for a mile through the shallow water on the reefs, its course marked by the contrast between its deep blue and the varying pearly tints of the reef shallows. The regularity of the canal

is astonishing when one remembers that it is purely natural, and not a river but an inlet of the sea. Then the reefs are replaced by low-lying land of yellow coral rock. We pass the tombs of shêkhs, cubical or domed, each with its set of tattered flags which are presented at intervals by the pious. Before us the harbour expands slightly and the canal forks; an island thus formed bears a solid mass of tall and graceful white houses, beneath which, to the right, cluster the short sloping masts of native vessels; beyond all, over the sunlit plain, the mountains. I know no other town which can compare with Suakin in the fair white dignity which it shews to one approaching. It is the realisation of one’s romantic image of an Arabian desert town. No higher praise could be given than by saying that this fair view of Suakin may replace and enlarge the image of our romantic dreams, and yet I give this praise deliberately, careless of contradiction.

Suakin is indeed a long way from being a city of palaces, as its residents know full well. There are no cathedral mosques, no citadel like that of Cairo. The buildings which made our view of fairyland include quite prosaic offices of the Bank, Quarantine, Eastern Telegraph, the Government House and the Customs. The rest are private houses occupied by very ordinary persons, Arab merchants and so on. All are either Arab buildings slightly adapted to their modern uses, or built by Arab architects in their own style. I suppose Suakin owes its fascination largely to its site. The houses appear so high and graceful, rising as they do directly from the water’s edge or from land only a foot or two above that level. Then the two branches of the harbour enclose it and render its boundary definite and compact, no straggling into dingy suburbs, on this side at least, and yet no hiding of the true town behind walls. Frankly, complete and self-contained, calmly the town faces the never-ruffled waters of its harbour, and looks over the great plain towards mountains and sea. Jedda, by comparison, is a finer and larger town, with more of architectural beauty, and also purely Arabian, but it is on the open shore, so lacking the ordered approach, the definiteness of site of Suakin, lying in its arms of the sea.

Plate IV

We do not expect much noise of traffic in the city of our fairyland, nor much display in the public buildings of our desert city. True this ancient and religious city is full of white-washed mosques, and of domes over the tombs of shêkhs, but their minarets are often no higher than the surrounding houses, and marble pillars give place to painted wood, but the minarets, short and free from carving and other ornament though they be, are quaintly graceful; they are neither Turkish nor Egyptian, but purely Arabian in design (Plate IV)[7]. One would not wish to alter the stern yet peacegiving simplicity of the places where generations of men of the desert and sea have prayed, for the more ornate buildings of richer lands.

Well do I remember waking at sunrise after a night spent under the stars on a flat house-roof, to a scene of beauty that does much to reconcile me to the monotony and loneliness of exile in Suakin, and help me to bear the terrible heat of summer days. Sunrise over the sea, a great blaze of gold following the pearly pinks which made the sky like the inside of a lovely shell. Houses and mosques purest white, no stain shewing in that fresh light. Over the grey plain I cannot tell whether what I see is mere gravel or a layer of grey morning mist, from which rise the deep red foot-hills, and beyond are the high mountains in perfect clearness, first purple then ruddy, all detail visible, yet with no loss of aerial perspective. From the harbour below come the voices of sailors, “Al-lah, Al-lah” is the word distinct among the babel as they call upon God and His Prophet for help in the task in hand. But one who has come in from a sojourn of weeks in the desert rests his eye with infinite pleasure on a spot in the near distance, the oasis of Shâta, where, just beyond the embankment between two of the forts which were built to keep Suakin from the dervishes, the tops of green trees nestle. One promises oneself a walk out there to the trees and gardens in the afternoon, when it is not cool indeed, but still a little cooler. Meanwhile though the sun has risen not half an hour it is scorching already, and one must seek shelter from it and prepare for the day’s work.

A history of Suakin would be worth reading, but it remains mostly unwritten; though since the times of Gordon it might be extracted from reports and newspapers. Gordon was once Governor-General of the Red Sea, and the “Mudiria,” or Government House of Suakin, was his official headquarters. Traces of the railway begun for his relief in Khartûm, but never finished, the outlying forts once attacked by dervish fanatics, are within easy reach, and the nearer ones for the defence of the Shâta Wells and the town itself are close at hand. Even the rifle trenches, the barbed wire entanglements and such temporary defences, though nothing has been done for their preservation, are still present to shew how near, in Suakin, we are to those famous fights.

