound to half-a-pound per diem, and the army moved on. Fortunately news came up that the natives were bringing in a thousand pounds of flour a-day to the commissariat station which had been established at the Tacazze, and with these and our half-rations we might hold on for some time.

The next day’s march was sixteen miles, to Ad Gazoo, through a country precisely similar in character to that passed on the preceding day, except that it was more cultivated. The villages, indeed, were everywhere scattered, and although small were snug and comfortable-looking, the little clusters of eight or ten huts, with their high conical thatched roofs, looking very like snug English homesteads with their rickyards. Here, as indeed through the whole of the latter part of our journey, the people came out to gaze on the passing army of white strangers. Picturesque groups they formed as they squatted by the wayside. In the centre would probably be the priest, and next to him the patriarch and the chief of the village. Round them would sit the other men, and behind these the women and girls would stand, the latter chattering and laughing among themselves, or to the younger men, who stood beside them. Here, too, would be the mothers, some with their little fat babies in their arms, some with two or three children hanging round them, and peeping bashfully out at the strange white men. Some of the women would generally have brought goats, or a pot of honey, or a jar of milk or ghee, or a bag of grain to sell, but they soon forgot to offer them in their surprise at the strange attires and beautiful horses of the strangers.

From Ad Gazoo we yesterday moved our camp to this place, a distance of only two miles, Sir Charles Staveley bringing up his division to the camp we had left, so that the whole force is now well together in case of an attack. An affair took place yesterday evening, the consequences of which might have been very serious. Ashasta, Gobayze’s uncle, who visited us at Santarai, again came into camp with a couple of hundred followers. Care had been taken this time to prevent the possibility of his being fired into by the pickets, and when his visit was over he was escorted by an officer beyond the lines. After he had left us, he went to a village not far distant, where he billeted half of his men. With the remainder he started for another village; but upon his way he passed close to an outlying picket of General Staveley’s brigade, consisting of a corporal and four men of the 3d Native Infantry. These men of course knew nothing of his having come from our camp, and shouted to the party to keep their distance. The natives, who, as I have before said, have a strong impression that we cannot fight, replied by derisive cries and by brandishing their lances. The corporal, naturally supposing that it was a party of Theodore’s cavalry, ordered one of his men to fire, which was answered by a couple of shots on the part of the natives. The corporal then gave the word to the others to fire, and then to charge, and the little party, sword in hand, went gallantly at the numerous party of their supposed enemy. Ashasta, seeing that it was a mistake, ordered his men to retreat, which they did, pursued by the picket, who came up with some of the hindmost of the party. They pursued for some distance, and then halted. Two of the natives were killed in the affair, one with a bullet, one by a sword-thrust, and two others were wounded. At the sound of the firing Staveley’s brigade was called out under arms, and considerable excitement prevailed for some time. Late in the evening, when the matter was understood, M. Munzinger went out to explain to Ashasta how it had happened; and as the men killed were not chiefs, and human life does not go for much in Abyssinia, our apologies were accepted, and Ashasta came into camp again to-day. Thus what might have been a very serious business is happily arranged. The men upon picket are in no way to blame; in fact, they behaved with great gallantry, and must have opened the eyes of the natives to the fact that we can fight when we like. Technically, they were somewhat to blame in charging, as the rule is that a picket should never advance, but should fire and hold its ground when possible, or retire upon its supports if threatened by an overwhelming force.

The Naval Rocket Brigade now form a portion of this camp. They are an admirable body of men, and do great credit to Captain Fellowes, their commanding officer. They support the fatigues and hardships with the good-temper peculiar to naval men. They march, contrary to what might have been expected, even better than the soldiers, and never fall out, even on the most fatiguing journeys. They are a great amusement to the troops, and their admonitions to their mules, which they persist in treating as ships, are irresistibly comic. I saw a sailor the other day who was leading a mule, while a comrade walked behind it. A stoppage occurred, but he went right on into the midst of a number of soldiers.

“Hallo, Jack!” they said good-humouredly, “where are you coming?”

“Coming?” Jack said, “I ain’t coming anywhere. I am only towing the craft; it’s the chap behind does the steering.”

It is always so with them. The head-rope is always either the “tow-rope” or “the painter.” They starboard or port their helm, “tack through a crowd,” or “wear the ship round” in a most amusing way. They have of course shore-titles for the occasion, but do not always answer to them.

The other day I heard an officer call out, “Sergeant-major!”

No answer.

“Sergeant-major!” This time louder.

Still no reply.

A third and still louder hail produced no response.

“Boatswain, where the devil are you?”

