CHAPTER IV.
Reception of visitors by the Sultaun of Tajourah.—Arrival in that town, from Shoa, of Demetrius and Joannes.—Ruins and remains of antiquity.—Preparations for our departure.—The day fixed for our start.—Leave Tajourah on the 27th of March.
Duringmy stay in Tajourah, the fair at Berberah broke up, and three or four boats belonging to the town returned, some of them firing guns to announce their approach, the reports of which, as was justly observed by Nassah, being very thin compared to good fat English ones.
As each boat anchored, the rais and passengers, if there were any, dressed in their cleanest and best apparel, proceeded to the Sultaun’s house, escorted by a mob of the townspeople, to an audience with his Majesty, who received them with great formality. Every one touched his hand, and then kissed their own, placing the ends of their fingers immediately afterwards on their foreheads, the usual mode of Arab salutation. After this, the whole assembly repeated the opening chapter of the Koran called the Fahtah, to intimate the peaceable nature of the meeting. The latest news of the fair were now discussed, the ever-circulating coffee sent round,the Fahtah again was joined in; and so terminated the business of welcoming the return of the parties home.
Some three or four days previous to our starting, a kafila from Abyssinia came in, and with it arrived two Greeks, who had long been residing at the court of Salie Selassie, the Negus, or King of Shoa. Their names were Demetrius and Joannes; whilst in Abyssinia they had professed Christianity, but now found it convenient to be very devout Mahomedans, and called themselves, the former, Hadjji Mahomed, the latter, Hadjji Yoseph. They were in no very good condition, having been robbed on this side the Hawash, by one of the tribes of the Dankalli people living near that river. They reported also, that three discharged Indian servants of Capt. Harris’s were killed at the same time, and accounted for their own escape by their being Mahomedans. They farther informed us that only one half of the stores last sent up had reached Shoa, the rest having been plundered by the Bedouins. All the English party had, however, arrived in safety. They begged to be given a passage to Aden, and also for any article of clothing we might have to spare.
Our interview with these men took place in the usual court of audience, before the Sultaun, Isaak, and Cassim; and Mr. Cruttenden having in the meantime sent his servant for two shirts, Cassim, to prevent any dispute between the two men, very gravely undertookto decide by lot which shirt each should have. Placing his face in his cloth he received from Demetrius a piece of stick, and from Joannes a small stone, without of course knowing the choice of either, then uncovering his face, he placed upon each shirt the representative of the individual that should have it; and who, accordingly, received from the hands of the Sultaun the, to them, very welcome present. After our interview with these men, and we had returned to our own courtyard, Cassim came in and remarked, it was very foolish of Demetrius and his friend affecting Mahomedanism in Tajourah, when their religion and situation in Shoa were so well known to him, he having frequently seen them in that country. He seemed rather vexed at the mistrust evinced by this circumstance; and, appealing to us, asked if we thought they would have been any the worse treated had they come in the character of Christians. We found afterwards, that with all their protestations of poverty, these men had brought down several slave-girls, whom they were desirous of carrying over to Mocha, and by their sale obtain funds to carry them to Constantinople. This coming to the ears of Mr. Cruttenden, he peremptorily refused them a passage in his boat, and told them that if they brought their slaves to Aden, their relative positions would certainly be reversed, that they would be imprisoned, and their bondswomen be made free.
Having heard in Aden from conversations with a missionary who had visited Tajourah that some ruins existed near that town, which could only be referred to the labours of some highly civilized people in a condition far superior to the present state of the inhabitants, I was particular in my inquiries concerning the traditional history of the place. The Sultaun, who appeared to be one of the oldest men, informed me that in his younger days stone walls of some extent, but completely in ruins, were to be seen on the road to the well, and offered to accompany Mr. Cruttenden and myself to point out their situation. Their site was about half way between the town and the well. All traces of them above ground had long since disappeared; but by raking over the spot with the butt-end of a spear very evident marks of the foundations of some extensive buildings were to be seen, but still were too indistinct to enable us to form any idea as to their character. A few yards distant from them we found, nearly perfect, a regular formed millstone of extraordinary dimensions, made of a black coarse volcanic rock, and weighing at least 600 pounds; the Sultaun could give us no other account of its origin than that it had been brought down from the hills by the rain. Respecting the stone houses, foundations of which we had been examining, he told us that he had been informed by his father, that the Turks had erected them when they had possession of the country.
It is necessary, however, to observe, that there are no remains of ancient buildings, either in this country or that of the Soumaulee, concerning which the natives will not tell the same tale, that they were towns once occupied by the Turks. I was often told during my journey through the Adal country of ruined houses built of stone and lime, being in the neighbourhood, and my informants invariably added that they had formerly belonged to the Turks; sometimes, as if correcting themselves, explaining that they meant the Feringees, for that the old possessors had not been Mahomedans but Christians.
