THE name of Ferdinand Werne will sufficiently recommend the present volume to the readers of Maga, who need no introduction to the most adventurous and eccentric of recent travellers in north-eastern Africa. They will not have forgotten his narrative of the Expedition up the White Nile, and of the Campaign in Taka, to both of which we first directed the attention of the English public, which has since had opportunities of becoming acquainted with them through the medium of translations. The journey to Mandera is to be received, we presume, as the complement of Mr Werne's African travels. The three works form a series-although not in the order of publication and might well have been published as a whole, in two or three uniform volumes, instead of in the irregular unchronological manner in which they have made their appearance. Now that Mr Werne has abandoned, at least for the present, Nilotic discovery and Nubian campaigns, and reposes under the shadow of the linden trees of his native Germany, he could hardly better employ his leisure than in correcting and arranging a new and collective edition of his travels and adventures, remarkable as these are for originality both of subject and of treatment. From the day that he was joined at Cairo by his brother the physician, his existence was one of constant excitement, activity, and incident, chequered with much suffering. Invited by his brother Ferdinand, and urged by the late Professor Dieffenbach, Dr Joseph Werne repaired to Egypt to study the diseases of the country. An ardent desire for new scenes and adventures impelled the brothers towards the interior. At Chartum, in the country of Sennaar, at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles, they remained for some time, suffering from intermittent and other

fevers. They left that pestilent spot to accompany Achmet Pasha, the governor of Bellad-Sudán, in the campaign to Taka, before the termination of which, an expedition up the White Nile having been decided upon, Ferdinand Werne left the camp-in company with Soliman Kaschef, who was to command the flotilla-his brother remaining with the Pasha. When he returned from his voyage up the White Stream, he found the doctor on a bed of sickness in the fatal Chartum, where he died a few days afterwards, (3d May 1841,) doubtless of the prevailing fever, although some attributed his decease to poison, and pointed the finger of suspicion at an Italian renegade whom Dr Werne was to have replaced as chief of the entire medical department in the country of Sudán. Mr Werne does not insist on this suspicion, which he seems, however, from passages in the present book, to have shared to a certain extent; although, in his two previous works, he declared fever and not poison to have caused the doctor's death. Whatever the cause, the fondly attached brother was crushed to the very earth by the grievous and irreparable loss. In mind and body he was completely prostrated, and for many days he spoke not a word. Achmet Pasha, who, previously to the Taka campaign, had had his admiration excited by the Wernes' fraternal affection, and by the care with which they tended each other during the terrible fever fits, was absent in Kordofan when the doctor died, and the sad intelligence was conveyed to him by a dromedary express. On his return to Chartum he sent an orderly for Ferdinand Werne, who for three weeks had not left his divan, where he had slept upon the bed and between the very sheets in which his brother died, utterly dejected and courting death. With some difficulty

he was prevailed upon to suffer himself to be dressed and to obey the Pasha's summons. Mounted upon the ass upon which the doctor had been wont to visit his patients, he reached the grand divan, was helped up the stairs by servants, and conducted into the presence of the Pasha, who himself looked sickly and much shaken. Achmet's eyes expanded, as at sight of some unearthly apparition, when he beheld the state to which grief, disease, and self-abandonment had reduced his former officer, the trusty German bimbaschi (major) who had done such good service during the long and severe campaign in Taka and amongst the Beni-Amer. "Keddi el donia," he at last said; "Such is the world!" and dashed the tears from his eyes. "I hear," he continued, "that you wish to die; that is not right, and I will not have it. Remain with me; you know that I am alone in the world. I will make a great man of you-will recommend you at Cairo for the title of Bey. You must quit Chartum; I too am always sick here, and will go to Karreri." "Then he asked me," continues Mr Werne, "whether I no longer desired to visit the ruins of Mandera, remarking that Achmet Abu Sin, the great Sheik of the districts I should have to traverse, was my friend; and then, turning to Noureddin Effendi, he ordered him to take me round the works at Kamlin, where he proposed building a town, and to listen to my advice, for that I understood everything, (hue àraf kulo,)—an assertion which I compelled my modesty to leave uncontradicted. To his surprise I declined his offer to give me, from his stable, the dromedaries necessary for the journey, for, by purchases and presents, our stock of those animals had been increased to eleven, which were in the pastures near Kamlin. The Pasha did not discredit the report that Joseph had been poisoned, and remarked that Italians were bad men, to whom he would no longer trust his life, and that he had therefore sent to Cairo for other physicians and apothecaries. These I afterwards met in Dongola."

