March to Magdala Part 14

In the mean time, however, the men of the 33d, upon the road leading up to the gate, discovered a spot half-way up, by which they were able to scramble up to the left, and, getting through the hedge, they quickly cleared away the defenders of the gate. A large portion of the regiment entered at this spot, the gate not being fairly opened for a quarter of an hour after the storming-party arrived at it; for when it was broken down, it was found that the gate-house was filled with very large stones; and therefore, had powder been at hand, and the gate been blown in, a considerable time must have elapsed before the party could have entered.

Behind the gateway were a cl.u.s.ter of huts, many of whose inhabitants still remained in them in spite of the heavy fire which had for two hours been kept up. Behind them was a natural scarp of twenty-five or thirty feet high, with a flight of steps wide enough only for a single man to ascend at a time. At the top of this was another gate, which had been blown open by the rifles of the 33d. I entered with the rear of the regiment; but all was by that time over. By the first gateway were six or seven bodies, and two or three men by the second. Beyond this was the level plateau, thickly scattered with the native huts of their ordinary construction-not the hayc.o.c.k-fabrics which had covered the other hills and plateau. At a hundred yards from the gate lay the body of Theodore himself, pierced with three b.a.l.l.s, one of which, it is said, he fired with his own hand. He was of middle height and very thin, and the expression of his face in death was mild rather than the reverse. He had thrown-off the rich robe in which he had ridden over the plain, and was in an ordinary chief's red-and-white cloth.

The fighting was now over. A hundred men or so had escaped down a path upon the other side of the fortress, and the rest of the defenders had fled into their houses, and emerged as peaceable inhabitants without their weapons. Nothing could be more admirable than the behaviour of the 33d. I did not see a single instance of a man either of this or of the regiment which followed attempting to take a single ornament or other article from the person of any of the natives. These latter thronged out of their houses, bearing their household goods, and salaaming to the ground, as they made their way towards the gate of the fort. I went into several of the abandoned huts; they contained nothing but rubbish. A few goats and cattle stood in the enclosures, and bags of grain were in plenty. The poor people had been well content to escape with their lives, and with what they could carry away on their own shoulders and those of their pack-animals.

I presently met an affecting procession. These were the native prisoners.

Laden with heavy feet-chains were at least a hundred poor wretches who had lingered for years in the tyrant's clutches. Many of them were unable to walk, and were carried along by their friends. We pitied them vastly more than we have done the prisoners sent in to us, who, with commodious tents, numbers of servants, and plentiful supplies of money and food, have had a far better time of it than these poor wretches of natives. They endeavoured in every way to express their joy and thankfulness. They bent to the ground, they cried, they clapped their hands; and the women-at least such as were not chained-danced, and set-up their shrill cry of welcome. Very kind were the soldiers to them, and not a few gave-up their search for odd articles of plunder to set-to with hammer and chisel to remove their chains. There were some hundreds of huts upon the flat plateau, but not one of them bore any signs of the bombardment; and fortunately the great distance at which the guns were fired had saved the inhabitants from the injury which they must otherwise have suffered from the needless bombardment. A few people had been wounded when the 33d had first entered, but their number was very small; and it seems incredible that out of so large a population only some ten or fifteen, and these the defenders of the gate, were killed.

The huts were all of the same size and description-stone walls with conical roofs, and no light except that which entered by the door. The King himself lived in a tent. His wife, or I should rather say wives, lived in a house precisely similar in shape, but larger than the other tents. One or two of these poor women were among the wounded, having rushed wildly about the place before the firing ceased, and being struck by stray bullets. It is extremely satisfactory to know that no lives, with the exception of those of the actual fighting-men, were sacrificed.

