CHAPTER XXVIII.

Journey from Murroo to Sakeitaban, general direction, W.S.W., time marching, one hour.—Visit to Durtee Ohmed.—Halt for short time at Sakeitaban.—Proceed to Mullu, general direction, W.S.W., time marching, four hours.—Bad road.—Threats of assassination.—Shields of the Dankalli, and care of their arms.—Arrive at Mullu.—Write letter to Ankobar.

May 17th.—We left Murroo a little before sunrise. I was about to start, when Ohmed Mahomed came up, and introduced a one-eyed stranger, with the rather surprising information that he was the Durtee Ohmed, for whom I had a few days before been making inquiry. On looking about, I could not see Ebin Izaak to ask for an explanation, but as I conceived that Ohmed Mahomed knew of my having before given three dollars to a man who was said to be Durtee Ohmed, I said I should not repeat the present. My respectable Ras ul Kafilah denied any knowledge of the circumstance, and appeared quite indignant at the deceit practised upon me by Ebin Izaak. The one eye of the present applicant was repeatedly pointed to as evidence of identity, and at length I was induced to give the man two dollars as a present from Lieut. Barker.

I had been detained a little in the rear by this business, so mounted my mule to gallop up to Ohmed Medina, who was now some way ahead. I dismounted when I reached the party he was with, but no Ebin Izaak being there to expostulate with for his deceit, I relieved my feelings by complaining of his conduct to Ohmed Medina. He laughed, but whether at my simplicity, or the pettifogging pilfering of my companions, I cannot say, but pointing to the kraal, the huts of which now became visible, he said he would shew me the real Durtee Ohmed, who was, and had been, sick for many days. He stipulated that I should not upbraid Ohmed Mahomed, or speak at all about the two dollars I had given to the man on his representations, and undertook that these should be carried to account for the purchase of food for the Hy Soumaulee. I readily agreed to this, as I now felt curious to see thefinaleof all this humbug. I learned that Ohmed Medina’s chief reason for taking me to visit Durtee Ohmed was to exculpate his young friend, Ebin Izaak, from having any interested motive in the trick he had played me.

The road went close to the kraal, but we had to turn off a few yards, to the farther hut of the whole, before I was introduced into the presence of the sick chief; who, on seeing me, extended his hand, and soon convinced me of his being the real Simon Pure, not only by his one eye, but also by hisinquiries, and the interest he manifested in Lieut. Barker. The man to whom I had given the first three dollars followed us into the hut, and I then found that he was the son of the old chief.

It had not been deemed politic to introduce me to the latter by reason of the trip to the kraal, which would have been necessary, and was considered unsafe. It had, therefore, been arranged that any present I had to give should be received by the son, who was to personify his father, and as the motive seemed to have been purely out of consideration for me, I easily excused the hoax. Ebin Izaak thinking, as I had been cheated so often, that unless I saw the individual himself I should withhold the present, had concealed the truth, and with a few bold assertions, had removed, in a great measure, my doubts naturally excited by seeing Durtee Ohmed possessing two eyes instead of one, as I had expected.

It was just milking time when we arrived at the kraal. Girls standing up to their knees in sheep and goats, caught each the one she intended to operate upon, and placing a hind leg between her knees, so held the animal fast. In their left hands they held baskets of the usual closely-woven mid rib of the palm-leaf, which they soon filled with rich and frothy milk.

Ohmed Medina and I were pressed to drink; and the old man turning over on the mat upon which he lay, reached from behind him a verynicely made fedeenah, which he pressed upon my acceptance. His civility, and the remembrance of what was due to him for his attention to Lieut. Barker, induced me to add to my previous present two more dollars, making altogether five, the number I had originally intended to give him, but which I had kept back in the first instance from his son, because of certain misgivings as to his identity, that even Ebin Izaak’s protestations had failed to remove entirely.