The interview with the Pasha, and his friendly and encouraging words, revived Mr Werne's drooping spirits.

Returning home, he made a meal, for the first time since his brother's death -on all previous occasions, when he attempted to eat, grief had choked him and forbidden a morsel to pass. He and the deceased doctor had long planned a journey to the hill and ruins of Mandera, where some, who have not visited the spot, have been inclined to place the site of the ancient city of Meroë. This journey Mr Werne now proposed to accomplish alone. Before setting out, it was necessary to regain his strength; and with this view, and in order, if possible, to cheer himself and forget his sorrow, he now went abroad to the bazaar and coffee-houses. The warmhearted sympathy he there met with gives a favourable impression both of himself and his brother, who had known how to win it, and of the people who testified it. "I had many opportunities," he says, "to observe how my brother and myself, each of whom had done good in his sphere, were beloved; for it was nothing uncommon to see tears of compassion roll down into the beards of Turks and Arabs, as they sympathisingly pressed my hand and pitied alike the living and the dead." Neither such friendly demonstrations nor the Pasha's favour and promises of advancement could reconcile Mr Werne to the idea of a prolonged abode in the land of Sudán, and especially in the odious fever-ridden Chartum. He had secretly made up his mind to return to Egypt, and thence by way of Greece to his native country, taking with him the rich collections which were the fruit of his long sojourn in Africa, and part or the whole of which now enrich the royal museum in Berlin. Before returning to Germany, however, he would go to Mandera, in hopes of making valuable discoveries in a land unknown to Europeans. Achmet Pasha also expected him to make discoveries, but of a different kind. Antiquarian treasures were coveted by Mr Werne; the Pasha's thoughts were set upon golden stores, said to be concealed at Mandera, and which, having been buried beneath monuments erected by unbelievers, were accessible only to a kafir or infidel, who would learn from his books where to dig. So the Pasha

exhorted his German friend to make careful search, and to inform him alone of its results. Finally, in his last conversation with Mr Werne, Achmet unexpectedly reverted to the project he had often discussed with him during the campaign in Taka, but which Mr Werne believed him to have definitively abandoned upon receipt of the discouraging intelligence of the defeat of the Egyptians at Acre. This project was-as those will remember who have read the campaign in Taka or its English version *-to shake off the Egyptian yoke, found an independent Ethiopian empire, and proclaim himself its Sultan. He had just received a second invitation, or rather summons, from the viceroy, to visit him at Cairo, a summons which he had no intention of obeying, busied as he was with his ambitious schemes, and not very confident as to the reception reserved for him by Mehemet Ali. His plan was to ally himself with Ras Ali, an Abyssinian chief of great importance, King of Amhara, who dwelt in Gondar, and who, he was informed, had become a convert to the Mahommedan religion. The campaign was to be a rapid one-to be over before the English had time to interfere in favour of their Abyssinian protégés, and the Pasha desired Mr Werne to speak openly of the plan to the great Sheik Abu Sin, who, as well as other chiefs in Sennaar, were personal friends of Achmet's. In his usual quaint, odd style, Mr Werne exhibits the result of all these ambitious schemes, in the following characteristic episode of modern Egyptian politics :

"When he (Achmet Pasha) subsequently disobeyed Mehemet Ali's third invitation, he died of tertian ague-so at least it is to be found recorded in print. On the same occasion I should, no doubt, have succumbed to the same malady, if, in the interval, my continued ill health and homesickness had not driven me northwards. Achmet Pasha had a certain degree of confidence in his father-inlaw, and would not hear speak of the possibility of poison, when, upon my return from this journey, I started the idea. The suspicion was suggested