We have no killed, but have ten or fifteen wounded, most of them very slightly. One of the Punjaubees who was wounded in the fight three days before has since died. The loot obtained by the soldiers was generally of the most trifling description. Pieces of the hangings of the King's tent, bits of tawdry brocade, and such-like, are the general total. A very few got some gold crosses, and other more valuable articles. A general order has been issued, ordering all valuable spoil to be returned; but I do not imagine that the amount returned will be large. All the spoil taken, with the arms, &c., will be sold by auction in a day or two, and the result at once divided. It is known that considerable sums in dollars and gold have been buried, and a search is being inst.i.tuted for them, but without, I imagine, much chance of success. In my wanderings I came upon a large hut, which turned out to be the royal cellar. Here the natives were serving-out "tedge"-which I have already described as a drink resembling small-beer and lemonade mixed, with a very strong musty flavour-to soldiers. There were at least a hundred large jars filled with the liquid, which the soldiers call beer, and which, thirsty as the men were, was very refres.h.i.+ng. It was now nearly six o'clock, and the soldiers had had nothing to eat or drink since early morning. I should say that every soldier in the force supped that night upon fowl. Their value here, except when offered to us for sale, is merely nominal, and none of the people took the trouble to take them away; consequently they were running about in hundreds, and gave rise to many animated chases.

Magdala itself is about half a mile long by a quarter of a mile wide, its narrow end joining the shoulder to Salamgi, and as this end is rather narrow, it touches the shoulder only for about fifty or sixty yards. At this point I should say that the plateau of the fortress is 200 feet above the shoulder. Upon its other side it would be 1200 feet sheer down. The 33d planted their colours upon the highest spot, and General Napier when he entered addressed a few words to the men, saying, "that they had made the attack in gallant style." Of course, as it turned out, the danger was slight; but this does not detract from the way in which the regiment went up to the a.s.sault; as, for anything they could tell, there might have been hundreds of men concealed in the huts immediately behind the gate.

The two most valuable articles of booty which were known to have been obtained were purchased by Mr. Holmes, of the British Museum, for the nation, of the soldiers by whom they were taken. The one was, one of the royal s.h.i.+elds of Abyssinia, one of which I described as having been borne by Gobayze's uncle when he visited our camp. The other is a gold chalice, probably four or five centuries old. It has the inscription in Amharic, of which the following is the translation: "The chalice of King Adam-Squad, called Gazor, the son of Queen Brhan, Moquera. Presented to Kwoskwan Sanctuary (Gondar). May my body and soul be purified! Weight 25 wohkits of pure gold, and value 500 dollars. Made by Waldo Giergis." The name of the maker would seem to testify that he was either the son of an Italian, or an Italian who had adopted an Abyssinian first name. As these acquisitions are made for the nation, Sir Robert has decided that they are not to be given up. He has also directed that Mr. Holmes may select such other articles as may be suited to the Museum before the auction takes place.

The second brigade pa.s.sed the night in Magdala, and still remain there; the first brigade returned to camp, which they did not reach until a very late hour. The aspect of the hill of Salamgi, and of the plains below it, was very striking, as I rode through it at night. The great emigrant population had encamped there, and their innumerable fires had a very pretty effect. During the night a very scandalous act of theft and sacrilege took place. The coffin of the late Abuna, a high priest, was broken open; his body was torn almost to pieces, and a cross, set with precious stones of the value of some thousands of pounds, was stolen. It is quite certain that this act was not perpetrated by our soldiers, as they of course knew nothing either of the Abuna or his cross. Suspicion generally points to some of the late prisoners, who knew, what was, it appears, a matter of notoriety, that the Abuna had purchased this extremely valuable ornament to be buried with it.

The expedition is now at an end. Its objects are most successfully attained, and the interest and excitement are over. We have now only our long and weary march back again. The day upon which we turn our faces homeward is not yet settled; the 20th is at present named. We shall probably halt at Dalanta for a day or two, and there it is said that Gobayze will visit the Chief, and that we shall have a grand parade.

The opinion which the natives will entertain of us upon our homeward march will be singularly different from those with which they regarded us upon our advance. Then they looked upon us as mere traders, prepared to buy, but incompetent to fight for our countrymen in chains; now they will regard us as the conquerors of the hitherto invincible Theodore, and as braves, therefore, of the most distinguished order.

Before Magdala, April 16th.

