G. A. Henty

“ English quickset-hedge is as nothing—and losing many pounds in weight from the effect of our exertions. Hot as it was, I think that the climb did us all good. Indeed, the state of the health of everyone out here is most excellent, and the terrible fevers and all the nameless horrors with which the army was threatened in its march across the low ground, turn out to be the effect of the imagination only of the well-intentioned but mischievous busybodies who have for the last six months filled the press with their most dismal predictions. ”

“ The duties of looking after the animals in their lines have of course to be generally supervised by an officer from each division, but are under the charge of English inspectors, who are sergeants in cavalry or line regiments. The lines, being to leeward of the camp, are constantly enveloped in a cloud of blinding dust, so thick that one cannot see fifty yards. To live in such an atmosphere is next to impossible, especially when delicately scented by the odour of the three or four thousand mules, ponies, and oxen, to say nothing of the native attendants close at hand. ”

“ At the end of the journey the change is still more advantageous: one selects the site for one’s tent near the little commissariat stations, but far enough off to be quiet; and here, free from the neighing and fighting of horses and mules, the challenge of the sentries, the chattering of the native troops, who frequently talk until past midnight, and the incessant noise of coughing and groaning, and other unpleasant noises in which a Hindoo delights when he is not quite well, we pass the night in tranquillity. ”

“ You have crossed many steep and precipitous ranges of mountains, more than ten thousand feet in altitude, where your supplies could not keep pace with you. When you arrived within reach of your enemy, though with scanty food, and some of you for many hours without food or water, in four days you have passed the formidable chasm of Bachelo and defeated the army of Theodore, which poured down upon you from their lofty fortress in full confidence of victory. A host of many thousands have laid down their arms at your feet. ”

“ The greatest difficulty of the transport train at present is most unquestionably in its drivers. The greater part were, as I have before said, collected haphazard from the scum of Smyrna, Beyrout, Alexandria, Cairo, and Suez. They are entirely without any idea of discipline, are perfectly reckless as to the Government stores, and are brutally cruel to their animals. By cruel, I do not mean actively cruel, but passively cruel. They do not thrash their mules much, they are too indifferent to the pace at which they travel to put themselves to the trouble of hurrying them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Captains Twentyman, Warren, and Hodges, and Lieutenant Daniels, are beginning to forget what a bed is like, for they are at work and about for more than twenty hours out of the twenty-four. Indeed, I must say that I never saw a greater devotion to duty than is shown by the officers of the various departments. The quartermaster’s department, the commissariat, and others, vie with each other in the energy which they exhibit, and the only thing to be wished is that there were a little more unanimity in their efforts. Each works for himself. ”

“ A mere passive resistance, the driving away of flocks and herds, and the burning of the grass, would have brought us to a standstill at Senafe; while the bare idea of defending our communication, and guarding the enormous trains required for our march of three hundred miles through a barren, hostile, and most difficult country, is so supremely ridiculous as to be laughable. ”

“ It would, in the face of the terrible forebodings which were launched when it was first set about, have seemed an almost impossibility that we could have journeyed here, defeated and almost annihilated Theodore’s army, obtained the whole of the prisoners, stormed Magdala—incomparably the strongest fortress in the world—and killed Theodore, and returned before the rains, with the loss of only one man dead from his wounds, and two or three from sickness; a loss infinitely less than would have taken place in the ordinary course of nature among so large a body of men. ”

“ Up and down this ravine the wretched animals stumbled and toiled, starving when in the pass, and dying of thirst during their brief pauses at Zulla; the fortunate ones dying in scores upon the way, and the less happy ones incurring disease of the lungs, which, after a few painful weeks, brought them to the welcome grave. And all this to feed Colonels Merewether and Phayre and the troops at Senafe. Cui bono? No one can answer. No one to this day has been able to offer the slightest explanation of the extraordinary course adopted by these officers. ”

“ I am not blaming the engineer officers who are in charge of the railway. They exert themselves to the utmost, and have no assistance in the way of practical gangers and platelayers, and have neither tools nor conveniences of any kind. Indeed, the actual laying down of a line can hardly be considered engineers’ work. An engineer makes the surveys and plans, and sees that the bridges, &c., are built of proper materials; but he is not a professed railway-maker, and is ill-calculated to direct a number of natives, who neither understand his language nor have a conception of what he is aiming at. ”