Before Ohmed Medina and I came up again with the Kafilah, we found it already halted at a place called Sakeitaban, not much unlike the scene of our previous halt, and but little more than three miles distant from it. The camels were not unloaded, but appeared to be awaiting the decision of a calahm that was going on under a large tree, both the Tajourah people and the Hy Soumaulee taking part in the debate. Ohmed Medina joined them immediately, whilst I sat down until a signal from him intimated that our stay was determined upon. The assembly broke up, several of the parties going to their camels, and commencing to unload them. I now heard that the escort had insisted upon the Kafilah waiting for the one, belonging to their people, we had been expecting for the last four days, and from which fresh messengers had arrived who affirmed that it would be up in a few hours, which, much to my surprise, was really the case.

Ebin Izaak came to my hut very soon after thebustle of unloading had subsided, and as he seemed inclined to remain, I made Zaido enlarge it for our better accommodation. He was anxious to explain how he came to practise upon me the little imposition he had employed as regarded Durtee Ohmed. To occupy himself whilst he remained, he brought with him part of the branch of a myrrh-tree and a small kind of axe, that reminded me of one somewhat of the same kind I have seen represented upon old Egyptian monuments. It consisted of an iron head, the cutting edge of which was about one inch and a-half in extent, whilst the body of it was a socket three or four inches long, which received into it the pointed extremity of the short arm of a trimmed branch, which joined at a very acute angle the longer, or handle proper, about a foot and a-half long, the shorter portion inserted into the axe head not being more than six inches.[5]

5.Several ancient British celts have been compared with the head of one of these axes I brought home with me, and are in size and shape exactly similar.

With this primitive tool he soon chopped out of the wood a pretty correct form of a spoon which gradually assumed, under the repeated light blows of the axe, a very elegant shape. I was so much pleased with this production of savage genius, that I gave him a small hollow-gouging chisel he had long coveted, to scoop out and finish the bowl. My pocket-knife was also in requisition, to enable him to ornament thehandle with an intricate wavy pattern, and by mid-day he produced an article that for elegance might have vied with the most finished of the carved wagers, sung for in the pastorals of some of our classical poets.

Our conversation and occupation were suddenly interrupted by the arrival of the Hy Soumaulee Kafilah, a numerous body, consisting of several hundred camels, the original party having been joined by a large number from Owssa. Fortunately the new arrivals were anxious to proceed, and as this feeling was participated in by us, a short calahm was followed by our camels being driven into camp and loaded, whilst the Hy Soumaulee proceeded on their march. My mule innocently enough came within arms’ length of me, and I secured a ride to-day; for, with an amusing sagacity, when wanted in a morning at the general hour of starting, she frequently contrived to have made herself scarce, and thus obliged me to walk when I would much rather have ridden.

As the numerous Kafilahs now formed a little army, we moved across the country, not in a single file, but with an extended front. No attack in our present condition therefore, was anticipated, so my escort, with Ohmed Medina and myself, preceded in a body. The road continued for nearly two hours through a park-like country, high mimosa and other trees standing in clumps of three or four together, at considerable distances from each other.

The moomen, or toothbrush-tree,[6]abounded at Sakeitaban. Several of the Hy Soumaulee brought me a handful of the berries to eat, but I was soon obliged to call out “Hold, enough!” so warmly aromatic was their flavour. This singular fruit grows in drooping clusters of flesh-coloured mucilaginous berries, the size of our common red currants, each containing a single round seed, about as large as a peppercorn. The taste at first is sweet, and not unpleasant, and by some, I think, would be considered very agreeable indeed. After some little time, if many are eaten, the warmth in the palate increases considerably, and reminded me of the effect of pepper, or of very hot cress. As we approached the river Hawash, I found these trees growing more abundantly.

6.Salvadora Persica. The “Peeloo” of India, identified by Dr. Royle with the mustard-tree of Scripture.

