{"product_id":"2940148857853","title":"Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 70, No. 431, September 1851","description":"Africa, the least explored division of the globe's surface, and the best field for travellers of bold and enterprising character, has been the scene of three of the most remarkable books of their class that have appeared within the last ten years. We refer to Major Harris's narrative of his Ethiopian expedition—to the marvellous adventures of that modern Nimrod, Mr Gordon Cumming—to Mr Ferdinand Werne's strange and exciting account of his voyage up the White Nile. In our review of the last-named interesting and valuable work,[1] we mentioned that Mr Werne, previously to his expedition up the Nile, had been for several months in the Taka country, a region previously untrodden by Europeans, with an army commanded by Achmet Bascha, governor-general of the Egyptian province of Bellad-Sudan, who was operating against refractory tributaries. He has just published an account of this campaign, which afforded him, however, little opportunity of expatiating on well-contested battles, signal victories, or feats of heroic valour. On the other hand, his narrative abounds in striking incidents, in curious details of tribes and localities that have never before been described, and in perils and hardships not the less real and painful that they proceeded from no efforts of a resolute and formidable foe, but from the effects of a pernicious climate, and the caprice and negligence of a wilful and indolent commander.\u003cbr\u003eIt was early in 1840, and Mr Werne and his youngest brother Joseph had been resident for a whole year at Chartum, chief town of the province of Sudan, in the country of Sennaar. Chartum, it will be remembered by the readers of the \"Expedition for the Discovery of the Sources of the White Nile,\" is situated at the confluence of the White and Blue streams, which, there uniting, flow northwards through Nubia and Egypt Proper to Cairo and the Mediterranean; and at Chartum it was that the two Wernes had beheld, in the previous November, the departure of the first expedition up Nile, which they were forbidden to join, and which met with little success. The elder Werne,[252] whose portrait—that of a very determined-looking man, bearded, and in Oriental costume—is appended to the present volume, appears to have been adventurous and a rambler from his youth upwards. In 1822 he had served in Greece, and had now been for many years in Eastern lands. Joseph Werne, his youngest and favourite brother, had come to Egypt at his instigation, after taking at Berlin his degree as Doctor of Medicine, to study, before commencing practice, some of the extraordinary diseases indigenous in that noxious climate. Unfortunately, as recorded in Mr Werne's former work, this promising young man, who seems to have possessed in no small degree the enterprise, perseverance, and fortitude so remarkable in his brother, ultimately fell a victim to one of those fatal maladies whose investigation was the principal motive of his visit to Africa. The first meeting in Egypt of the two brothers was at Cairo; and of it a characteristic account is given by the elder, an impetuous, we might almost say a pugnacious man, tolerably prompt to take offence, and upon whom, as he himself says at page 67, the Egyptian climate had a violently irritating effect.\u003cbr\u003e\"Our meeting, at Guerra's tavern in Cairo, was so far remarkable, that my brother knew me immediately, whilst I took him for some impertinent Frenchman, disposed to make game of me, inasmuch as he, in the petulance of his joy, fixed his eyes upon me, measuring me from top to toe, and then laughed at the fury with which I rushed upon him, to call him to an account, and, if necessary, to have him out. We had not seen each other for eight years, during which he had grown into a man, and, moreover, his countenance had undergone a change, for, by a terrible cut, received in a duel, the muscle of risibility had been divided on one side, and the poor fellow could laugh only with half his face. In the first overpowering joy of our meeting in this distant quarter of the globe, we could not get the wine over our tongues, often as my Swiss friend De Salis (over whose cheeks the tears were chasing each other) and other acquaintances struck their glasses against ours, encouraging us to drink.... I now abandoned the hamlet of Tura—situated in the desert, but near the Nile, about three leagues above Cairo, and whither I had retreated to do penance and to work at my travels—as well as my good friend Dr Schledehaus of Osnabruck, (then holding an appointment at the military school, now director of the marine hospital of Alexandria,) with whom my brother had studied at Bonn, and I hired a little house in the Esbekie Square in Cairo. After half an hour's examination, Joseph was appointed surgeon-major, with the rank of a Sakulagassi or captain, in the central hospital of Kasr-el-Ain, with a thousand piastres a month, and rations for a horse and four servants.","brand":"Lost Leaf Publications","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47174518604016,"sku":"2940148857853","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940148857853_p0.jpg?v=1763709030","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940148857853","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}