to me by the presence in Chartum of a confidential emissary of Mehemet Ali's, who affected a jocose and jovial demeanour, but was avowedly a government commissioner, and who watched every step the Pasha took, and showed particular interest in all my proceedings. His name was Nebi Effendi. He was fond of wine, but could not support a great deal of it, and held arrack to be a particularly pleasant and strengthening drink. For this reason, on an excursion to Tomaniat, I gave him, in presence of the Pasha, the name of Nebit and Debib-Effendi (Wine and Suake Effendi.) In his drunkenness he did not take offence at this. He had just before been endeavouring to pump me with respect to the Pasha, and had confessed to me that he had secretly delivered to the Princess-who was dissatisfied with her husband, and with the monotony of Chartum, and longed to get back to Cairo-a letter from her father. The Pasha, who did not usually set so much store by a man's life, would not agree to my proposal to hang up the fat spy, and so bring on an open rupture, because, he said, he was only a harmless Turkish ass. His kawedshi, too, a Greek renegade from Crete, was discontented with the Pasha, because he had to keep coffee ready day and night, and did not find himself sufficiently paid. In short, Achmet Pasha, originally a Circassian slave, subsequently son-in-law of Mehemet Ali, and ruler of Bellad-Sudán, died of tertian ague-and now I proceed with my journey."

This commenced at the end of May 1841. Few travellers, probably, ever performed three expeditions in the same region in such totally different ways as Mr Werne. We have already seen him boating up the Nile and campaigning with an Egyptian army; we now find him travelling alone, his sole escort consisting of two servants - Fadlalla, a Darfour black, and Mohammed Nuhr from Dongola. Each servant mounted a dromedary; a third, a fine bischari, was led for Mr Werne, who commenced his journey humbly upon an ass, until such time as increasing

Longman & Co. 1852.

strength should enable him to ride the nobler animal. His route at first led him along the banks of the Blue Nile -which we may henceforward, for shortness' sake, designate as the Nile, his journey nowhere bringing him into the neighbourhood of the White stream. In his debilitated state it was desirable to keep near the river, for the sake of abundance of water, and of the accommodation afforded by the villages in its vicinity. These would be more numerous, but for an oppressive and odious usage which Achmet Pasha in vain endeavoured to repress. The crews of vessels belonging to the government, to military officers, and other official persons, are in the habit of compelling the villagers to tow their ships up stream. When the able-bodied men have fled to avoid the hardship, women, children, and infirm persons are often pressed into the service. Hence it was that Mr Werne found, at some distance from the river, villages whose inhabitants had abandoned its immediate neighbourhood, as the only way of avoiding the severe and gratuitous toil.

It certainly indicates a most indomitable spirit of enterprise, that a man in Mr Werne's condition, enfeebled by sickness, bowed down by affliction, and altogether in bad case, should have undertaken a long journey through such a country, amidst semisavage tribes, and at the mercy of servants who, like most of their race, proved addicted to drink, and not to be depended upon. Had he, indeed, been as he was when campaigning in Taka, when his ready sabre and terrible iron stick made him respected by the boldest of his companions, there would be less to wonder at; but the man was ailing, quickly fatigued, scarcely able to bestride his donkey. His black attendants soon gave him trouble. On the third day's journey they neglected to water the camels, and the animals, in the violence of their thirst, augmented by their dry meal of durra, a coarse kind of millet, broke the fetters from their knees in the night, and betook themselves to the Nile to drink. Fadlalla and his companion were drinking also, but at a very different cup. They were carousing in the village, upon

merissa, a sort of beer made from the durra; and when Mr Werne, rendered irritable by sickness, angrily reproached them, they lied intrepidly, and Fadlalla cast a savage and dangerous look at his helpless master. Mr Werne consoled himself, however, with the hopes of soon meeting a German friend, and conversing in his beloved native tongue. This was a certain Herr Bauer, inspector of a soap factory recently established by the Pasha in the newly-founded and as yet infant town of Kamlin. Soap, in that country, is one of the first necessaries of life, and rations of it are regularly served out to the soldiers. On reaching the works, in the forest of Kamlin, (a word which signifies thieves' corner,) Mr Werne saw the Austrian flag waving over Bauer's tokul, (a straw-thatched hut,) whose occupants hurried out, and burst into tears on beholding the piteous aspect of the man who came as bearer of mournful tidings. Two Italian apothecaries, fugitives from pestilential Chartum, crept forth, ghastly-looking skeletons, to welcome the European guest. One of these, and poor Bauer, subsequently fell victims to the terrible climate. At the time of Mr Werne's visit they were endeavouring to regain the strength of which fever had robbed them; resorting, amongst other means, to the moderate use of wine, which he considers highly essential to Europeans in that burning climate, whose debilitating influence is in some measure counteracted by the stimulant. Mr Werne had no wine in his travelling stores, for, when he left Chartum, not a bottle was to be had. He partook of that belonging to the Italians; and with such good effect, that, on resuming his journey, after three days' stay at Kamlin, he was able to ride his dromedary, an active and spirited animal-and to ride it, too, at top of its speed, when, at evening, the approach of a storm rendered it necessary to hasten to the village where they were to pass the night.