My letter describing the fall of Magdala was only written two days ago, and I have but few sc.r.a.ps of intelligence to add. These, however, I shall now send, in hopes that they may arrive by the same mail which conveyed my last. We have had only two excitements here; the one the perquisition-indeed, by the way it was conducted, I may call it inquisition-for loot; the other, the constant plunder by those arrant thieves, the Gallas. The first orders with respect to plunder were reasonable and sensible enough. They were, that all articles of intrinsic value, or which might be nationally interesting, were to be given up. This no one objected to. It was only fair that all booty collected of any value should be fairly divided for the benefit of the force in general. The next order, however, was simply ridiculous, and caused naturally a good deal of grumbling. It was ordered that every article taken, of whatever value or description, should be returned. Now, the men had possessed themselves of all sorts of small mementoes of the capture of Magdala. Spears and gla.s.s beads, books and sc.r.a.ps of dresses, empty gourds and powder-horns, all sorts of little objects in fact, the united intrinsic value of which would not be twenty dollars, but which were valuable mementoes to the three or four thousand men who had picked them up-all these were now to be given up; and so strict was the search, that I saw even the men's havresacks examined to see that they had hidden nothing. The pile of objects collected was of the most miscellaneous description, and looked like the contents of a p.a.w.nbroker's shop in the neighbourhood of Whitechapel. These things were valuable to the men, as having been collected by them in Magdala; but they will fetch nothing whatever when sold. It is a very great pity that the original order was not adhered to, as the men would have all acquiesced cheerfully enough in the summons that articles of intrinsic value should be delivered up. As it is, the whole value of the plunder will not exceed ten thousand dollars in value, and, indeed, I question if it will approach that sum. The princ.i.p.al articles of value, with the exception of some crosses, are of English manufacture, double-barrelled guns, &c.; in fact, the presents which the English Government sent out by Ra.s.sam. A medical court have examined Theodore's body, and have come to the conclusion that he died by his own hand. Mr.

Holmes, of the British Museum, has taken an exceedingly good likeness of the dead monarch; indeed, I do not know that I ever saw a more striking resemblance. The Engineers have also taken a photograph of him.

The Gallas have been extremely troublesome for the last three days. The unfortunate fugitives from Magdala are encamped at the foot of the hill, and are gradually moving-off to their respective homes. 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. Eighteen are at present prisoners in our camp, some of whom were concerned in the murder of one of the Abyssinians. The night before last they made an attack upon some of the mules with the baggage of the 33d, near Magdala, but were beaten off with the loss of several men. Now that we have got Magdala, our difficulty is to dispose of it, and it is this only which is keeping us waiting here.

Magdala is, as I have already said, an almost impregnable place, even in the hands of these savages. North and west of them the people are Christians. Whether their Christianity, or the Christianity of any savage people, does them any good whatever, or makes them the least more moral or better than their neighbours, it is needless now to inquire. At any rate they are a settled people, living by the culture of their land. To the east of these agricultural people are the Gallas, nomadic Mussulmans, whose hand is against every man's, who live by robbery and violence, and who are slavers and man-stealers of the worst kind. Against them Magdala stands as a bulwark. It is on the road between their country and Abyssinia proper, and the garrison can always fall upon their rear in case of an attempted foray. It was therefore desirable that it should be intrusted to some power strong enough to hold in check this nation of robbers.

Theodore's son, who, with his wives, has fallen into our hands, is too young to be thought of, and there remains only Gobayze, and his rival Menilek. Menilek in the early days of the expedition was heard a good deal of. General Merewether was always writing about him and his army of forty thousand men, and his great friends.h.i.+p; but, like most of the gallant general's promised lands, Menilek's a.s.sistance turned out a myth, and we have never heard of him since we came within a hundred miles of Magdala.

