  As the famous traveller, Dr. Junker, After a short day’s march through the country of the Bari, As the expedition neared the station, shots were fired as a welcome. The advancing boys and carriers made way and Junker perceived a body of men in faultlessly white garments coming to meet him. At their head he at once recognized his friend, Dr. Emin Pasha, a slim, almost haggard man of little more than medium height, with a small face, dark full beard, and deep-set eyes, whose sight was rendered keener by spectacles. His demeanor and movements impressed one with his composure and self-control. His external appearance betrayed an almost painful neatness. He and his attendants rode mules and six black soldiers in white uniforms followed him. To Dr. Junker it appeared a festal procession and tears came to his eyes. He sprang from his horse and greeted his friend first, then the others. The rest of the distance to the station was made on foot, the two eagerly conversing. What a change there had been at Lado since Dr. Junker last saw its miserable rush huts, six years before. At that time, Emin had just begun his difficult administration. The changes which they saw all about them testified eloquently to the governor’s abilities. The man holding this high position in the Soudan arose from humble circumstances. His real name was Edward Schnitzer. He was born at Oppeln in Silesia, in 1840, and shortly after his family removed to Neisse, where many of his relatives are living to-day. We know little about his youth, but we are told that the boy was an enthusiastic naturalist, fond of making collections of flowers and insects, and even at that time noted for his reserve and thoughtfulness. Both these characteristics are observable in the man. The study of nature was his principal recreation and compensated for his lack of human intercourse. But his conscientious devotion to science and his aversion to publicity leave us little knowledge of his accomplishments or his real sentiments. Even his most intimate friends knew little of his inner nature, and while his letters to European scholars reveal his varied activities, yet they are of no value in throwing light upon his nature, which makes it difficult to understand some of the actions of the man. Edward Schnitzer studied medicine in Breslau and Berlin in 1863-64 and took the doctor’s degree. It was his love of nature that led him to go abroad. He went to Trieste and Antivari, and from there, with a Turkish companion, Hakki Pasha, to Trebizond. He soon succeeded in gaining respect and influence. His facility in adapting himself to the habits of the places where he was stopping, the remarkable ease with which he learned languages (he spoke Turkish and Arabic as if they were his native tongues), and the success which attended his medical practice, quickly brought him fame and importance; and when, as was the custom in those countries, he changed his German name to a foreign one (Emin, “the Faithful”), he was hardly recognizable as a European. In the company of Hakki he explored Arabia and then went to Janina and Constantinople. When his protector died, the young physician returned home and devoted himself entirely to scientific pursuits. But soon the monotony of everyday life and its quiet regularity, the colorless northern landscape, and frequent cloudy skies became unendurable, and he suddenly decided to make a change. In 1876 he went south again, this time to Egypt. He reached there at just the right time, for the enterprising Khedive, Ismail Pasha, was attracting large numbers of Europeans to his country because of his extension of the limits of the ancient kingdom of Pharaoh far to the south and the west. Emin placed himself at the disposition of Gordon Pasha as a physician, Gordon at that time being governor of Hat-el-Estiva. He soon recognized Emin’s importance, and intrusted several diplomatic missions to negro chiefs in the south to him. When Gordon resigned his position in 1878 to enter upon a wider field of action, Emin became his successor and governed a territory in the Equatorial Provinces which stretched from Lado to the equator and was as large as France, Germany, and Austria combined. Emin owed his elevation to the post of governor to Dr. Junker’s recommendation. Consequently the latter was very anxious to know what he had accomplished in the wilderness, so far away from civilization. As Emin conducted his guest to his private divan, it seemed to him a palace, though it would have been a very unassuming structure to us. It stood upon a plaza, on the bank of the Nile, in the form of a spacious, enclosed rectangle. On the east side, towards the river and also towards the north, was the house, surrounded by rows of dark green lemon trees, between the servants’ and watchmen’s cabins. On the west side of the plaza were two larger cabins and a great sun awning which made a most comfortable lodging for the traveller and his company. Emin’s house had doors and windows, but the entrances of the other dwellings were fitted with curtains. The houses were built of brick and stood in regular order upon broad streets which were intersected by narrower rectangular thoroughfares. The numerous huts of the natives were constructed of straw and palm leaves. These light buildings lasted only about three years, for termites The arrangement