The following morning (5th June) the rain had made the road so slippery that the travellers were fain to quit it for the firmer footing afforded by the forest ground. With a compass in his pocket, Mr Werne did not

fear losing his way, and he loved to explore new paths. Presently he stumbled upon some Arab huts, erected under the shadow of mighty trees. Captivated by the fresh woodland life, he halted and purchased a kid, which was quickly slaughtered and cooked, his canteen apparatus exciting the intense astonishment and admiration of the tall handsome Arab women, whilst a few trifles bestowed upon the boys and girls, who were running about stark naked, won him the hearts of the whole community. He would gladly have prolonged his stay amongst these friendly and hospitable people, but he could not be sure how long his servants would conduct themselves properly, so he quitted the pastoral scene and marched on to night quarters in a village. In one way or other the servants were a constant annoyance to him. The next day, after purchasing at the town or large village of Messalamië some sandals and other manufactures of the country -now forming part of his ethnographical collection in the royal cabinet of curiosities at Berlin-he was anxious to set out, although a storm was evidently approaching, and seek in a neighbouring hamlet the repose which the restless curiosity of the townspeople, and especially of the old women, would not suffer him to enjoy. But the servants were absent; the charms of the merissa pot had been too much for their virtue. Having at last found and brought them back, almost by force, he compelled them to saddle, notwithstanding their urgent representations that bad weather was at hand. But wilful Werne would have his way, and the three rode out. Presently a servant was missing: he had gone, he subsequently alleged, to fetch a flask of the precious merissa for his master's sleeping cup. Fadlalla was sent to seek Mohammed, whilst Mr Werne trotted on alone. Suddenly the lightning flashed from the inky clouds; the dromedary turned short round and retraced his steps at full gallop, a pace at which the very best camel-rider is troubled to keep his seat long. The bridle broke, the saddle got loose; Mr Werne threw his leg over and looked for a soft place to drop upon; when, at a second flash, the beast gave a bound which

sent its rider flying head over heels through the air. The involuntary summerset was wound up by a tremendous shock. He fell upon his head and shoulder, the former of which was fortunately protected by two fez which he had put on, one over the other, to keep off the sun. One of the pistols in his girdle was discharged by the shock, and he narrowly escaped a bad wound from the bullet, which passed through his clothes; his sabre was broken in the sheath. He was, of course, stunned by the fall, but on recovering his senses he still, with characteristic pertinacity, refused to be carried back to Messalamië, and found shelter in a small village, under the roof of a benevolent fakir, where, in apprehension of a fatal hemorrhage, he wrote in pencil a hasty will, which he addressed to Bauer, with the strict injunction to bury him beside his brother at Chartum. But his adventurous career was not to be so early closed. He was able to proceed to Wollet-Medine, where dwelt Dumont the apothecary, one of his companions in the Taka campaign. At his house he alighted, and had himself examined by the Italian doctor, Bellotti, when it was found that no bones were broken, and that in a few days he might continue his journey.

"Five iron cannon, captured in Abyssinia by the former king of Sennaar, Wedi or Bedi, lay upon the river-bank at Wollet-Medine; they were ship's guns, probably of Portuguese origin. I was also shown a little bronze Venus, which had been dug up near the chubba, (the lofty beehive-shaped tomb of a saint.) It was about a span long, and the attitude was nearly that of the Venus de Medicis. Further, I here saw a very big harasch tree (a lofty sort of mimosa) laden with the nests of innumerable herons and storks. Mussa Bey, a Circassian, whom my brother had cured of a dangerous malady at Chartum, offered me his ship to make excursions up and down the Nile; and the commandant at Wollet-Medine informed me that he had orders from the Pasha to place a company of soldiers at my disposal, for the journey to Mandera. These offers were