Henty - March to Magdala

In submitting to the public in a collected form the Letters which havealready appeared in the daily press, a Special Correspondent has theoption of one of two courses. The one course is, to publish the Letters asnearly as possible as they originally stood, as a journal written from dayto day, and from week to week; the other, to recast the whole, to rewritethe Letters, and to give a continuous narrative of the expedition as of apast event. The second of these courses has the advantage of unity ofpurpose; it will contain fewer errors, fewer mistaken predictions of theprobable course of events, and, above all, less of the repetitions whichmust unavoidably occur in a series of letters. The style, too, willnaturally be far smoother and more polished than in the original letters,written as they usually were in haste and under circumstances of greatdifficulty. But, on the other hand, such a narrative would lose much ofthe freshness which original letters possess, and it would be deficient inthat interest which a knowledge of the hopes and fears, the doubts andanticipations, the plans destined to be frustrated, and the opinionsconstantly varying with the course of events, must give to a narrative.The present tense too is far more pleasant and less monotonous than thepreterite. I have therefore determined, in submitting my Letters forrepublication, to adhere as closely as possible to the original form andmatter; not hesitating, however, to make many additions, alterations, andexcisions, where subsequent information or the course of events haveproved my opinions or conclusions to have been erroneous.

The present work does not profess to be a scientific record of theexpedition. It gives neither statistics, general orders, nor officialdocuments. This will no doubt be hereafter done by some officer far betterqualified for the task than I can be. It is merely the plain narrative ofa looker-on, who accompanied the expedition from the commencement ofDecember 1867, when affairs at Zulla were at their worst, to the closingscene at Magdala. At the same time, I have not shrunk from stating my ownopinions as to the course of events. A great disaster like that of thecomplete break-down of the Transport-train at Zulla cannot occur withoutgrievous blame attaching to somebody. I conceive it to be one of the firstduties of a correspondent to state fearlessly the persons and the causeswhich, in his opinion, have brought on a great public disaster.Unpleasant, therefore, though it be to find fault, I have not hesitated toassign the blame where I consider it was due. This I did in the very firstletter I wrote from Zulla after landing, before I had gone up to Senafe;and the opinion I then expressed, I now, after months have elapsed, andafter hearing the matter discussed in every light, do not hesitate toreaffirm.

With the exceptions I have alluded to, the Letters are the same in formand substance as when they appeared in the columns of the Standard; andalthough, for the reasons I have given, I am convinced that it is thewisest course to leave them so, yet, remembering as I do the circumstancesof haste, fatigue, and difficulty under which they were written, I cannotbut feel extreme diffidence in submitting them to the public "with alltheir errors on their head."

G. A. H.

The Abyssinian expedition has, from the time it was first determined upon,attracted an amount of attention, not only in Great Britain but throughoutthe civilised world, altogether disproportionate to the strength of thearmy employed, or to the extent of the interests at stake. The total forceengaged was under, rather than over, 10,000 men; not one-fifth thestrength of an army which we might ourselves put into the field for acampaign in India; scarcely a fiftieth of the force at the command ofeither of the great Continental Powers. It was clearly not the magnitudeof the expedition, then, which attracted attention: it was theextraordinary and novel circumstances under which it was undertaken; thealmost insurmountable difficulties to be overcome; the unknown nature ofthe country to be traversed, and the romantic disinterestedness of themotives which led England to embark upon it, which has rendered it one ofthe most interesting and notable campaigns ever undertaken. Since theexpedition of Pizarro and Cortes in the middle ages, no such novel andhazardous expedition is on record. The country itself was like that of thefar-famed Prester Johneverything about it smacked of the marvellous. Itwas more mountainous, more inaccessible, more war-loving, more wild thanany other country in the world. The king with whom we waged war was apotentate who by his military talents had raised himself from acomparatively obscure position to the sovereignty of all Abyssinia: he wasenlightened beyond his race; patronised strangers, encouragedmanufactures, endeavoured in every way to improve the condition of hiscountry, and was yet a bloodthirsty tyrant. The people themselves were astrange race, far more civilised than other African nations, Christians inthe midst of a Mahometan and Pagan continent, a mixture of manyracesAfrican, Greek, Arab, and Jew. Altogether it was a land of romance.Nor had travellers done much to enlighten us as to the country. Some haddescribed it as fertile in the extreme; others had spoken of it as a landof mountain and defile, where no sustenance could be hoped for for thearmy. They had united only in prophesying evil thingshunger and thirst,inaccessible mountain and pathless wastes, fever, cholera, small-pox,dysentery, the tetse-fly, tapeworm, and guinea-worm. We were to beconsumed with fire; we were to be annihilated with stones rolled upon uswhen in ravines; we were to be cut off in detail upon our marches; we wereto be harassed to death by repeated night and day attacks. All these andmany other prophecies were freely uttered, and it really appeared as ifour expedition was to partake strongly of the nature of a forlorn-hope.The friends of officers and men said good-bye to them as if they weregoing to certain death, and insurance-offices doubled and trebled thepremium upon their lives. All this assisted to raise the public interestand anxiety to the highest point. It is needless now to say that almostthe whole of the adverse predictions were entirely falsified, and that wehave met with no difficulties whatever beyond mountain and ravine, thewant of transport, and the scarcity of food.

Generally as the subject is known, it is yet necessary, before commencingthe history of the campaign, to say a few words upon the events whichpreceded and caused it; and as the subject has been exhausted by Dr. Bekein his able work on the Abyssinian captives, I cannot do better thanpreface my story with a brief epitome of the facts recited in his volume.Dr. Beke was well-acquainted with Mr. Plowden, our late Consul there, andknew thoroughly the whole of the events which led to the captivity of theEnglish party, and he was in intimate communication with their friendshere. His statements are supported by numerous official documents; andthis volume, in which he now sets forth the state of the case, may beapparently received with confidence as reliable in every particular.