Gobayze, on the other hand, has at any rate turned out to be a real personage. He has never, it is true, done the slightest thing to a.s.sist us in any way; still his uncle paid us a visit, and nearly got shot, so that we may presume that this uncle really has a nephew called Gobayze. Gobayze has been written to, to come and take possession of Magdala, but he has not arrived; but this morning his uncle has again appeared upon the scene, and, I understand, declines, in the name of his relative, to have anything to say to Magdala. Magdala, in fact, except as a stronghold to retreat to as a last resource, is absolutely valueless. It is too far removed from the main portion of Abyssinia to be of any strategical importance, and it would require a couple of thousand men to garrison it, and who would have to be supplied with provisions from a considerable distance. Gobayze wants all his available force for the struggle he will be engaged in with Menilek as soon as we leave the country, and he does not at all care about detaching two thousand men to an extreme corner of his dominions, where they could in no way affect the issue of the war. He may change his mind; but if he should not do so, we shall in a couple of days start upon our backward course, and abandon Magdala to the first comer. The Abyssinians complain bitterly of our mode of fighting. With them an engagement is a species of duel. Both sides charge simultaneously, discharge their pieces, and retreat to load, repeating the manuvre until one side or the other has had enough of it. They object, therefore, excessively to our continuous advance and fire, without any pause to reload. It is to this unseemly practice that they attribute their defeat.

The whole army are looking forward with the greatest eagerness for the order to retire. Existence here is not a pleasant one. The weather in the day is dry, hot, but not unpleasant; in the afternoon we have always heavy rains, and cold at night. Our variety of provisions is not great. We have plenty of meat, and little flour; no rum, no tea, no sugar, no vegetables.

By the way, the commissariat actually managed to supply the extraordinarily liberal allowance of one dram of rum per man to the force on the day after the capture of Magdala. But our great want is water. We are literally without water. A mile and a half off is a limited quant.i.ty, but it is very limited indeed, and stinks abominably; so bad is it, that it is difficult to distinguish what one is drinking, even if one is fortunate enough to procure tea or coffee; and even of this there is not sufficient for drinking purposes alone, and a man enters another tent and asks as eagerly for a cup of water as if it were the choicest of drinks.

Was.h.i.+ng is altogether out of the question; and the animals have to be taken down to the muddy Bachelo, fifteen hundred feet below us, and six miles distant, for their daily draught. Decidedly the sooner we are out of this the better. At present the 18th is the happy day decided upon; and I earnestly hope that nothing will occur to postpone our departure. Some of the troops will certainly start to-day or to-morrow.

Antalo, May 1st.

There are few things of less interest than the closing chapter of a campaign. The excitement and anxiety, the success and triumph, are over; the curtain has fallen upon the play, and we have only to put on our wraps and go home. Even by the present date the telegraph has told England of the success with which the expedition has been crowned. When he has once read the details, the English reader will, after the first little burst of natural pride and satisfaction, sit himself down with a slight sigh to count the cost, and then endeavour, as far as possible, to forget the unpleasant subject. I feel that the heading of my letter, "The Abyssinian Expedition," will no longer be an attractive one. Epilogues are gone out of fas.h.i.+on, and are only retained as a relic of the past at the annual play of the Westminster boys. I should imagine that at the end of a modern play very few people would sit-out an epilogue; and in the same way, I antic.i.p.ate that very few readers will care for hearing any more about the barren and mountainous country in which it has been our lot to sojourn for the last six months. I should imagine that they must be nearly as weary of the subject as we are ourselves. Never certainly in my experience have special correspondents had so hard or so ungrateful a task as that which has devolved upon us here. The country through which the army has marched has been barren and mountainous in the extreme. The actual events have been few and far between. There has been no opportunity for generals.h.i.+p or strategical movement. It has been one long, slow, monotonous march, accompanied with more or less hards.h.i.+p to all concerned. It has presented no points of comparison with the s.h.i.+fting scenes and exciting phases of a European campaign. It is only by its results, and by the remembrance of the hostile criticisms and lugubrious prophecies with which it was a.s.sailed in its early days, that we ourselves can judge of the difficulty of the task accomplished, and of the way in which the world will view it.