Plate V

Plate VI

CHAPTER II
SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS

Three perfectly distinct nationalities have representatives on this coast[8]. Besides the natives proper there are true Arabs from the other side of the Red Sea, and negroes, who are slaves or the descendants of slaves brought over the mountains from the upper Nile valley.

The true natives are called, and call themselves, Arabs, and many of them speak Arabic. For all that they are no more Arabs than they are Europeans, being of Hamitic not of Semitic race, allied to the ancient Egyptians and far less mingled with Arab blood than are the so-called “Arabs” of Modern Egypt[9].

This western shore being altogether too poor a country for the evolution of real sea-going vessels, and the Arabs of the eastern side being one of the first of the sailor and exploring nations of the world, it is no wonder that all the traffic of the Red Sea is carried out by Arabs, and that Arabs are to be found in every village of the coast. Besides the sailors they supply the shop-keepers, merchants and skilled artisans, and nowadays many come over to work as labourers in Port Sudan. The two types, Hamitic natives and Semitic Arabs, can therefore be seen together and contrasted very easily. (Compare Figs. 11, 12 and 13 on Plate VII and Fig. 10.) Apart from dress the following important physical differences are obvious at first sight. The West Coast man is generally the taller, much darker in colour, and with smaller features, especially a smaller and straighter nose. He is as often “good looking” as is the Arab, and that perhaps, is the most generally appreciable difference between him and the negro. In contrast with the Arab his hair is a “fuzzy” mop not jet black[10] nor merely curly. His beard[11] is scantier, though to both it is the most precious of personal beauties. Mentally, though many are very intelligent, he is the inferior of the Arab who has occupied all the skilled trades in the country, but he is the superior again of the negro. It is however debateable whether this effect may not be partly due to the civilisation of a more populous and richer country having brought out the capabilities of those Arabs who possess any.

Plate VII

I have had closer personal acquaintance, than is generally possible to an Englishman, with more than fifty natives, and know the character and capabilities of each individual among them. Some are intelligent, some stupid, varying extremely, just as much as a corresponding number of English labourers. On the whole I should think too that they vary between much the same limits. Our chief sailor, an Arab, is not far ahead of the best of the natives, and Arabs I have met are often as stupid as the less intelligent of the latter.

The negroes are quite distinct. To begin with they are black, not merely chocolate brown, with a blackness that hardly admits of shades, and differ from the other races in all the well-known negro characteristics, such as shape of nose and lips, poor development of calf, and the curious way the hair grows in little patches.

We thus have every possible shade of colour between yellow and densest black. The Arab merchant or teacher, who rarely exposes himself to the sun, is hardly dark enough to be called brown, but his poorer brethren become darker, those who labour much in the sun being as dark as the lighter Hamites. These vary down to the darkest chocolate, and then we have the negroes. I well remember my introduction to three new sailors who had been engaged for me in Port Sudan. There appeared a huge negro, coal black, a giant with a gentle voice, and on either side of him a little yellow Arab, like two canary birds hand in hand with a crow.

Socially, the negroes come lowest in the scale; even if slaves no longer, they are treated as complete outsiders in all affairs, and in general with a kindly contempt. I notice for instance that when the villagers go fishing two by two in their canoes negroes pair off together, never Hamite and negro in one canoe. At the same time the headman of a larger sailing vessel always wishes to include a few negroes in his crew, their honesty and tractability, combined with great strength, being qualities which counterbalance dislike to close contact with them in a cramped space.

Intermarriage between Hamite and negro must be rare, as I have met no case[12]. If the village contains no negro women, the male negro must remain unmarried, and no regular marriage between a Hamite man and a black woman has come under my observation, though this union is the more likely to occur. Exceptional men from among them have always risen at intervals, and the British rule, in giving a greater equality of opportunity to all races, will cause more negroes to come to the front. There is some intermingling between the two first races, as Arab sailors are not different from others in liking to have a wife in every port, but it is not at all extensive. The Arabs form no permanent settlement on the coast, the sailor classes at least rarely or never bringing over their women, and the merchants save money to end their days at home. Labourers and sailors will only contract for limited periods; they are soon homesick and go off with their savings for so long as the latter will last. Of the Arabs in my employ only one has settled down and taken a wife on this side. While the native sailor is always in debt and scarcely able to live on his wages (whether £2 a month or £3, it is all the same in many cases) I was astonished at one Arab who kept coming to me and handing over money for safe keeping until I had £5 or so besides what other savings he had. Having accumulated this fortune he gave me a month’s notice and went off to his own country, returning and saving when that was spent. One of my men who was getting the magnificent wages of £4 a month brought his old father-in-law over, but the suggestion that he should also bring his wife and settle down in the house I promised to build for him was met simply by the regretful statement, “It is not our custom to bring our women over the sea.” He has so lost the best job he is likely to find in the Red Sea, for soon after he declared he could no longer stand being away from his own people and returned home.