“ The duty of these officers should be to exhibit signs and wonders. Mr. Anderson might perhaps be induced to undertake the control of the machine tricks and general magic; Mr. Home would do the spiritual business, and could astonish the native mind with the sight of elephants floating in the air, or could terrify a negro potentate by tweaking his nose at a durbar by invisible fingers. One of the deputy-assistant magicians should be a pyrotechnist, whose duty would be to light up the camp with unearthly fire, and to place strange portents in the midnight sky. ”

“ It is no wonder that the people are poor, and that in times of drought, or when the locusts sweep over the land, or the rebels, more destructive still, carry off crops and herds and flocks, famine stalks through the land. There is no doubt that our mastership would be an unmixed blessing to them, but it would certainly be the very reverse of advantageous to ourselves. From our landing at Zulla to the present time we have passed through a country more barren than any I ever traversed. Except for grazing purposes it is absolutely valueless. ”

“ Sir Robert Napier arrived here with his personal staff the day before yesterday, having been five days en route, spending one day carefully examining each station, inquiring, as is his custom, into every detail, and seeing how each department worked. Never was a commander more careful in this inquiry into every detail than is Sir Robert Napier. Nothing escapes him. He sees everything, hears what everyone has to say, and then decides firmly upon what is to be done. The army have rightly an unbounded confidence in him. He is essentially the man for an expedition of this sort. ”

“ There was a guard to preserve order, but order could not have been kept by ten times as many men. There were hundreds of transport animals, with one driver to each five or six of them. What could one driver do with six half-mad animals? They struggled, they bit, they kicked, they fought like wild-beasts for a drink of the precious water for which they were dying. Besides these led animals were numerous stragglers, which, having broken their head-ropes, had gone out into the plain to seek a living on their own account. ”

“ The fact is, that in our army we leave the most important branch of the service to shift for itself. Unless the Land Transport Train is able to perform its duty, nothing can possibly go right; but the Land Transport Corps has no authority and no power. It is nobody’s child. The commissariat owns it not, the quartermaster and adjutant-general know nothing whatever of it. It may shift for itself. All the lâches of all the departments are thrown upon its shoulders, and the captains who are doing the work may slave night and day ”

“ This narrow gorge is overhung with trees, and in every cranny and on every tiny ledge grow lovely patches of green ferns. It requires no stretch of fancy to imagine oneself by the side of a pretty mountain-stream in Wales or Ireland. The vegetation is too bright and varied for a Highland stream. Nearly every officer in camp, and a good number of the men, have been down this morning for a bathe, which is doubly refreshing after the fatigue of yesterday and the paucity of our present washing appliances. The camp yesterday morning presented quite an unusual appearance. ”

“ It is singular how similar is the constitution of the female mind in savage and in civilised countries. An English beauty certainly does not betray any consciousness of being looked at and admired, excepting, of course, if she be a milkmaid; but she is no doubt equally conscious, and perhaps just as pleased—except that the sensation is more a matter of course—as is the dark-eyed and dark-skinned Abyssinian girl sitting in her scanty leathern garment and shell-ornamented wrapper in the market at Attegrat. ”

“ He was only thirty-five years of age, the youngest colonel in the British service, and would, in all human probability, have been a brigadier-general before he was thirty-six. Known as a dashing officer, distinguished for his personal bravery, a colonel at an age when other men are captains, there was no rank or position in the army which he might not have confidently been predicted to attain, and his loss is a loss to the whole British army. But not less than as a soldier, do all who knew poor Dunn regret him as a man. He was the most popular of officers. ”

“ They died, shot down upon baggage-guard, cut off when in search of provisions, surprised when in small parties, harassed to death by overwork. Such would have been the fate of three thousand men landing in Abyssinia. The people here are as brave as the Spaniards, the country is beyond all comparison more difficult, and the resources which, it offers to an invader are as nothing to those of Spain. Our force, as it is now constituted, is sufficient to overawe the country, and it is fortunate that it is so. ”

