In the Heart of Africa

CHAPTER IV.

On the Abyssini­an bor­der. A new school of medicine–Sa­cred shrines and epi­demics.

We left the camp of Abou Sinn on the morn­ing of Ju­ly 25th, and in a few rapid march­es ar­rived at Tomat, a love­ly spot at the junc­tion of the At­bara with the Set­tite.

The Set­tite is the riv­er par ex­cel­lence, as it is the prin­ci­pal stream of Abyssinia, in which coun­try it bears the name of “Tacazzy.” Above the junc­tion the Athara does not ex­ceed two hun­dred yards in width. Both rivers have scooped out deep and broad val­leys through­out their course. This fact con­firmed my first im­pres­sion that the sup­ply of soil had been brought down by the At­bara to the Nile. The coun­try on the op­po­site or east­ern bank of the At­bara is con­test­ed ground. In re­al­ity it forms the west­ern fron­tier of Abyssinia, of which the At­bara Riv­er is the bound­ary; but since the an­nex­ation of the Nu­bian provinces to Egypt there has been no safe­ty for life or prop­er­ty up­on the line of fron­tier; thus a large tract of coun­try ac­tu­al­ly form­ing a por­tion of Abyssinia is un­in­hab­it­ed.

Up­on our ar­rival at Sofi we were wel­comed by the sheik, and by a Ger­man, Flo­ri­an, who was de­light­ed to see Eu­ro­peans. He was a sal­low, sick­ly-​look­ing man, who with a large bony frame had been re­duced from con­stant hard work and fre­quent sick­ness to lit­tle but skin and sinew. He was a ma­son, who had left Ger­many with the Aus­tri­an mis­sion to Khar­toum, but find­ing the work too la­bo­ri­ous in such a cli­mate, he and a friend, who was a car­pen­ter, had de­clared for in­de­pen­dence, and they had left the mis­sion. They were both en­ter­pris­ing fel­lows, and sports­men; there­fore they had pur­chased ri­fles and am­mu­ni­tion, and had com­menced life as hunters. At the same time they em­ployed their leisure hours in earn­ing mon­ey by the work of their hands in var­ious ways.

I de­ter­mined to ar­range our win­ter quar­ters at Sofi for three months’ stay, dur­ing which I should have am­ple time to gain in­for­ma­tion and com­plete ar­range­ments for the fu­ture. I ac­cord­ing­ly suc­ceed­ed in pur­chas­ing a re­mark­ably neat house for ten pi­as­tres (two shillings). The ar­chi­tec­ture was of an an­cient style, from the orig­inal de­sign of a pill-​box sur­mount­ed by a can­dle ex­tin­guish­er. I pur­chased two ad­di­tion­al huts, which were erect­ed at the back of our man­sion, one as the kitchen, the oth­er as the ser­vants’ hall.

In the course of a week we had as pret­ty a camp as Robin­son Cru­soe him­self could have cov­et­ed. We had a view of about five miles in ex­tent along the val­ley of the At­bara, and it was my dai­ly amuse­ment to scan with my tele­scope the un­in­hab­it­ed coun­try up­on the op­po­site side of the riv­er and watch the wild an­imals as they grazed in per­fect se­cu­ri­ty. We were thor­ough­ly hap­py at Sofi. There was a de­light­ful calm and a sense of rest, a to­tal es­trange­ment from the cares of the world, and an en­chant­ing con­trast in the soft green ver­dure of the land­scape be­fore us, to the many hun­dred weary miles of burn­ing desert through which we had toiled from Low­er Egypt.

Time glid­ed away smooth­ly un­til the fever in­vad­ed our camp. Flo­ri­an be­came se­ri­ous­ly ill. My wife was pros­trat­ed by a se­vere at­tack of gas­tric fever, which for nine days ren­dered her re­cov­ery al­most hope­less. Then came the plague of boils, and soon af­ter a species of in­tol­er­able itch, called the coorash. I adopt­ed for this lat­ter a spe­cif­ic I had found suc­cess­ful with the mange in dogs, name­ly, gun­pow­der, with one fourth sul­phur added, made in­to a soft paste with wa­ter, and then formed in­to an oint­ment with fat. It worked like a charm with the coorash.