In my village at least there is a strong prejudice against such marriages, and the above is the reason. Among less than a hundred families I know of two cases where a daughter has married an Arab and been left with a young family to support, with her father’s and brothers’ assistance. Naturally that makes the Arab distinctly unpopular as a son-in-law.

The negroes, being a minority and, though permanent residents, not natives of the country, I have less to say of them and so dispose of them first.

I have already referred to their comparatively industrious and frugal habits, and to their subordination. These qualities are less romantic than are the desert restlessness and blood feuds of the Hamites, but they endear them to the administrator, whether of justice or of work.

In manner some are undignified, just “jolly niggers,” but others have as good a bearing as any Arab.

They have all been slaves, some to within a year or two, their histories demonstrating the efficacy of the government’s repression of slave dealing, even within the country, and in the second and third of the cases I give, the proof is striking.

Several have very similar stories. They remember little of their capture, in remote provinces of the Sudan, as all were then boys of ten or twelve at most. One remembers that his father was killed. Four practically began life in Jedda, where they were first set to tend camels, then sent with the pearling fleet up and down the coast, even as far as Aden and Jibûti, in French Somaliland. At this time several formed friendships which induced them to foregather in my village when they were free.

After years in the pearling fleet, three were sold in Suakin to “Arabs” of the Atbara district, many miles inland, over the mountains and desert, towards Berber. A fourth reached the same tribe by a more adventurous way. Peacefully tending camels for his master near Handûb, in the Red Sea hills, in ignorance of the vicinity of war, he suddenly found himself in the midst of battle[13], and, after receiving a stray bullet through the leg, was carried off by Osman Digna’s dervishes in their flight to Tokar.

After the capture of Tokar in 1891, this being the conclusion of the war on the Red Sea coast, he was sold to pearlers from Masawa, finally, at Suakin, to the tribe from the Atbara.

Two others, who had been born in the service of one master in the above-mentioned district, are here. One explained his presence, across hundreds of miles of desert and the Red Sea mountains, by stating that he had heard that his “brother” was doing well in Suakin. There was no romantic desert flight, he took the train near Berber, with his master’s concurrence, possibly with his assistance also. His owner had said simply, “I have all the slaves I can manage, go or stay as you like.” Such a permission, given freely to two slaves of the most valuable kind, about thirty years old, of powerful physique, intelligent, docile and industrious, is emphatic evidence of the impossibility of sale nowadays. If a secret sale could have been effected, the sacrifice would have been too great, even for an old man anxious to lay up treasure in Heaven.

It is strange enough to find in this tiny village on the edge of the world, men from Darfur and the sources of the Nile, but we have even a Swahili from Zanzibar. Old Mabrûk’s life has been far from that of the “Blessed One” his name signifies. He was kidnapped when a boy of ten or twelve, in the days of old Sultan Bargash, away from the island of plenty, to spend the rest of his days on desert coasts. The old ruse, of offering him some coppers to carry a parcel aboard a sambûk, started him on the journey from which he never returned. He found himself with “two hundred” others beating up desert coasts for “seven months[14],” through the Gate of Tears into the Red Sea, to Hodêda, and thence to Jedda. There they were thrust into a tiny house by the sea (here Mabrûk indicated my bookshelf as approximately the size of the house!) and sold a few at a time at night.

Plate VIII

After a year in Jedda he was sent in a sambûk loaded with camels to Suakin, where he obtained his liberty, he scarcely knows how. He was employed aboard a sambûk used by Government to convey money and stores to its employés at the three coast villages, and in the course of time his son was with him as his fellow-sailor. One night, while in fancied security in a desert harbour, they were set upon by “forty” Arabians, who took them, the Government money, stores, and all, to Jedda. Here he was a slave again, working at collecting fodder in a state of semi-starvation. Two others of the crew had escaped in the night; the rest, including his son, were taken inland and he never saw them again. His skipper, being a freeman, a Hamite not a negro, was not enslaved, but was an exile, until an acquaintance from this side found him and took him home to Suakin. The portrait of this veteran is shewn on Plate X.