Proceeding to the well, we found the mouth of it surrounded with a low fence of stones, about two feet high. The shaft was about fifteen or sixteen feet deep to the surface of the water, which is always plentiful and sweet. At some little distance, their extremities placed in the earth, were six upright halves of the same kind of mill-stone we had just before seen; all of which, according to the statements of the numerous slave-girls who were filling their water-skins, had been brought from some place among the hills by the torrents in the wet season, so far according with the Sultaun’s story, and perhaps originating from the same sources of information.
The questions that naturally arise are, to what people must we attribute these works of art, so superior to the capabilities of the present inhabitantsof Tajourah, are even these rude mill-stones, and for what purpose of manufacture could they have been originally designed. The climate of the country in which we find them precludes the idea of their being used for the grinding of wheat; nor would the jowaree, I think, be used as food by people so advanced in civilization as these stones indicate. I am quite at a loss to account for their presence, for no production of this country, as it now exists, could require their employment, and the difficulty can only be surmounted by supposing them to have been the product of a period anterior to the volcanic era which has made the whole of this country a desert. Some examination of the country to the north and east of Tajourah may, perhaps, at a future day prove the existence of extensive ruins in the neighbourhood; and this I feel more inclined to believe from the name of Tajourah itself, which appears to me to signify the dependent village of the black population, of some once great and flourishing city.
The time was now approaching for my departure. The Arab blacksmith had been two or three days at work making me a crooked dagger to be carried with three small pistols in my belt, and which enabled me to present a very warlike front. The rumours of assassinations and Bedouin attacks, made me wish to be ready in cases of extremity. I am fully convinced that the greatest danger in travelling among savage and lawless tribesis fancied security, and to be really safe, the traveller must be always prepared to meet their attacks. He will find his best protection to be a constant suspicion of every man’s intentions until fully convinced of his peaceable character, or that he is quite aware of the ability to reward him for his protection and friendship, or to punish him for any attempts upon life or property.
Two saddle-bags of cowskin dressed with the hair on, were made also by the blacksmith; they had no pretensions to elegance, certainly, but as they were capacious enough for me to stow in them all the wardrobe I had selected for the journey, and also several pounds of biscuit, and a small cheese, I did not mind their not being of a make that would have commanded the entire approbation of a bagsman accustomed to travel only on English roads. A mule was also purchased for my use, a good oldShabah, as my Dankalli servant Allee used to delight in calling her. She was a remarkably staid steady-going animal of a sober grey colour, and had been so accustomed to travel up and down the road we were going, that I really believe she could have taken me to Shoa without a guide, and had become so used to the regular slow two miles an hour pace of the camels, that she never could be induced to go on any faster, and always seemed most happy when she was at the very end of the line walking close under the tail of the last camel.
Mr. Cruttenden and myself were hard at work with our needles for two days previous to the start, he kindly undertaking to manufacture a skin-case for my watch, pocket-compass, and ammunition; whilst I attempted to vie with him in his workmanship by stitching together two strips of ox-hide into a belt, which, for want of the necessary buckles, was made to button in front. To this the sheath of my Adal knife, or dagger, was secured, as also a little bag for caps and bullets. When finished, the Sultaun very graciously pronounced the belt to be a very creditable effort of genius, with which encomium I felt highly flattered.
March 27th, the last day in Tajourah.—The night before, all the boxes were taken to the open place beyond the little stone mosque in the rear of the Sultaun’s house, preparatory for the grand start to our first halt this day, which I was positively informed would be at the distance of at least seven miles. It was not until late in the afternoon, that I was called to witness the camels loaded for the first time, and to count them, as they one by one proceeded on their march. Mr. Cruttenden was present to take farewell; and a whole circle of the principal hukells of the town, who here held their last calahm, to place me particularly under the care of Ohmed Mahomed, the brother of Cassim and Mahomed, or as he was commonly called Ebin Izaak, the son of Izaak, upon whom jointly now devolved the charge of the Kafilah andmyself. Cassim, one of the chief men of the town, and Ibrahim Shaitan, “the devil,” (a very appropriate name,) had agreed to accompany us for three days, and see us fairly started on our journey.
The camels having already got out of sight, the Fahtah was recited by all present, and a general leave-taking followed. I shook hands with Mr. Cruttenden, and after sincerely thanking him for his kindness and the trouble he had taken in providing everything necessary for my journey, mounted my mule, and went on my way rejoicing at having at last turned my back upon Tajourah, a town I was most heartily tired of.