It has to us been simply a monotony of hard work and hard living. Until the last week of our march we had no excitement whatever to enliven it; and, as far as the incidents of the campaign have been concerned, there has been but little to recompense the British taxpayer for his outlay. In other respects there is no doubt that, worthless as were the set of people as a whole in whose favour this costly expedition has been undertaken, the money has been well spent. In no other way, with so comparatively small an outlay, could Great Britain have recovered the prestige which years of peace had undoubtedly much impaired both in Europe and the East. England has shown that she can go to war really for an idea; that she can embark in a war so difficult, hazardous, and costly, that no other European Power would have undertaken it under similar circ.u.mstances, and this, without the smallest idea of material advantage to herself. England had, _pace_ our French critics, no possible benefit to derive from the conquest or occupation of Abyssinia. With Aden and Perim in our power, the Red Sea is virtually an English lake, and the possession of Abyssinia, hundreds of miles from the port of Annesley Bay, which in itself is quite out of the track of vessels between Suez and Aden, would be a source of weakness rather than of additional strength. The war was undertaken purely from a generous national impulse, aggravated by the feeling that the captivity of our unfortunate countrymen was due to no fault of their own, but attributable to the gross blundering of the men to whom the foreign affairs of the nation were unfortunately intrusted. Our success has been astonis.h.i.+ng even to ourselves, and has been providentially accomplished in the face of blunders and mistakes which would have ruined any other expedition.

In my last letter I stated that Gobayze had declined to accept the charge of Magdala. It was consequently determined to burn it; and on the 18th ultimo fire was applied, and in a very short time the whole of the thatched tents were in a blaze. The wind was blowing freshly at the time, and in a few minutes the whole of the plateau of Magdala was covered with a fierce blaze, which told to the surrounding country for miles that the last act of atonement was being inflicted. Had the scene taken place at night, it would have been grand in the extreme; but even in broad day the effect of the sheet of flame, unclouded as it was by smoke-for the dry roofs burned like tinder-was very fine. Imagine a gigantic farmyard of three-quarters of a mile long by nearly half a mile wide, and containing above 300 hayricks, in a blaze; and the effect of burning Magdala may be readily conceived. Simultaneously with the conflagration the gates were blown up and the pieces of ordnance burst; and then the troops who had been told-off for the task retired from the scene of their signal success to join their comrades, and march the next day for the sea-sh.o.r.e. I started for Dalanta the day before the departure of the troops, and was very glad that I did so, as I thereby avoided the tremendous confusion of the baggage, part of which was nearly thirty hours upon the road, and witnessed one of the most extraordinary scenes I ever beheld. At the Bachelo river I came upon the van of the princ.i.p.al column of the fugitives from Magdala, who had encamped upon the previous night by the stream. Here the number of empty gourds, cooking-vessels, and rubbish of all kinds, showed that, scanty as their baggage was, it was already too great for their means of transport. A mile farther I came upon their rear. As far as the eye could reach up the winding path to the summit of the gorge, they swarmed in a thick gray mult.i.tude. Thirty thousand human beings, men, women, and children, besides innumerable animals of all kinds. Never, probably, since the great Exodus from Egypt, was so strange a sight witnessed. All were laden; for once, the men had to share the labours of their wives and families; and indeed I may say that the males of this portion of Abyssinia are less lazy, and more willing to bear their share of the family-labours, than were the men of Tigre, who, as I before mentioned, never condescend to a.s.sist their wives in any way. The men carried bags of grain-which, by the way, the men always carry on one shoulder, and not upon their backs as the women do; the women were similarly burdened, and in addition had gourds of water and ghee, with a child or two clinging round their necks. The children, too, carried their share of the household goods, all but the very little ones; and these, little, naked, pot-bellied things, trotted along holding by their mothers'

skirts. A few, who in the crowd and confusion had lost their friends, sat down and cried pitifully; but as a general thing they kept steadily up the steep ascent, which was trying enough to men, to say nothing of these poor little mites. Although an involuntary exodus, it did not appear to me to cause any pain or regret to anyone. Neither upon this occasion nor upon the day when they quitted Magdala did I see a tear shed, or witness any demonstrations of grief. Now, the Abyssinians are an extremely demonstrative people, and weep and wail copiously and obstreperously over the smallest fancied grievance; consequently, I cannot but think that the great proportion of the people were glad to leave Magdala, and to return to their respective countries. All pressed steadily forward; there was no halting, no delay, scarce a pause to take breath; for on their rear and flank, and sometimes in their very midst, were the robber Gallas plundering all whom they came across. I spoke of the Gallas in my last.