After three months came his great adventure, his crossing the whole Red Sea in a stolen canoe, a mere dug-out about fifteen feet long by a little over two broad. This feat is part of one of the stories of Saint Flea (page 37) and seemed legendary until Mabrûk appeared, a man who had done it in actual life, and whose canoe is in sight from my window.

Like the saint he had no store of food and but little water; it was dead calm, and only those who have been exposed to the Red Sea sun can appreciate the wonder of his endurance, in paddling for eight days, and of his good fortune in landing at the only village in three hundred miles of coast. The present Governor of the Red Sea Province, being on a tour of inspection, revived the half dead man with wine, food, and water, and sent him on to Suakin, where the “Pasha” gave him three months’ pay and offered him work on another sambûk. He was tired of the sea, and preferred to wander up the coast in his stolen canoe, gaining a precarious living by fishing.

The old man’s misfortunes have left him some humour yet, he chuckles delightedly at the idea of his secure and honourable possession of the stolen canoe, forgetting the suffering with which he paid for it, and how near he was to death by thirst, or more mercifully, by the waves of the sea.

Another, who was skipper of a coasting vessel until he went blind lately, and whose portrait is on Plate VII, was stolen in Kordofan when a boy, and taken to Cairo, where shopping with the cook is all the hard labour he remembers. Then his master, in pious mood, gave him his paper of freedom, “for the sake of our Lord.” This happened at Suez, which led the freedman to the life on merchant and pearling sambûks which he has followed since, and which has thrice taken him as far as Basra on the Euphrates.

It was at Aden he heard that money was to be had in vast quantities by labourers, in the making of the new town of Port Sudan, and there he was engaged for me as ordinary sailor by the Arabian skipper of my little schooner, who once had been his cabin boy or midshipman, or whatever the equivalent may be aboard a sambûk!

From what I gather, this is the first time he has spent more than a year in one place, or had a hut he could call his own, though his beard is going grey.

After a few years’ service in my vessels he went blind, and is reduced to living on charity, for once well deserved. Even this was not his only trouble, for the Hamites wished to take away his baby son, to be brought up as a slave, denying his paternity. This may, we hope, be prevented.

Having placed our man among the other nationalities in the country, we want to know what he is like to meet and to deal with, how he spends his time and gets his living, what he thinks about, and how this reacts upon his actions, in short, what kind of a man he is.

Plate IX

I may say at once, that my experience has quite shaken my belief (if I ever held it) in the usual notion that:

The great mysteries of the East are the mysteries of all humanity, and as you may scratch the Russian and find a Tartar, so you may scratch an “Eastern” and find,—just a man, much like the rest of us.

When we meet our friend we generally see a tall, well-made man, light in build but strong and active, often good-looking, with a pleasant and self-respecting expression. He may rise as we pass, to shew respect, but offers no salutation unless his superior should salute first. If we speak to him he will address us respectfully, yet as an equal, first shaking hands as he would to one of his own nation. If he is not a very poor man, or engaged in manual labour, he is probably much more gracefully dressed than we are, in the folds of yards of calico looped about his person, leaving arms and neck free. True his hair, a great fuzzy mop, plastered with mutton fat, looks a trifle ridiculous and even unclean, but Burton e.g. has, after experience, much to say in favour of a free use of grease in a tropical climate. Or he may wear a turban, which appears more dignified to European eyes, being more familiar.

He displays his freedom, his membership of a desert community, not only by his self-reliant look, but by his always carrying arms. As we meet him, his camel has been tethered[15] before the shop where he is obtaining provisions, and his sword, shield, or spear given into the merchant’s keeping, our mountaineer retaining only a dagger, stuck into a loose heavy leather belt, or having its sheath bound round his arm, just above the elbow. The former dagger is generally a curved blade nine inches or so long, the latter a small broad dagger with a plain round handle. The sheaths are very ornamental, bearing embossed patterns and strips of green leather among the brown.

Neither is he anything but proud of the evidences of his religion and superstitions. There may be a circular patch of dust in the middle of his forehead, where he touched the ground, bowing in prayer, and his amulets, paper charms wrapped up in little square leather cases worn as a necklace, or, more often, tied round the arm immediately above the elbow, and his string of prayer beads, are his principal ornaments. He may wear a ring or two, on his fingers, and a narrow band round his arm, both of silver, while a thin curved skewer, of hard wood or ibex horn, thrust through his hair, completes his adornment.