“Ay, ay, sir!” was the instant answer from the man, who was standing close by, but who had quite forgotten his new rank of sergeant-major.

Of an evening, if we have a halt, Jack sometimes dances. The band of the Punjaubees – between whom and the sailors there is a great friendship, although of course they do not understand a word of each other’s language – comes over to the sailors’ camp, and plays dance-music; and half-a-dozen couples of sailors stand up and execute quadrilles, waltzes, and polkas.

The scene is a very amusing one. The Punjaubees do not stand, but sit in a circle, and play away with the greatest gravity; very well they play too, for they are beyond all comparison the best band out here. The sailors dance without the least idea that there is anything comic in the business; while round stand a crowd of amused soldiers and of astonished natives of the country, to whom the whole performance is a profound mystery.

The Punjaub Pioneers still maintain the high opinion they have earned by their hard work. They are indeed a splendid regiment, and reflect the greatest credit upon Major Chamberlain, their popular commanding-officer. Major Chamberlain’s case is a particularly hard one. He was promoted to the rank of major during the mutinies, and was subsequently, for his great services, recommended no less than three times for his colonelcy. The Indian Government, however, refused, on account of his recent promotion. Eleven years have since elapsed, and that objection must long ere this be done away with; and yet Major Chamberlain is only Major Chamberlain still. It is to be hoped that at the end of this campaign a tardy recognition will be made of his services.

It was Major Chamberlain and his Punjaubees who found water at a short distance from Zulla. He asserted, and very rightly, that as there was water at Koomaylo, it must find its way down to the sea somehow, and so he set his men to work to dig. Down he went steadily, amidst the laughter and chaff of his friends in the Engineers. Still he persevered, and at nearly sixty feet from the surface he struck water. An abundant supply is now obtainable from this well, and by this service alone he has amply earned his promotion.

The difficulties of writing since we left Lât have been greater than ever, and the manual operation of inditing an epistle is a most serious business. Of course there is nothing resembling a chair or a table, – not even a box. The only way to write is lying upon the ground, and putting one’s paper upon one’s pillow. Now my pillow is not a comfortable one for sleeping upon, much less for writing. It is composed of a revolver, a box of cartridges, a telescope, a bag of dollars, a packet of candles, a powder-flask, a bag of bullets, a comb, a pair of stockings, and a flannel-shirt, – in fact, all my worldly belongings. A most useful kit, no doubt, but uncomfortable as a pillow, inconvenient as a writing-table. However, one gets accustomed to anything; and if this campaign lasts another month or two, we shall not improbably have learnt to dispense with much more important articles than tables and chairs; for we have only the clothes we stand in, and these are already giving unmistakable signs of approaching dissolution.

Dalanta, April 5th.

We are now getting to names which are somewhat familiar to us. The river Djedda, which the troops crossed yesterday, and the plain of Dalanta, where we are encamped to-day, were both mentioned frequently in the letters from the captives. The river Djedda was the place where Theodore was detained so long making a practicable road for his guns, and where he was represented as encouraging his men at their task by working with his own hands. Dalanta was the province or tract which was spoken of as in rebellion against him for a considerable time previously, but which submitted as soon as he had crossed the Djedda.