Since that time they have become even more bold and troublesome, and not a few have fallen in skirmishes with our troops. Soon after we had joined the body of fugitives, I heard screams and cries in front, and riding-in at a gallop with my friend, we came upon a number of natives in a state of great excitement, the women crying and wringing their hands. They pointed to a ravine, and made us understand that the Gallas were there. Riding up to it, we came upon a party of eight or ten men with spears and s.h.i.+elds driving off a couple of dozen oxen they had just stolen. Before they could recover from their surprise we were in their midst, and our revolvers soon sent them flying up the hill with two or three of their number wounded. We drove back the cattle, and were received with acclamations by the unfortunate but miserably cowardly natives, who could only with stones have kept their a.s.sailants at a distance, had they had the pluck of so many sheep. A few hundred yards further on we came upon another party of Gallas actively engaged in looting; and at the sight of us with our rifles and revolvers in hand, most of them fled; but we captured two of the robbers, who saw that throwing themselves upon their faces was the only chance of escape from being shot. We tied their hands behind them, and handed them over to our syces, who drove them before them until the end of the day, when we delivered them over to Colonel Graves of the 3d Cavalry, who was in command at Dalanta, and had the satisfaction of seeing them get two dozen lashes each, well laid on. After this skirmish, seeing numbers of Gallas hanging about, we const.i.tuted ourselves a sort of rearguard to the native column, and my double-barrelled rifle soon drove them to a distance, the long range at which it sent b.a.l.l.s into groups waiting for an opportunity of attack evidently astonis.h.i.+ng them greatly, and causing them to scatter in the greatest haste. I think it a question whether the Gallas or the Abyssinians are the greatest cowards. Two or three officers coming up later upon the same day had skirmishes with them, and three or four of the Gallas were killed. The natives encamped upon the plains of Dalanta, their black blanket-tents extending over a great extent of ground. The next day they crossed the Djedda, and after mounting to the table-land beyond, were safe from the attacks of the Gallas, and were able to pursue their way to Gondar, and the other places to which they belonged, in quiet.

On the 20th the whole of the troops were at Dalanta, and a grand parade took place. The troops marched past, and were then formed into hollow square, and the following order of the day was read to them:

"SOLDIERS OF THE ARMY OF ABYSSINIA,

"The Queen and the people of England intrusted to you a very arduous and difficult expedition-to release our countrymen from a long and painful captivity, and to vindicate the honour of our country, which had been outraged by Theodore, King of Abyssinia.

"I congratulate you, with all my heart, for the n.o.ble way in which you have fulfilled the commands of our Sovereign. You have crossed many steep and precipitous ranges of mountains, more than ten thousand feet in alt.i.tude, 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 pa.s.sed 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.

"You have captured and destroyed upwards of thirty pieces of artillery, many of great weight and efficiency, with ample stores of ammunition. You have stormed the almost-inaccessible fortress of Magdala, defended by Theodore with the desperate remnant of his chiefs and followers. After you forced the entrance, Theodore, who never showed mercy, distrusted the offers of mercy which had been held out to him, and died by his own hands.

You have released not only the British captives, but those of other friendly nations. You have unloosed the chains of more than ninety of the princ.i.p.al chiefs of the Abyssinians.

"Magdala, on which so many victims have been slaughtered, has been committed to the flames, and remains only a scorched rock.

"Our complete and rapid success is due-first, to the mercy of G.o.d, whose hand I feel a.s.sured has been over us in a just cause. Secondly, to the high spirit with which you have been inspired. 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 pa.s.s away quickly, but your gallant exploit will live in history. The Queen and the people of England will appreciate your services. On my part, as your commander, I thank you for your devotion to your duty, and the good discipline you have maintained; not a single complaint has been made against a soldier of fields injured or villages wilfully molested, in property or person.

"We must not forget what we owe to our comrades who have been labouring for us in the sultry climate of Zulla and the Pa.s.s of Koomaylo, or in the monotony of the posts which maintained our communications; each and all would have given all they possessed to be with us, and they deserve our grat.i.tude.