In conversation we find him generally intelligent, rarely surly or ill-behaved. Having self-respect himself he appreciates and returns politeness, and is not so foolish as to interpret it as weakness. In travelling through the desert any dusty old man will expect you to give a friendly greeting, and the news, and smile upon you as a friend. Unfortunately the language is rather a stumbling-block, as many natives are not fluent in Arabic, and few British know the Hamitic speech. However, for a friendly salutation Arabic (or perhaps any language!) will suffice anywhere.

An introduction to a woman is not so easily arranged. Though the women are only partially secluded, and are not veiled, even if one knows the husband, sons, and brothers of a family quite well, the women shew a distinct reserve. One knows their character largely through complaints brought by their husbands, for not only does the British lord of a desert village become their father in name, but he is dragged at intervals into the consideration of intimate family concerns. Also in no country can “Cherchez la femme” be a better motto for investigating any dispute. They appear in the background of every lawsuit and complaint, even if it at first seems to concern men alone, and when men would let a doubtful claim go by, it is the women who insist on their rights, as keenly on fancied as on real, and send their men before the magistrate.

Plate X

In person they are rather slight, and well made like the men. In accordance with their more sheltered life they are lighter in colour, and their dress and ornaments are altogether different, for instance the hair is plaited into a number of tight little tails, and the fat which is rubbed in is mixed with soot. It is nearly long enough to reach their shoulders, and is decorated with strings of beads and thin plates of gold. Sometimes these are in quite good taste, in other cases the effect is merely barbaric. Though the men dress in white only (a white which speedily becomes the general tint of the desert), the women practically always wear coloured cotton stuff. Dark blue with a red and yellow border is common, but the fashion now in my village is for a red stuff with yellow threads interwoven. Two pieces make the complete outfit, one being tied round the waist reaches the feet, the other is laid shawl fashion about the shoulders, and, in the case of married women, over the head as well. The women are not veiled, but on meeting a white man they generally draw part of their garment over their mouths.

Their ornaments consist of strings of beads round neck and waist, silver rings for fingers and ankles, and, if possible, gold (or gilt) ornaments for nose and ears.

I give illustrations of some of the ornaments on Plate X; note the curious ring, stalked to display its stone, which may be mere coloured glass or such a stone as cornelian. The nose ring must be a trying discomfort. It is often my fate to administer medicine, and, before drinking, the nose ring must be pushed aside, and held so, I suppose, whenever anything is put to the mouth. The ankles bear large scars made by the friction of the rings when they were first worn.

They are just as good-looking and intelligent as their husbands, and young women and girls are often very pretty, the former in spite of their nose rings. But the circumstances of their lives often give the older women a hard expression, though I know of old women living in the most abject poverty who remain models of genial good-nature.

The fact that the northern[16] and southern tribes, otherwise of similar customs and beliefs, differ altogether in such a fundamental matter as female morality, is instructive. In the south a girl who became pregnant illegitimately would run a great risk of death at the hands of her relatives, in the north it would be easily condoned. Not only so, but a woman is the more valued by her husband if she gives proof of her attractiveness to other men, even by adultery; he has no resentment against his wife, his honour being satisfied by an attack with his dagger on the first meeting with his rival.

The explanation that suggests itself is that the lesser rainfall of the north, making the country able to support but a sparse population, necessitates a greater restriction of the natural increase than in the more habitable south. In the northern deserts war is unknown, pestilence cannot flame from end to end of so scattered a people, and local famines can be more or less avoided by nomads, the men of whom are so inured to hard fare as to be able to travel for days on dry uncooked “dûra” corn alone. Hence the postponement of marriage which, combined with oriental licence, brings about the result with equal certainty, and greater misery, than do that awful trinity, War, Pestilence, and Famine.

The women may easily excuse themselves to the western critic by asking why they should be faithful to a contract in the making of which they had no voice, and sexual immorality cannot here be condemned as a sin against the race as it is in the West.