“ These animals are rather a nuisance to meet going down the pass. Our own mules go in strings, one tied behind the other, and the drivers, if one meets them, endeavour, as far as possible, to make room for an officer to pass. The natives, on the contrary, drive their animals in a herd before them, occupy the whole width of the track, and make no effort whatever to get their cattle out of the way. It is in vain shouting and being angry. The Shohos regard one with placid indifference, and you must push your horse into a thorn-thicket or up a rock to get out of their way. ”

“ From what I saw of the fighting, I am convinced that troops should, if possible, load at the muzzle when acting as skirmishers, and at the breech only when in close conflict against large bodies of cavalry or infantry. It is all very well to order men to fire slowly, a soldier’s natural eagerness when he sees his enemy opposite to him will impel him to load and fire as quickly as possible. He cannot help it, nor can he carry more than sixty rounds of ammunition, which will not last him twenty minutes. ”

“ There are now a hundred of them lying down within fifty yards of my tent. I consider the camel to be the most ridiculously-overpraised animal under the sun. I do not deny that he has his virtues. He is moderately strong—not very strong for his size, for he will not carry so much as a couple of good mules; still he is fairly strong, and he can go a long time without water—a very useful quality in the desert, or on the sea-shore of Abyssinia. But patient! Heaven save the mark! He is without exception the most cantankerous animal under the sun. When he is wanted to stand up, he lies down ”

“ It is 2500 yards from the top of Salamgi to Magdala, and even the heaviest artillery could do nothing against the wall of rock. We may well congratulate ourselves that Theodore sent his army to attack our baggage; for had they remained and defended the place, provided as they were with forty cannon, our loss would have been very heavy; and even with our superior weapons it is a question whether we could have succeeded, the road in many cases winding along the face of a precipice, which a few men from above merely rolling down stones could have cleared. ”

“ The Abyssinians, too, are men with a strong sporting tendency. They bet freely on the speed of a horse or the accuracy of their aim. They bet, too, with conditions under which very few Englishmen would make a wager. They choose a judge, and the judge, whoever wins, takes the stakes, the loser of course paying. This system of betting, where one may lose and cannot win, is, as far as I am aware, without a precedent, and would do more, if introduced into England, to put down gambling than all the laws that Parliament could pass would do in a hundred years. ”

“ Round their camp, and round the unfortunates upon their march, the Gallas swarm in great numbers, robbing, driving-off their cattle and donkeys, carrying-off their women and children into captivity, and wounding, and sometimes killing, all who oppose them. Sometimes, too, they attempt to rob our mules and stores. We do all we can to protect the defenceless people, and detachments are constantly going out to drive the robbers off. The infantry, the rocket-train, and the guns have several times had to fire, and several of the plunderers have been killed. ”

“ Near to them is the grain-market. Here are men and women with their grain-bags, made of skins of goats sewn up, and with only an opening at the neck. They sit about everywhere, while the buyers walk about among them and inspect the samples with a gravity and intentness which would do no discredit to Mark-lane. Their purchases probably will not exceed two or three pounds’ weight, but they are as careful over the matter as a brewer would be who was going to make a bid for a ship’s cargo. The grain is almost entirely barley, and splendid barley too. ”

“ Indian soldiers have forgotten their prejudices of race and creed to keep pace with their European comrades.
“Never has an army entered on a war with more honourable feelings than yours; this has carried you through many fatigues and difficulties. You have been only eager for the moment when you could close with your enemy. The remembrance of your privations will pass away quickly, but your gallant exploit will live in history. ”

“ The king with whom we waged war was a potentate who by his military talents had raised himself from a comparatively obscure position to the sovereignty of all Abyssinia: he was enlightened beyond his race; patronised strangers, encouraged manufactures, endeavoured in every way to improve the condition of his country, and was yet a bloodthirsty tyrant. The people themselves were a strange race, far more civilised than other African nations, Christians in the midst of a Mahometan and Pagan continent, a mixture of many races—African, Greek, Arab, and Jew. ”