First footsteps in East Africa | Page 6

excellent papers: one headed a "Report on the Mijjertheyn Tribe of
Somallies inhabiting the district forming the North East Point of
Africa;" secondly, a "Memoir on the Western or Edoor Tribes,
inhabiting the Somali coast of North East Africa; with the Southern
Branches of the family of Darood, resident on the banks of the Webbe

Shebayli, commonly called the River Webbe." Lieut. C. P. Rigby, 16th
Regiment Bombay N. I., published, also in the Transactions of the
Geographical Society of Bombay, an "Outline of the Somali Language,
with Vocabulary," which supplied a great lacuna in the dialects of
Eastern Africa.
A perusal of the following pages will convince the reader that the
extensive country of the Somal is by no means destitute of capabilities.
Though partially desert, and thinly populated, it possesses valuable
articles of traffic, and its harbours export the produce of the Gurague,
Abyssinian, Galla, and other inland races. The natives of the country
are essentially commercial: they have lapsed into barbarism by reason
of their political condition--the rude equality of the Hottentots,--but
they appear to contain material for a moral regeneration. As subjects
they offer a favourable contrast to their kindred, the Arabs of El Yemen,
a race untameable as the wolf, and which, subjugated in turn by
Abyssinian, Persian, Egyptian, and Turk, has ever preserved an
indomitable spirit of freedom, and eventually succeeded in skaking off
the yoke of foreign dominion. For half a generation we have been
masters of Aden, filling Southern Arabia with our calicos and
rupees--what is the present state of affairs there? We are dared by the
Bedouins to come forth from behind our stone walls and fight like men
in the plain,--British proteges are slaughtered within the range of our
guns,--our allies' villages have been burned in sight of Aden,--our
deserters are welcomed and our fugitive felons protected,--our supplies
are cut off, and the garrison is reduced to extreme distress, at the word
of a half-naked bandit,--the miscreant Bhagi who murdered Capt.
Mylne in cold blood still roams the hills unpunished,--gross insults are
the sole acknowledgments of our peaceful overtures,--the British flag
has been fired upon without return, our cruizers being ordered to act
only on the defensive,--and our forbearance to attack is universally
asserted and believed to arise from mere cowardice. Such is, and such
will be, the character of the Arab!
The Sublime Porte still preserves her possessions in the Tahamah, and
the regions conterminous to Yemen, by the stringent measures with
which Mohammed Ali of Egypt opened the robber-haunted Suez road.
Whenever a Turk or a traveller is murdered, a few squadrons of
Irregular Cavalry are ordered out; they are not too nice upon the subject

of retaliation, and rarely refuse to burn a village or two, or to lay waste
the crops near the scene of outrage.
A civilized people, like ourselves, objects to such measures for many
reasons, of which none is more feeble than the fear of perpetuating a
blood feud with the Arabs. Our present relations with them are a "very
pretty quarrel," and moreover one which time must strengthen, cannot
efface. By a just, wholesome, and unsparing severity we may inspire
the Bedouin with fear instead of contempt: the veriest visionary would
deride the attempt to animate him with a higher sentiment.
"Peace," observes a modern sage, "is the dream of the wise, war is the
history of man." To indulge in such dreams is but questionable wisdom.
It was not a "peace-policy" which gave the Portuguese a seaboard
extending from Cape Non to Macao. By no peace policy the Osmanlis
of a past age pushed their victorious arms from the deserts of Tartary to
Aden, to Delhi, to Algiers, and to the gates of Vienna. It was no peace
policy which made the Russians seat themselves upon the shores of the
Black, the Baltic, and the Caspian seas: gaining in the space of 150
years, and, despite war, retaining, a territory greater than England and
France united. No peace policy enabled the French to absorb region
after region in Northern Africa, till the Mediterranean appears doomed
to sink into a Gallic lake. The English of a former generation were
celebrated for gaining ground in both hemispheres: their broad lands
were not won by a peace policy, which, however, in this our day, has
on two distinct occasions well nigh lost for them the "gem of the
British Empire"--India. The philanthropist and the political economist
may fondly hope, by outcry against "territorial aggrandizement," by
advocating a compact frontier, by abandoning colonies, and by
cultivating "equilibrium," to retain our rank amongst the great nations
of the world. Never! The facts of history prove nothing more
conclusively than this: a race either progresses or retrogrades, either
increases or diminishes: the children of Time, like their sire, cannot