In spite of the use of weapons, in private or in tribal quarrels, examples of which I describe later, I consider no really lawless or unintelligent race could have built up, and maintained, the administration they have, under the circumstances of desert life. They are elaborately subdivided into tribes and family groups under Shêkhs[17], of superior and subordinate ranks, whose decisions they respect as a rule. The Government has found the system workable, and on the whole confines its attention to perfecting and supplementing it where necessary. Cases brought before a magistrate are often, after hearing, referred back to a Shêkh, whose decision is, if necessary, backed up by the Civil Power. No Englishman need carry any arms in living in or passing through their country, and, at least in the north, he need have no fear of theft. They are perfectly contented with the Government and respect all its agents, pay their taxes and obey the decisions of either magistrates or their own Shêkhs. They have a lively recollection of the Mahdist General, Osman Digna, and their gratitude for, and jubilation over his downfall is still expressed in ordinary conversation. I had polite enquiries for him the other day, with remarks on the impoverishment of the country which he caused. I fear my sailor was disappointed to hear that he was not yet dead. Osman Digna’s men, “fuzzies” though they were, were either foreigners brought into the country and living upon its already poor inhabitants, or conscripts taken more or less by force. In any case there was very little fighting so far north as my station.

Arms, though but rarely used, are regarded as indispensable, and no native goes a mile or two away from the towns unarmed. A leather belt, generally a very broad heavy affair, ornamented with patterns cut into it, carries the typical curved knife or “khangar[18]”; or a straight dagger may be carried in a sheath which is tied round the arm immediately above the elbow. One of these together with a very hard heavy stick, slightly curved, and not used as a walking-stick, is the ordinary man’s equipment, but if he goes on a journey he takes as well a round leather shield and long sword or a spear. If afoot he carries the former on his back, the sword under his arm like an umbrella. Perhaps the fact that he does not carry them after the style of the hero of romance only emphasises the fact that they are carried as a matter of sober business. The wounds that I have dealt with have been mere flesh wounds and apparently had been inflicted with the curved khangar, which seems beautifully adapted to give showy wounds without going so deep as to endanger life. In two cases, the jugular or carotid had been aimed at, but missed, though the great angular gash resulting was a sufficiently disgusting sight. Almost all the natives one meets have great scars and the reasons they give for them are generally “only a little talk,” but of course women are concerned with most. Trivial private quarrels have a way of becoming inter-tribal in our neighbourhood, as we are on the boundary between the Bisharia and Amarar. For instance two of the more serious cases which have come about during my residence here arose as follows:

A man drawing water for his camels fell into the well and another laughed at him. Unfortunately the two men were of different tribes and a fight resulted, one man was knocked senseless by a blow given end-on by one of their thick and heavy sticks, and two more were badly cut about with knives. The former was expected to die at any moment, and his death would confer on his relatives the right and duty of killing the murderer, or, failing him, his next of kin. They declared their intention, as soon as the man should die, of coming for two of my employés, who were related to the murderer but who had been at work with me during the fight, so I was appealed to. I proposed to send the threatened men away by boat, but to pass the reefs by night was a difficulty. All the head boat men declared it impossible and declined the risk except one, the younger and more adventurous, who took them through and has gloried in the feat since.

Plate XI

There was some danger of a general fight between the two tribes, but a third and impartial set came down from the hills to keep the peace. Next day came requests that we should dress the wounds. So, my wife accompanying me, we rode out to a tent among the trees, in the dark depths of which we found two savage half-witted looking men stolidly sitting sniffing onion and spices with which their noses were plugged to prevent them inhaling any possible odour of their wounds. Each had three or four cuts about six or eight inches long and one to two deep. I tried more or less to close up the edges of the cuts in one man’s back, which would have caused great pain to a white man; if I hurt this one at all he only shewed it by laughing. We were far from laughter in that dark and smelling tent and glad to get under way again. We were then led to the house of the dying man and found a tent among the acacia bushes surrounded by a semicircle of men sitting silently to await what might befall, every man fully armed with swords, daggers and spears, apparently ready to wreak vengeance the moment the victim should die. We found the man sitting in the middle of the tent, a roughly circular hole in his forehead exposing the pulsating brain. We could do nothing for him; it would have been no use suggesting sending him to Port Sudan hospital, though that might have saved his life. Of course the man was completely unconscious, his sitting up was explained by the fact that he remained in any position in which he might be placed. It was more than a week before he died and meanwhile the murderer had gone into the country of another tribe. For the present he is safe, but should he return without the blood money his life is forfeit. It is usual for a murderer to collect say £10 from the charitable, the payment of which to the next of kin to the murdered man may be the condition of peace between them. One imagines him on his tramp repeating, “I am a poor man and having committed a murder, a most worthy object of your charity. Give me a little towards the blood money.” It seems an easy way of settling for a murder, but five to ten years’ exile as a beggar in another tribe must be a very serious thing for these family-loving people. It is at any rate less barbarous than that horror of civilisation, penal servitude for life. It is one of those cases where the ends of justice are well served by the Government’s policy of leaving, under supervision, whatever of administration can justly be left to the natural rulers of these wanderers among inaccessible mountains.

