SIR GERALD PORTAL'S ADVENTURES.

Evening Post, Volume XLVII, Issue 82, 7 April 1894, Page 1 (Supplement)

SIR GERALD PORTAL'S ADVENTURES.

The Daily Telegraph recalls some of the remarkable details of Portal's adventures whilst on the Abyssinian Mission. He took with him Veter-iuary-Surgeou Beech — now Captain, 20th Hussars — and a faithful servant, Hutchison. Almost at the outset the small party had to contend with the treachery of guides, who deliberately led them astray and then deserted them. The decision (if character which formed a strong feature in the leader came out in this crisis. While considering whether to tie the guido to the saddle or shoot him on the spot the fellow absconded, and with him the whole crew of native followers. "It was lucky for thofee wretches," he writes, " that our carbines were attached to our saddles, at some yards distance." After a succession of troubles duly recounted in "My Mission to Abyssinia," Portal, his two English companions, and his Egyptian interpreter, Ahmed Fehniy, were left in the pathless, waterless desert, with every chance of perishing, as did four years earlier Hicks Pasha and his 11,000 men. Water could be found nowhere. There was only one alternative, to return guideless to the Italian camp. "At the moment when this resolution was come to," narrates Portal, "poor Ahmed Fehmy was making himself useful by sitting on a stone and moaning to himself!" His Arab nature was not equal to the emergency. Before returning tbe mules were stripped, and everything except the box containing the Queen's and Lord Salisbury's letters' was thrown away. AVorn with anxiety, exhausted by fatigue, and still more with thirst, they began their retreat. Sir Gerald writes: — " Already our tongues were refusing their wonted office, and the strongest voice that could issue from our parched throats through our blackened lips was a husky, strained, sibilant whisper. Meanwhile Ahmed Fehmy again and again fell behind, and at last it was necessary to leave him. There was no choice. . . . Had I hesitated for a moment whether to make one more halt, one more effort to bring Ahmed Fehmy along, a single glance at the fixed, staring eyes, the pinched, drawn faces, and the bent figures of my remaining followers would have sufficed to convince me Unit hut one order could be given if any of us were to see the light of to-morrow's sun — 'Push on.' . . . Ahmed Fehmy was afterwards found dead — the victim of want of pluck ; not his specially, but the mark of his race. He had water and food later than we ; his lips were red and uurs were black. (Subsequently, the reader will be pleased to know, Her Majesty's Government made a grant of £4-*>o for the poor man's family.) Hour by hour our diminished party rode slowly on under the burning sun, the only living and moving creatures in that vast, scorching, deadly wilderness, our eyes fixed on the ground, looking for every sign which should tell us we were still in the path that we had toiled over on our outward march. At one time the route was lost, whenr fortunately Hutchison picked up a pocket handkerchief which Beech had dropped, and so told us that the way was right. At a time when our physical and mental powers of endurance were all but exhausted, when our eyes could scarcely distinguish the stones beneath our feet, and my own eyes were playing me all sorts of tricks, and Bhowing me green grass, waving trees, and sparkling pools of water on every side, a loose mule, relieved of his load, took up the lead. As though he guessed the failure of the-faculties of his human masters, he assumed the responsibility, never going too far ahead and never lagging behind. The other mules and horses instinctively acknowledged his leadership, and followed of their own accord." At last Portal pushed on to the Italian camp, sending back relief to his comrades, 1 and all were saved. Of his companions, Captain Beech, like himself, was a strong man, but his servant suffered terribly. — London correspondent of the Lyttelton Times.