After I had sent off my letter of the 3d, intelligence arrived that Theodore had broken up his camp before Magdala, and was moving to attack us. I need hardly say that the news was untrue. The Chief, however, was bound to act upon it, and consequently we were ordered to march at seven; and instead of halting, as previously intended, upon the edge of the ravine of the Djedda, we were to cross and encamp on the other side, so as to avoid the possibility of having to take such a strong position. Colonel Milward, who had marched the evening before with the Punjaubees, and two companies of the 4th, was ordered to cross early, and General Staveley was to bring up his force to the edge of the ravine. We started punctually at the time ordered, and marched across a precisely similar country to that we had traversed for the few previous days. Some miles before we reached the edge of the Djedda the whole aspect was changed. The yellow stubble and hay, which had before stretched away upon both sides, was all burnt, and the ground was covered only with a black ash. The flocks and herds which had dotted the country were gone, and scarcely a human being was to be seen over the black expanse. The snug homesteads and villages had disappeared, and in their places were bare walls and heaps of stones. I rode up to one of these. On the floor lay the half-charred thatch of the roof; among it were portions of broken pots and baking effects. Here was a long round stone, which was used as a rolling-pin to make the flat bread; there was a large vessel of baked earth and cow-dung which had once held flour or milk. A rat scuttled away as I looked in. There was not a living soul in what had once been a large village. This was indeed the desolation of war. Presently we saw rising, apparently a few feet above the plain, at a distance of five or six miles, a long perpendicular wall of rock. This, we knew, was the upper edge of the opposite side of the Djedda. The ground then sank a little in front of us, and, riding along the slight depression, we suddenly turned a corner, and below us lay the wonderful gorge of the Djedda. Its width from edge to edge was four or five miles, its depth to the stream 3800 feet. It was a wonderful ravine. As far as eye could see either way, the upper part upon sides appeared like two perpendicular walls of perhaps a third of its total depth. Then, on either side, was a plain or shoulder of from a mile to a mile and a half in width, with a gradual slope towards the stream. The lower portion was again extremely steep, but still with a gradual descent, and not mere walls of rock like the upper edges. It was easy to imagine the whole process of the formation of this gorge. Originally it must have been an arm of the sea; a gulf of five miles across, and with perpendicular cliffs upon either side, and its depth the level of the broad shoulders. Then the land rose, and a great river ran through the centre of what was now a noble valley, gradually eating its way down until its bed attained its present enormous depth. It was this ravine which had been the cause of the immense detour we have had to make. Forty miles back, at Santarai, we were said to be as close to Magdala as we were when we stood prepared to descend into the Djedda. But the perpendicular walls barred our progress, and we have marched along nearly parallel to its course until we have reached the one spot where a break in its iron walls allow of our descent. By this route Theodore marched, and when we saw the road he had made for us, we felt for the first time since our arrival really grateful to the Abyssinian tyrant.

It is really a wonderful road, almost as good as could have been made by our own engineers; the only difference being that they would have thrown a layer of earth over the loose stones to bind them together, and to afford a firm and level surface. The road is really constructed with great engineering skill. Blasting-tools have been freely used wherever the rock required it. Every wind and turn, every shoulder and slope, has been taken advantage of in order to make zigzags, and render the descent more gradual. It is true that in places it is fearfully steep – an incline of one and a quarter to one – which, to convey the idea more popularly, is about the slope of the bank of a railway-cutting. The leaving the road in its present state, with loose stones, may have been done with an object, for upon a solid road of this angle it would have been next to impossible to have kept heavy cannon on wheels from running down, whereas upon a very loose and heavy road the matter was comparatively easy. The length of the descent is four miles and a half, that of the ascent three miles and a half. Two miles and a half of the former, and a mile and a half of the latter, are across and partially along the shoulders, where the slope was very slight. In consequence, it may be said that actually three thousand feet of depth were on either side attained in two miles, which would give an average incline of one in three. The road is from twenty to thirty feet in width; generally it is made through basalt, which, in cooling, had crystallised, so that its surface resembles a mosaic pavement, and this readily breaks up. Parts, however, are cut through a hard stone, and portions through a conglomerate, which must have tried to the utmost the tools and patience of Theodore’s army. How he achieved the task with the means at his disposal I am at a loss to understand; and the road has certainly raised Theodore very many degrees in the estimation of our men. Upon every level space in the camping-ground of his army, there are their fireplaces, and innumerable little bowers of five feet high and little more in diameter, in which his troops curled themselves up when their day’s work was over. It was a long and very weary descent. Going down a steep place is comparatively easy when one carries no load; but when one has over fifty pounds upon the back it is extremely trying. At last we reached the bottom, a stony waste of a quarter of a mile wide, with a few large trees growing upon what in the rainy season are, no doubt, islands. The bed of the stream is perfectly dry, except that here and there, at intervals of a quarter of a mile or so, were pools of water, very soft and unpleasant to the taste, and full of tadpoles. The troops when they arrived here were a good deal done up, having already marched thirteen miles, and it was hoped that the Chief would order a halt for the night. He, however, considered it essential that the plateau should be gained that evening, and Milward’s corps, whose rearguard left the river as we descended to it, supported. The troops were ordered to halt and rest until four o’clock, and to have their dinners, and the mules were to be unloaded, fed, and watered.