In this particular case I hear the avengers are implacable, no mediation will induce them to accept blood money, they must have the murderer’s life.

Another quarrel arose from a debt of one shilling only, the debtor refusing to pay. The creditor came to complain to me when I was busy in my office and I put him off awhile. He came again and said something about somebody striking him. I said I would see about it directly. Five minutes later on going out I found four men sitting on the sand each in a little pool of blood, and a crowd waving sticks coming up from the village. The first thing was to meet the crowd and make my men take possession of all the sticks and knives and throw them into my store, but such was the excitement that some would part with their stick to no one but myself. This done I spent two hours bandaging the wounds of those four men. I suppose there would be sixteen cuts altogether. None made the smallest sign of pain. One, a boy of about eighteen, who had lost a good deal of blood through the severing of a vein, looked rather sleepy. We hope soon to be too civilised for these scenes and nowadays the carrying of knives in the village, except in the case of men actually coming in from or starting out upon a journey, is being punished by the confiscation of the knife, and fighting otherwise discouraged.

Just as their system of Government is patriarchal, so also the junior members of their community treat each other with a consideration and good nature one would be glad to see more of, among blood-brothers in other lands. They work together with invariable good humour, an extra man never shirking his share of work, but often insisting that his turn at the oar, e.g., is due before his fellow is willing to give it up. Heavy labour is accompanied by song and invocations of God and the Prophet, and work in a big, noisy crowd, is one of the pleasures of life. I remember once when timber was being unloaded from a sambûk, work continued after hours, but a suitable song being started, and extra men being put on, turned the whole thing into a game; as each man threw down his load he dashed back along the pier at a dancing run, to receive another plank with the eagerness a child shews over sweets. There is nothing very inspiriting in the songs as a rule, mere vain repetitions such as:

Who Moses was I have not discovered, except that it is not the prophet but another of that name.

was sung at about six o’clock in the morning!

This makes them extremely pleasant to work with, and though among a number of employés disputes necessarily occur, and slackness has to be rebuked, I do not feel that I should get more work from members of a “superior” race, and I doubt whether I should be able to be on the same friendly footing with them. In intelligence they vary widely, just as do members of any other nationality or any class, and while some are only at the level of European labourers and factory hands, others could be trained to become good rough carpenters and blacksmiths, while a man capable of managing a boat well, through all the chances and intricacies of a ten days’ voyage, and able to preserve discipline among his crew, shews skill and intelligence of no mean order.

From what has been said so far, one would imagine social conditions to be almost Utopian, but just as the Mohammedan religion is admirable from one aspect, and a degradation from another, so the patriarchal system, which breeds self-reliance with subordination, tribal patriotism and consideration for fellows, also produces a strength of public opinion, which, coupled with the absence of privacy inseparable from life in small communities of overcrowded and unfenced tents, becomes a grinding ever present tyranny. The action of any more clear-sighted man who should arise among them would thus be instantly and automatically extinguished, superstition is stereotyped, a man’s life is hedged in with restrictions, which are absurd because the meanings they have had are now utterly forgotten[19]. There is nothing more unfortunate than the great idea many British express, of the wonderful knowledge the “Arabs” possess, which is held to transcend all that mere western methods can ever discover. Put to the test, by a careful examination of the working of their own particular interests, say camel breeding and pearl fishing, this wonderful science all falls down to rule of thumb, coupled with that sublime assurance in making unfounded assertions which is the prerogative of the very ignorant. A year or two’s acquaintance with either industry will put a careful observer into possession of more knowledge than has been accumulated from hoary ages of rule of thumb and the lazy theorising which is the parent of all superstition.

Again, the fearful loss caused by the absence of love, with its concomitant immorality and suffering, is largely due to the levelling down which results from the tyranny of public opinion. The partnership of man and woman which, in our ideal, is closer than any other, is impossible under their conditions of life, which make privacy and individuality so difficult, and men are not the more eager to marry, where that involves coming even further under the fetters of custom, and the giving of all the wife’s relatives, as well as those of blood, a voice in their private affairs.

One symptom of this state of things is the fact that a married woman is often more loyal to her brothers than to her husband, and it is a common complaint that she is supporting able-bodied brothers in idleness, on her husband’s earnings, without his leave and, so far as possible, without his knowledge.