"I shall watch over your safety to the moment of your embarkation, and to the end of my life remember with pride that I have commanded you.

(Signed) R. NAPIER, Lieut.-general, Commander-in-chief.

(Signed) M. DILLON, Lieut.-colonel, Military Secretary."

The proclamation, if a little grandiose in style, is true to the letter.

The men have endured privation and toil such as seldom falls to a soldier's lot, with a good feeling and cheerfulness which has been literally beyond praise. The only occasions throughout this expedition upon which I have heard grumbling has been when the troops have been told by the quartermaster's department that they were to march a certain distance, and when the march turned out to be half as far again. But this grumbling was not against the distance or the toil, great as both were; it was against the incapacity which had inflicted an unnecessary toil upon them. At any necessary privation, at picket-duty in wet clothes after a hard day's march, at hunger and thirst, fatigue-duty, wet and cold, I never heard them grumble; and I feel a.s.sured that, as the general order says, the people of England will appreciate their toils and services. In one point at least they may be to some extent rewarded. Their pay here is exactly the same as they would have drawn in India; they have no field or other extra allowance whatever. Had the war taken place in India, the army would, most unquestionably, be granted a year's "batta," as a reward for their suffering and toil. In the present case the English Government holds the purse-strings, but I trust that this well-earned extra pay will be granted. It would form a comparatively small item in the expenses of the expedition, and the boon would be an act of graceful recognition on the part of the nation to the men who have borne its flag so successfully under the most arduous and trying circ.u.mstances.

After the reading of the general order, Sir Robert Napier handed over the rescued prisoners to the representatives of the Governments to which they belonged; and the general feeling of every one was, that we wished these officers joy of them, for a more unpromising-looking set could hardly be found anywhere else outside the walls of a prison. Sir Robert Napier, in handing these prisoners over, thanked the foreign officers for having accompanied the expedition, and for having shared in its toils and hards.h.i.+ps. The ceremony over, the last act of the Magdala drama may be considered to have terminated, and the army on the next day marched for the coast, the second brigade leading, and the first following a day in their rear. The interest of the campaign being now over, I determined to come on at full speed, instead of travelling at the necessary slow pace of the army with all its enc.u.mbrances of material and baggage. It is, too, vastly more pleasant to travel alone, the journeys are performed in two-thirds of the time, and without the dust, noise, and endless delays which take place in the baggage-train. 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 pa.s.s the night in tranquillity. The hyenas and jackals are, it is true, a little troublesome, and howl and cry incessantly about the canvas of our tent; but the noise of a hyena is as music compared to the coughing and groaning of a sick Hindoo; and so we do not grumble. We have a party of four, making, with our ten servants, syces, and mule-drivers, a pretty strong party; no undesirable thing, as the country is extremely disturbed all the way down. Convoys are constantly attacked, and the muleteers murdered; indeed, scarce a day pa.s.ses without an outrage of this kind. It is, perhaps, worst between Lat and Atzala; but beyond Antalo, and down even in the Sooro Pa.s.s, murders are almost daily events. The killing is not all on one side, for numbers of the natives have been shot by the guards of the convoys which they have attacked. The evil increases every day, and the Commander-in-chief has just issued a proclamation to the natives, which is to be translated into Amharic and circulated through the country, warning the people that the scouts have orders to fire upon any armed party they may meet, who do not, upon being called upon to do so, at once retire and leave the path clear.

The fact is, that, except at this point, we have not enough troops in the country to furnish guards of sufficient strength to protect the convoys. A great many very wise people have talked about our force being too large.

At the present moment it is actually insufficient for our needs, insufficient to protect our convoys even against the comparatively few robbers and brigands who now infest the line. A convoy of a thousand animals extends over a very long tract of country; three or four miles at the least. What can a dozen or so guards do to protect it? An instance occurred to-day within three miles of this place. A convoy of a thousand camels were coming along; the guards were scattered over its length; and a man in the middle of the convoy was murdered by three or four Abyssinians, whom the soldiers, who had gone on, had noticed sitting quietly on some rocks at a few yards from the line of march. The soldiers behind heard a cry, and rode up, only in time to find the muleteer lying dead, and his murderers escaped. When the robbers are in force, and attempt to plunder openly, they are invariably beaten.