It was three o’clock before the baggage began to arrive in the valley, and it was evident that it would not be all down until dark, and that much of it could not reach the plateau above that night. Three of us, therefore, resolved upon sleeping where we were, and upon going on at daybreak. We accordingly pitched our tents under a tree, saw our horses picketed and fed, and dinner in course of preparation, and then went out for a walk to explore the valley. The temperature was very many degrees warmer than upon the plateau above, and the flora was more than proportionately luxuriant. Here I find, among hundreds of other plants of whose names and properties I am unfortunately ignorant, the wild verbena and heliotrope, also the cucumber. Unfortunately the cucumbers had only just begun to form, and were scarcely as large as gherkins, or we might have had an unexpected addition to our fare. I also found quantities of the rare palm-fern growing in crevices of the rocks. It was altogether a splendid field for a botanist, and I think it a great pity that a learned botanist did not accompany the expedition instead of a geographer, who, although a most distinguished savant, can but tell the world nearly the same particulars of the narrow strip of country through which we are travelling as must occur to any ordinary observer. Had this gentleman merely taken advantage of the protection given by our presence in the country to travel generally through it, he might have no doubt added largely to our store of information; but keeping to the line of route followed by the army, he can, with the exception of ascertaining the precise heights over which we travel, tell us really next to nothing. I believe, however, that this staying with the army is in no degree the fault of the gentleman in question, but of the military authorities, who here appear to have the idea that a civilian is a sort of grown-up baby, who must be kept strictly under their own eyes, or else that he will infallibly get into mischief, and either come to harm himself, or else be the cause of that dreadful and mysterious thing – complications. Had King Kassa, at the time he visited us, been applied to by the Commander-in-chief, he would, no doubt, have afforded every facility to the geographer and archæologist to have wandered as they pleased among his dominions, and the latter especially might have visited the interesting cities of Adowa and Axum, and made discoveries of an important and interesting nature, instead of wasting his time on the summit of the bleak Abyssinian mountains.

We enjoyed our little picnic amazingly. It was such a relief to get for once out of the routine of camp, with its sentries, and its countersigns, and bugle-calls, and mules, and to lie outside our tent and enjoy the warm evening air, which we had not been able to do since we left Zulla, where there was only sand to lie on. At eight o’clock, however, the rain came on and drove us in, with the pleasant knowledge that we had chosen well in stopping, for the last of the baggage was not down the hill until past six; and although they at once started upon their weary climb, it was impossible that they could reach the camp before morning. Our camp was presently increased in size by a dozen commissariat coolies, who were driving several hundred sheep and some oxen, and who did not get to the river until nearly eight o’clock. Jackals and hyænas were very numerous, so we piled together a good fire to keep them off our horses, and then lay down to sleep with our rifles and revolvers within reach, for it was of course just possible, although not – as some of the members of the staff to whom we had mentioned our intention to stay considered likely – probable, that some of Theodore’s cavalry might come along down the valley upon the look-out for stragglers. We came up at daybreak next morning, and after a cup of sugarless tea, started for camp. It was a very severe climb, and at the shoulder we came up to many of the mules which had been unable to get up the night before. The road which Theodore has cut enables us to see very clearly the formation of the valley, and I have not the least question that coal would be found there. I do not mention this as a commercial, but as a scientific, fact; for, commercially, coal here would be of no more value than stones. But of the fact itself I have no question. The character of the formation, the stone, the bands of fireclay, and of black friable shale, are very distinct, and there is in my mind no doubt whatever of the existence of coal. On the way we passed several dead mules and horses, and there can be no question that the journey was a most cruel one. This extreme fatigue may not cripple a man at the time, he may be ready for duty the next morning; but it must tell, and tell severely upon his constitution, and there are not a few men here who will feel the effects of Mahkan, Dildee, and Dalanta, to the end of their lives. The camp is situated upon a dead-level about a mile from the top of the ascent. I find upon inquiry that the troops in general got in at nine o’clock – of course wet through – but that very many of them, and a great deal of baggage, did not come in until this morning. There were rumours of an attack, Rassam having sent in a letter warning the Chief to be particularly on his guard against night attacks. The men, therefore, went to sleep in their boots, with their rifles by their sides. No attack took place. The same precaution is used to-night. We find, as I expected, that very little is brought in by the natives. The horses and mules to-day only get two pounds of grain each. We are still upon half-rations of flour, which, by this means, and with what is bought at Tacazze and upon the way will, I hope, enable us to hold on until supplies arrive. Nothing positive has yet been heard of the native carriage. Sir Robert Napier has been out all day making a long reconnoissance. From one point which he attained the tents of Theodore’s army upon the plain in front of Magdala were clearly visible. The party did not return until dark, and I have heard no particulars. Theodore is known, however, to be still there, and his efforts are directed to fortifying the hill which defends Magdala. He has several guns in position on the summit, and I apprehend that we shall have to capture it before we assault Magdala. It is not known yet whether we advance to-morrow or not, but it is believed that we shall start late, and make a short march, and that Sir Charles Staveley, who is encamped to-night at the bottom of the Djedda ravine, will come up to our present camp. It is a tremendously wet night.