I believe that in this all powerful patriarchal rule we touch upon a cause of much of the difference, for good or evil, between East and West, the stagnation of the East generally as well as the all powerful solidarity of Japan.

Of the Mohammedan religion the same may be said. It is attractive to most of those who approach it with any sympathy, to whom a religion for men, the ideal of proud yet ready submission to Almighty God, set forth by a ritual hardly surpassed in dignity by any, must appeal strongly. Yet here again is the tyranny of dead customs, the awful, blinding influence of Bibliolatry. Everything that was knowable was spoken to the Prophet by the messenger of God Himself, and to add to, or subtract from that knowledge, is sin. The customs and ideas of a provincial town, in the middle of desert Arabia, thus become unalterable laws for all the world, and those who will not acknowledge this are infidels, damned to the wrath of God.

In this atmosphere all advance in knowledge, all testing of theories by experiment, is mere foolishness, and though the infidel, whom the mysterious will of God has placed over them, may be their Friend and Father when all is well, let but some trifling incident pit his knowledge against theirs, and he will find that he is no longer the light shining in a dark place that he fondly imagined, but a mere ignorant meddler in matters that are too high for him; his poor “savage” children are the elect, the possessors of light and infallible guidance, he is in the darkness, groping among the beggarly elements, and occupying himself with ridiculous trifles. Very annoying indeed, and very trying to the temper of His Excellency, the British Magistrate, is it to have this fact rubbed in by personal experience, but it has a fine educative value. Even when he comes home, and studies the social problems of Britain, he will soon meet and be thwarted by members of his own nation who have all the essential characteristics of the typical Eastern, though clothed in different ideas, and will find that East and West not only meet, but inextricably intermingle.

In theory the often ridiculous miracle stories of Mohammedanism are non-essentials, in practice they impress the average believer far more than do the high religious moral ideals which are set forth with, and by, them. We must guard against thinking that our dark friends’ morality and actions are much influenced by his formal religion, it is only the general tendency, falling in as it does with his social ideas, which has any influence.

CHAPTER III
RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES AND SUPERSTITIONS

Just as “Inshaallah,” literally meaning “If God wills,” is really to be translated by a plain “Perhaps,” so this habitual use of the phraseology and ordinances of religion, instead of indicating a living ever present influence, is here, as everywhere, the mark of easy formalism[20].

Only in the higher peoples, and quite recently in history, is moral perfection regarded as essential to religious preeminence, and so we find that, in general, a popular saint is venerated for his miracle working, and his moral worth, if any, is totally forgotten. But I wish to insist that this disregard of the holy man’s morality is not a distinction of “savage” or “semi-heathen” men, but, shocking though it be, is common to all the lower moralities, of Europe or elsewhere, in the Middle Ages or the present time. I should explain also that until about seven years ago, when the first Arab shop-keeper settled in our village, the inhabitants did not know their prayers, the calls of the Muezzin or the performance of the worship known as “Mûled” described below. They called themselves Mohammedan, but knew nothing, and my friend the doctor says that the reply to his consolation to patients, “Well, you won’t have this pain in Paradise,” is often, “Who knows if there is a Paradise?”

On a sandy islet in the bay near my station, a spot of almost dreadful loneliness, is a shêkh’s tomb of the simpler kind. The grave itself is surrounded by stones set on edge and the large white shells of Tridacna, and by a sort of hedge of sticks, the longer at the head, which the pious decorate with rags[21]. A second enclosure of stones includes this and the remains of other graves, and the whole area is kept perfectly clean and sprinkled with pure white sand from the beach. The short broken sticks and decayed rags are not thrown away, but carefully taken down and laid aside.

One is naturally interested to enquire who the Shêkh was in life, and what qualities are considered as meriting so much posthumous honour, and conferring the power of intercession with God. Strange to say, no one knows anything excepting that his name was Sad, the prevailing idea seeming to be that, since his usefulness and power began after his burial, there is no reason to be interested in who he was, and what he did, in life. Even after death but one miracle is vaguely recorded, viz. that a certain man attempted to steal some pearl shells which had been deposited at the grave, and so placed under the Shêkh’s charge. The thief was punished by the loss of his hand, but whether by paralysis, or through the agency of a shark when he was diving, my informants neither knew nor cared. “It was something of that sort” was all they would say. And yet I believe that the dead Shêkhs are more thought of as practical help in time of trouble than either God or the Prophet.

Plate XII