Faith is the drug that is sup­posed to cure the Arab; what­ev­er his com­plaint may be, he ap­plies to his Faky or priest. This min­is­ter is not trou­bled with a con­fu­sion of book-​learn­ing, nei­ther are the shelves of his li­brary bend­ing be­neath weighty trea­tis­es up­on the var­ious mal­adies of hu­man na­ture; but he pos­sess­es the key to all learn­ing, the tal­is­man that will ap­ply to all cas­es, in that one holy book, the Ko­ran. This is his com­plete phar­ma­copoeia: his medicine chest, com­bin­ing purga­tives, blis­ters, su­dori­fies, styp­tics, nar­cotics, emet­ics, and all that the most pro­found M.D. could pre­scribe. With this “mul­tum in par­vo” stock-​in-​trade the Faky re­ceives his pa­tients. No. 1 ar­rives, a bar­ren wom­an who re­quests some medicine that will pro­mote the bless­ing of child­birth. No. 2, a man who was strong in his youth, but from ex­ces­sive dis­si­pa­tion has be­come use­less. No. 3, a man de­formed from his birth, who wish­es to be­come straight as oth­er men. No. 4, a blind child. No. 5, a dy­ing old wom­an, car­ried on a lit­ter; and sundry oth­er im­pos­si­ble cas­es, with oth­ers of a more sim­ple char­ac­ter.

The Faky pro­duces his book, the holy Ko­ran, and with a pen formed of a reed he pro­ceeds to write a pre­scrip­tion–not to be made up by an apothe­cary, as such dan­ger­ous peo­ple do not ex­ist; but the pre­scrip­tion it­self is to be SWAL­LOWED! Up­on a smooth board, like a slate, he rubs suf­fi­cient lime to pro­duce a per­fect­ly white sur­face; up­on this he writes in large char­ac­ters, with thick gluti­nous ink, a verse or vers­es from the Ko­ran that he con­sid­ers ap­pli­ca­ble to the case; this com­plet­ed, he wash­es off the holy quo­ta­tion, and con­verts it in­to a pota­tion by the ad­di­tion of a lit­tle wa­ter; this is swal­lowed in per­fect faith by the pa­tient, who in re­turn pays a fee ac­cord­ing to the de­mand of the Faky.

As few peo­ple can read or write, there is an air of mys­tery in the art of writ­ing which much en­hances the val­ue of a scrap of pa­per up­on which is writ­ten a verse from the Ko­ran. A few pi­as­tres are will­ing­ly ex­pend­ed in the pur­chase of such tal­is­mans, which are care­ful­ly and very neat­ly sewn in­to small en­velopes of leather, and are worn by all peo­ple, be­ing hand­ed down from fa­ther to son.

The Arabs are es­pe­cial­ly fond of relics; thus, up­on the re­turn from a pil­grim­age to Mec­ca, the “had­ji” or pil­grim is cer­tain to have pur­chased from some re­li­gious Faky of the sa­cred shrine ei­ther a few square inch­es of cloth, or some such tri­fle, that be­longed to the prophet Ma­homet. This is ex­hib­it­ed to his friends and strangers as a won­der­ful spell against some par­tic­ular mal­ady, and it is hand­ed about and re­ceived with ex­treme rev­er­ence by the as­sem­bled crowd. I once formed one of a cir­cle when a pil­grim re­turned to his na­tive vil­lage. We sat in a con­sid­er­able num­ber up­on the ground, while he drew from his bo­som a leather en­ve­lope, sus­pend­ed from his neck, from which he pro­duced a piece of ex­treme­ly greasy woollen cloth, about three inch­es square, the orig­inal col­or of which it would have been im­pos­si­ble to guess. This was a piece of Ma­homet’s gar­ment, but what por­tion he could not say. The pil­grim had paid large­ly for this blessed rel­ic, and it was passed round our cir­cle from hand to hand, af­ter hav­ing first been kissed by the pro­pri­etor, who raised it to the crown of his head, which he touched with the cloth, and then wiped both his eyes. Each per­son who re­ceived it went through a sim­ilar per­for­mance, and as oph­thalmia and oth­er dis­eases of the eyes were ex­treme­ly preva­lent, sev­er­al of the par­ty had eyes that had not the bright­ness of the gazelle’s; nev­er­the­less, these were sup­posed to be­come brighter af­ter hav­ing been wiped by the holy cloth. How many eyes this same piece of cloth had wiped, it would be im­pos­si­ble to say, but such facts are suf­fi­cient to prove the dan­ger of holy relics, that are in­oc­ula­tors of all man­ner of con­ta­gious dis­eases.

I be­lieve in holy shrines as the pest spots of the world. We gen­er­al­ly have ex­pe­ri­enced in West­ern Eu­rope that all vi­olent epi­demics ar­rive from the East. The great breadth of the At­lantic bound­ary would nat­ural­ly pro­tect us from the West, but in­fec­tious dis­or­ders, such as plague, cholera, small-​pox, etc., may be gen­er­al­ly tracked through­out their gra­da­tions from their orig­inal nests. Those nests are in the East, where the heat of the cli­mate act­ing up­on the filth of se­mi-​sav­age com­mu­ni­ties en­gen­ders pesti­lence.

