Most Of The Houses Stand On A
Small Barren Island Which Is Connected With The Mainland By A Narrow
Causeway.
At a distance the tall buildings of white coral, often five
storeys high, present an imposing appearance, and the prominent
chimneys of the condensing machinery - for there is scarcely any fresh
water - seem to suggest manufacturing activity.
But a nearer view reveals
the melancholy squalor of the scene. A large part of the town is deserted.
The narrow streets wind among tumbled-down and neglected houses.
The quaintly carved projecting windows of the facades are boarded up.
The soil exhales an odour of stagnation and decay. The atmosphere is rank
with memories of waste and failure. The scenes that meet the eye intensify
these impressions. The traveller who lands on Quarantine Island is first
confronted with the debris of the projected Suakin-Berber Railway. Two or
three locomotives that have neither felt the pressure of steam nor tasted
oil for a decade lie rusting in the ruined workshops. Huge piles of
railway material rot, unguarded and neglected, on the shore. Rolling stock
of all kinds - carriages, trucks, vans, and ballast waggons - are strewn or
heaped near the sheds. The Christian cemetery alone shows a decided
progress, and the long lines of white crosses which mark the graves of
British soldiers and sailors who lost their lives in action or by disease
during the various campaigns, no less than the large and newly enclosed
areas to meet future demands, increase the depression of the visitor.
The numerous graves of Greek traders - a study of whose epitaphs may
conveniently refresh a classical education - protest that the climate of
the island is pestilential. The high loopholed walls declare that the
desolate scrub of the mainland is inhabited only by fierce and valiant
savages who love their liberty.
For eleven years all trade had been practically stopped, and the only
merchants remaining were those who carried on an illicit traffic with the
Arabs or, with Eastern apathy, were content to wait for better days.
Being utterly unproductive, Suakin had been wisely starved by the Egyptian
Government, and the gloom of the situation was matched by the poverty
of its inhabitants.
The island on which the town stands is joined to the mainland by
a causeway, at the further end of which is an arched gateway of curious
design called 'the Gate of the Soudan.' Upon the mainland stands the
crescent-shaped suburb of El Kaff. It comprises a few mean coral-built
houses, a large area covered with mud huts inhabited by Arabs and
fishermen, and all the barracks and military buildings. The whole is
surrounded by a strong wall a mile and a half long, fifteen feet high,
six feet thick, with a parapet pierced for musketry and strengthened at
intervals by bastions armed with Krupp guns.
Three strong detached posts complete the defences of Suakin.
Ten miles to the northward, on the scene of Sir H. Kitchener's
unfortunate enterprise, is the fort of Handub. Tambuk is twenty-five
miles inland and among the hills. Situate upon a high rock, and
consisting only of a store, a formidable blockhouse, and a lookout tower,
this place is safe from any enemy unprovided with artillery. Both Handub
and Tambuk were at the outset of the campaign provisioned for four months.
The third post, Tokar Fort, lies fifty miles along the coast to the south.
Its function is to deprive the Arabs of a base in the fertile delta of the
Tokar river. The fort is strong, defended by artillery, and requires for
its garrison an entire battalion of infantry.
No description of Suakin would be complete without some allusion
to the man to whom it owes its fame. Osman Digna had been for many years
a most successful and enterprising Arab slave dealer. The attempted
suppression of his trade by the Egyptian Government drove him naturally
into opposition. He joined in the revolt of the Mahdi, and by his influence
roused the whole of the Hadendoa and other powerful tribes of the Red Sea
shore. The rest is upon record. Year after year, at a horrid sacrifice
of men and money, the Imperial Government and the old slaver fought like
wolves over the dry bone of Suakin. Baker's Teb, El Teb, Tamai, Tofrek,
Hashin, Handub, Gemaiza, Afafit - such were the fights of Osman Digna,
and through all he passed unscathed. Often defeated, but never crushed,
the wily Arab might justly boast to have run further and fought more
than any Emir in the Dervish armies.
It had scarcely seemed possible that the advance on Dongola could
influence the situation around Kassala, yet the course of events encouraged
the belief that the British diversion in favour of Italy had been
effective; for at the end of March - as soon, that is to say, as the news
of the occupation of Akasha reached him - Osman Digna separated himself
from the army threatening Kassala, and marched with 300 cavalry,
70 camelry, and 2,500 foot towards his old base in the Tokar Delta.
On the first rumour of his advance the orders of the Xth Soudanese to move
via Kossier and Kena to the Nile were cancelled, and they remained in
garrison at Tokar. At home the War Office, touched in a tender spot,
quivered apprehensively, and began forthwith to make plans to strengthen
the Suakin garrison with powerful forces.
The state of affairs in the Eastern Soudan has always been turbulent.
The authority of the Governor of the Red Sea Littoral was not at this time
respected beyond the extreme range of the guns of Suakin. The Hadendoa and
other tribes who lived under the walls of the town professed loyalty
to the Egyptian Government, not from any conviction that their rule was
preferable to that of Osman Digna, but simply for the sake of a quiet life.
As their distance from Suakin increased, the loyalty of the tribesmen
became even less pronounced, and at a radius of twenty miles all the
Sheikhs oscillated alternately between Osman Digna and the Egyptian
Government, and tried to avoid open hostilities with either.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 40 of 126
Words from 39520 to 40543
of 127807
