Los Angeles herald., 1905-01-22
BY Stephen BonsaI

tereSting personality or Africa
has been the Sienoussi Mahdi or,
as he is popularity called with regard
to the exclusive surroundings in which
he lives, the Yelled Prophet of the Sou
dan. No white man has ever beheld
him and returned to tell the tale
Scores of political agents and adven-
turers from all over the world have
journeyed toward the seat and shrine
of his growing power in the Soudan,
but of these no one has accomplished
his purpose and few, very few, have
returned alive.
Those who sought Lhassa in Tibet
were more or less gently turned back,
but those of our race and religion who
set out to seek the oasis of the Soudan
in which is enshrined the Sienoussi
Saint, the hope of one wing of Islam.
met with very different fates in detail
and yet alike in the main tragic end
ing. Some of these political spies who
wished to take the measure of this
new prophet, who is with honor even
In his own country, undertook fool
hardy journeys and died by the dagger
or the poison which the Youregs, so
chivalrous in fiction, administered with
the hospitable tea; others there were,
generally pioneers of commerce, in
duced to undertake the adventure by
avarice and a yearning for the usu-
fruct of that great market, the eastern
Soudan. Boldness, cunning, bribery,
mo- Of raanbir tto hoa6
ter of this most vital sect of the Mo-
hammedans, was essayed, but all to
no purpose. One after another the at
tempts to disclose to a curious and in
terested world the features of the
Yelled Prophet of the Soudan failed
and generally the penalty of failure
was death at the hands of the hawk
like Youregs whe, protect the shrine
from all who would approach it; death
by the dagger and death by poison, as
/ have said, but more often the ad-
yenturer from our world into another
would be buried alive up to is shoul-
ders in the burning sands of the des
ert, there to be tortured until the re-
lease of death came.
Demands on a Traveller
The man who seeks for knowledge in
unknown lands, who would get behind
the mask of hostile civilization, is al
ways represented to be, and generally
is, man of iron will. OF these modern
conquistadores our own Stanley was
certainly the most striking type, he
who won the names of Road Break
err and "Stone Crusher' in Sualreli,
and, in fact, in every language that is
spoken from the coast to the heart of
the Dark Continent. Perhaps Stanley,
had he tried it would have achieved
success in this quarter, as everywhere
else following along his own lines, but
1t is interesting to note that the man
by whom the mysterious desert .shek |
has at last been unveiled went upon
his quest unarmed and unaccompaned |
and with but slender resources. 1t is |
pleasant to learn from our Tunisian
pilgrim, who of course had the great
advantage over his luckless predeces-
sors of being a Mohammedan, that the
many massacres and murders which
shrine were due, not to malevolence,
but to misunderstanding of the pur-
pose with which the intruders came.
81 Mohammed the wise man from Tu
mis-, would have us believe that his
pilgrimage was easy of performance
and that all can and should follow in
his footsteps with great modesty ST
A-t.o ~. . |
mosque in Tunis, seeks to depreciate
rather than magnify his achievement,
and he dwells frequently upon the ad-
vantages which he had over his many
ill-fated predecessors upon this blood
stained trail. His strongest card, a
veritable open sesame, was undoubt-
edly his family pedigree, which he
wisely rected to all whom he met, be-
cause it showed him to be a descend
ant Of the Prophet through his daugh-
ter Fatima, that pure and peerless
woman of the Mohammedan Scrip
lures.
And whenever he got into difficulties
from which even his pedigree could
not save him our pilgrim extrlcated
himself by his enviable gift for Arabic
roetry. both impIovised and studied,
and before his eloquence in we'll mod
ulated numbers, one example of which
/ shall endeavor to translate all bar
riers vanished and all prejudices were
placated. The detail that 81 Moham-
eds desert journey only cost Kim a
thousand francs should not, in my
opinion, be omitted. l regard 1t as a
feat in economics which should not be
lost sight of in the light of his other
triumphs.
In Malta our pilgrim made close
connection with a Greek steamer
oound for Benghazi, i'm Tripoli Of Bar
oary, and from this happy coincidence {
he concluded that fortune favored his
adventure "Otherwise l must have /
passed week in the British island, {