The holy places of both Chris­tians and Ma­hometans are the re­cep­ta­cles for the mass­es of peo­ple of all na­tions and class­es who have ar­rived from all points of the com­pass. The greater num­ber of such peo­ple are of poor es­tate, and many have toiled on foot from im­mense dis­tances, suf­fer­ing from hunger and fa­tigue, and bring­ing with them not on­ly the dis­eases of their own re­mote coun­ties, but ar­riv­ing in that weak state that courts the at­tack of any epi­dem­ic. Thus crowd­ed to­geth­er, with a scarci­ty of pro­vi­sions, a want of wa­ter, and no pos­si­bil­ity of clean­li­ness, with clothes that have been un­washed for weeks or months, in a camp of dirty pil­grims, with­out any at­tempt at drainage, an ac­cu­mu­la­tion of filth takes place that gen­er­ates ei­ther cholera or ty­phus; the lat­ter, in its most ma­lig­nant form, ap­pears as the dread­ed “plague.” Should such an epi­dem­ic at­tack the mass of pil­grims de­bil­itat­ed by the want of nour­ish­ing food, and ex­haust­ed by their fa­tigu­ing march, it runs ri­ot like a fire among com­bustibles, and the loss of life is ter­rif­ic. The sur­vivors ra­di­ate from this com­mon cen­tre, up­on their re­turn to their re­spec­tive homes, to which they car­ry the seeds of the pesti­lence to ger­mi­nate up­on new soils in dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Doubt­less the clothes of the dead fur­nish ma­te­ri­als for in­nu­mer­able holy relics as ves­tiges of the wardrobe of the Prophet. These are dis­sem­inat­ed by the pil­grims through­out all coun­tries, preg­nant with dis­ease; and, be­ing brought in­to per­son­al con­tact with hosts of true be­liev­ers, Pan­do­ra’s box could not be more fa­tal.

Not on­ly are relics up­on a pock­et scale con­veyed by pil­grims and rev­er­enced by the Arabs, but the body of any Faky who in life­time was con­sid­ered un­usu­al­ly holy is brought from a great dis­tance to be in­terred in some par­tic­ular spot. In coun­tries where a tree is a rar­ity, a plank for a cof­fin is un­known; thus the rev­erend Faky, who may have died of ty­phus, is wrapped in cloths and packed in a mat. In this form he is trans­port­ed, per­haps some hun­dred miles, slung up­on a camel, with the ther­mome­ter above 130 de­grees Fah. in the sun, and he is con­veyed to the vil­lage that is so for­tu­nate as to be hon­ored with his re­mains. It may be read­ily imag­ined that with a fa­vor­able wind the in­hab­itants are warned of his ap­proach some time be­fore his ar­rival.

Hap­pi­ly, long be­fore we ar­rived at Sofi, the vil­lage had been blessed by the death of a cel­ebrat­ed Faky, a holy man who would have been de­scribed as a sec­ond Isa­iah were the an­nals of the coun­try du­ly chron­icled. This great “man of God,” as he was termed, had de­part­ed this life at a vil­lage on the bor­ders of the Nile, about eight days’ hard camel-​jour­ney from Sofi; but from some as­sumed right, min­gled no doubt with job­bery, the in­hab­itants of Sofi had laid claim to his body, and he had ar­rived up­on a camel hor­izon­tal­ly, and had been buried about fifty yards from the site of our camp. His grave was be­neath a clump of mi­mosas that shad­ed the spot, and formed the most promi­nent ob­ject in the fore­ground of our land­scape. Thith­er ev­ery Fri­day the wom­en of the vil­lage con­gre­gat­ed, with of­fer­ings of a few hand­fuls of dhur­ra in small gourd-​shells, which they laid up­on the grave, while they ATE THE HOLY EARTH in small pinch­es, which they scraped like rab­bits, from a hole they had bur­rowed to­ward the ven­er­at­ed corpse. This hole was about two feet deep from con­tin­ual scratch­ing, and must have been very near the Faky.

Al­though thus rev­er­ent in their wor­ship, the Arab’s re­li­gion is a sort of ad­justable one. The wild boar, for in­stance, is in­vari­ably eat­en by the Arab hunters, al­though in di­rect op­po­si­tion to the rules of the Ko­ran. I once asked them what their Faky would say if he were aware of such a trans­gres­sion. “Oh!” they replied, “we have al­ready asked his per­mis­sion, as we are some­times severe­ly pressed for food in the jun­gles. He says, `If you have the KO­RAN in your hand and NO PIG, you are for­bid­den to eat pork; but if you have the PIG in your hand and NO KO­RAN, you had bet­ter eat what God has giv­en you.’”