The other day Lieutenant Holt was in command of a train with treasure for Ashangi, having a guard of ten Sepoys. He was attacked by a band of fifty or sixty men, who came up twice to the a.s.sault, but were driven off, leaving three of their number dead upon the ground. These cases are not exceptional; they are of daily occurrence, and are rapidly upon the increase. It is greatly to be regretted; but it was to be foreseen from the course of conduct pursued in the first instance towards men caught robbing in the Sooro Pa.s.s. I predicted at the time of my first visit to Senafe, early in December last, what must be the inevitable result of the course pursued to the men caught pillaging. They were kept in the guard-house for a day or two, fed better than they had ever before been in their lives, and then dismissed to steal again, and to encourage their companions in stealing, believing that we were too weak and too pusillanimous to dare to punish them. And so it has been ever since. In the eyes of our political officers a native could do no harm. Any punishment which has been inflicted upon them has been given by regimental officers, or officers of the transport-train, who have caught them robbing. And even this moderate quota of justice was rendered at the peril of the judges. Lieutenant Story, 26th regiment, a most energetic officer of the transport-train-to give one example out of a score-found that at one of the stations the natives who were anxious to come in to sell gra.s.s and grain were driven away by two chiefs, who openly beat and ill-treated those who persisted in endeavouring to sell to us. The result was, that the natives kept away, and only a few ventured in at night to sell their stores. Lieutenant Story found that his mules were starving, and very properly caught the two chiefs, and gave them half-a-dozen each. The chiefs reported the case; the mild "politicals" as usual had their way; and Lieutenant Story was summarily removed from the transport-train.

I mentioned in a former letter the case of the mule-driver who wrested the musket from a man who was attempting to rob the mules, and shot him with his own weapon, and who was rewarded for his gallantry by having a dozen lashes. I could fill a column with similar instances. Had we had the good fortune to have had a man of decision and energy as our political officer instead of Colonel Merewether, all this would have been avoided. The first man caught with arms in his hands attacking and plundering our convoys should have been tried and shot; it is what he would have received at the hands of the native chiefs; and it would have put a stop to the brigandage. Instead of which, the policy-if such pottering can be termed policy-has been to encourage them, by every means in our power, to plunder our convoys and murder our drivers and men. A stern policy with savages is, in the end, infinitely the more merciful one. A couple of lives at first would have saved fifty, which have already on both sides been sacrificed, and a hundred more, which will be probably lost before we are out of the country. Sir R. Napier, now that he has taken the reins into his own hands, is fully alive to the error that has been committed, and to the absolute necessity of showing no more leniency to the robber-bands which begin to swarm around us. It is most unfortunate that the early stages of our intercourse with the natives had not been intrusted to a man of firmness and sound sense. With the repeated caution of the officers at the various stations in our ears, and with the accounts we received at almost every halting-place of some attack and murder in the neighbourhood within a day or two of our arrival, it may be imagined that we took every precaution. Our servants were all armed with spears, our mules were kept in close file, and two of us rode in front, two in the rear of our party, with our rifles c.o.c.ked, and our revolvers ready to hand. As we antic.i.p.ated, we were not attacked; for, as a general rule, the cowardly robbers, however numerous, will not attack when they see a prospect of a stout resistance. Our precautions were not, however, in vain; for we knew that at least in one case we should have been attacked had we not been so palpably upon our guard. On the brow of the hill above Atzala we pa.s.sed without seeing a single native; but looking back after we had gone three or four hundred yards, we saw a party of fifty or sixty men armed with spears and s.h.i.+elds, get up from among some bushes and rocks by the roadside and make off. There is no doubt that, had we not been prepared, we should have been attacked, and probably murdered. For the remainder of our journey there is little danger. The looting, indeed, continues all down the line; but the country is open and bare, and the natives would never dream of attacking in the open.