of the divan was simple and recalled the comforts of home. A long massive work table was covered with writing materials, another with meteorological instruments and periodicals, and European chairs stood at each. At the side was a small library on shelves and upon several round iron tables were various useful articles, such as are common with us. All the tables had neat covers. In two corners were chests and cases and flowered curtains hung at the doors and windows. The morning hours were spent by the two friends in conversation, but the dinner with table napkins and changes of plate was so surprising to our traveller, unaccustomed to such luxury, that it nearly took away his appetite. One morning Emin invited his friend for a walk to his storehouse and the government garden, of which he was very proud. Countless lemon and banana trees, full of fruit, shaded the passageway. Bitter oranges, sweet lemons, oranges and pawpaws, which are somewhat like our melons, only sweeter, were also cultivated. White and yellow and exceedingly fragrant flowers and golden and red fruit shone in the dark foliage everywhere. Emin had also imported pomegranates, small fig trees, and grapevines. Of vegetables there were our cucumbers, several kinds of cabbage, all the Arabian vegetables, as well as the cassava, the sweet batata, The government made a profit out of the garden as the surplus of its products was sold daily for a fixed sum. There were such gardens at all the stations and Emin exerted himself to supply the natives with seeds of all kinds and instructions how to plant them so that they might have the benefit of fruit and vegetables. He explained, however, that the negroes were so easy-going and childlike by nature that he always had trouble with them. They cultivated rice, coffee, cotton, and all the products of Emin’s garden, but in spite of all his admonitions they would never remember to retain seed corn. So, when the time came for sowing, appeals for seed were made on all sides and the governor was kept busy in sending for it. The negro had no anxiety for the coming day, for “Father Emin” was in Lado. A visit was next made to the drug department, from which a shaded walk led to the back of the garden, where there were several cabins for the use of the sick. The walk was a charming one, as it was shut off from the vegetable garden near by by hedges of flowers. They now reached a spot where the walk widened and Dr. Junker uttered an exclamation of joyous surprise. A lovely picture was before him. Under a canopy of blue and purple flowers and green vines sat a beautiful Arabian woman upon cushions rocking a charming child upon her knees. It was the little Ferida, Emin’s daughter, early bereft of her mother. She greeted her father with a joyous outcry, took the outstretched hand of the unknown guest in the most friendly manner, and gazed at him with indescribably deep, dark, serious eyes. She was a solitary child, without companions of her own age, without playthings or instruction, who would have had plenty of companions in Europe. She had to be carefully protected from the dangers of the tropical world, from snakes and deadly scorpions, which frequently made their way into the house through open windows. She could never leave the garden and go down to the river, for beasts of prey, which they often heard howling not far away, frequently attacked people and dragged them off. So Ferida had to stay the whole day with her dark-skinned nurse, a tall woman in a scarlet undergarment and white loose wrapper, eagerly waiting for the evening hour when the father would have time to see his darling. At such times the serious man and the lovely child would sit close to each other upon a bench in the dense shade of the bananas, watching the play of the shadows which the bluish moonlight made through the foliage upon the dark red ground. Over all reigned a mysterious silence, only broken by the rustling of the banana leaves. Great bats flitted like spirits through the air. “The father of the four wings,” as the Arabs call the nightjar, with its long fantastic feathers, which in flying give it the appearance of a dragon, flew noiselessly about. Bluish lights marked the course of the great “lamp carriers,” the tropical fireflies, and whirring night butterflies fluttered about, hardly visible to the eye in their dark dress. All nature was filled with the deepest peace. Then Emin would tell her of his quiet peaceful life in the far northern cities; of his joyous yet strenuous student life in beautiful Berlin; of his journey over the blue sea, which Ferida cannot yet imagine, notwithstanding his description of it; of Constantinople and its splendid palaces with their golden domes; of the desert, with its burning sun and the silence of the dreamy nights, when the stars are unnaturally bright; of brown and black people with their different habits and costumes; of wars and adventures; of the terrors of forest fires, and of the curious dwellings of the negroes. Then he would describe the plants, birds, and four-footed animals he had studied so closely and tell her fables and romances that he had heard on his many journeys from the natives, so that his child, who had no story books, might at least have a pretty one of her own father’s telling. |
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