The moomen forms a dense bush, some yards in circuit, and as their thick, velvety, round leaves, of a bright green colour, afford an excellent shade, they form the favourite lairs, both of savage men, and of wild beasts. Reposing upon the ground, near the roots, free from underwood and thorns, whoever, or whatever lies there, is entirely concealed from sight; and not unfrequently a leopard or hyæna skulks out of, or a startled antelope bounds from, the very bush that the tired Bedouin has selected for his own retreat from the sun.

Birds, of every hue, made this Adal forest their home, and displayed all that enjoyment of life,which appears to be the one general feeling that animates these happy denizens of air. Their shrill piping songs, their joyous freedom, and quick sportive movements, as chasing each other, or challenging to the flight, they dart from tree to tree, excite corresponding feelings of buoyancy and happiness in the delighted traveller, glad to have escaped from the stony deserts, or the burning plains of the arid country he has previously passed through.

In two hours we arrived at a more open country, its surface gently undulating, with a gradual slope towards the west. Here, it was not so densely wooded; the trees appeared younger, and the idea occurred to me, that a flood might have rushed over and devastated this district, some few years before, and this natural plantation had sprung up subsequent to that event. I could not obtain any information corroborative of this as a fact, but the uniform height of the trees, their young appearance, and the contiguity to an overflowing river, the Hawash, afforded me some reasons for supposing this part of the country to have been so acted upon.

A curious kind of medicine, I observed carefully picked up by my Dankalli companions. This was the hard clay-like fæces of the manus, or pangolin, said to have cathartic effects. This mailed ant-eater excavates, with its strong fore claws, a passage through the thick mud walls of the ant-hills, and the numerous army of soldier and of labouring ants, that are hereupon summoned tothe rescue, fall an easy prey to the slimy-tongued invader. The pangolin materially assists the porcupine in obtaining his food, for after the destruction of the little animals by the former, he takes advantage of the excavated passage, and possesses himself of the hoards of grain and other seeds, collected by these industrious insects. This, at least, appears to me the most reasonable mode of accounting for the presence of the porcupine, so frequently found in the neighbourhood of a burrowed, and, consequently, a ruined ant-hill.

During our march, Adam Burrah gave information to Ohmed Medina, that one of my escort, Esau Ibrahim, had threatened to take my life, in revenge for Ohmed Mahomed having denied some tobacco he wanted. I never liked this Esau; he always showed such unnecessary obsequiousness, that I had long suspected, he intended something more than he wished me to have any idea of. I was, therefore, not surprised when Ohmed Medina told me to take care of him; but I had nearly managed it very badly by suggesting, in reply, that he should be got rid of somehow or another. It was fortunate, both for himself and me, that I added almost immediately, I had thought of a plan, which was to send him with a letter to Shoa to announce my arrival, to do which I had been requested the two previous days by Ohmed Mahomed, and I now thought that two dollars could not be better expended, than by sending Esau out of the way on that errand. The same moneywould have induced Adam Burrah to have cut the throat of this rascal, and if I had only nodded my head, when this mode of relieving my care was proposed, it would have been done the same night. I preferred disappointing Adam Burrah, to whom, however, I was obliged to promise an additional present on our arrival in Shoa, to prevent such a sanguinary proof of his regard being done gratis.

Several times our road was crossed by swamps of small extent, that lay on each side of narrow and shallow ditches. It was most unpleasant walking for me, as my boots were quite worn out, and had large, gaping splits in the upper leather, which admitted the mud very freely. I would not ride, because my mule could scarcely drag herself through the soft, sticky clay. The broad foot of the camel was better suited for such situations, although these animals could not get on very well, and were continually slipping. On such occasions, one of their long legs, or sometimes both, slide outside with such a painfully prolonged sweep, that it is a most astonishing thing that dislocation does not sometimes take place.

I trudged along, in a very cross humour, my bare-legged companions laughing all the while, and sometimes lending me a hand, when I got stuck altogether in the mud. I, at length, began to be amused myself, as I thought of the will-o’-the-wisp that was leading me through such scenes; and from a personal review of myself, I took on gettingover the last of these difficult portions of the road, I felt quite sure my own mother would have found it difficult to recognise her son in the bog-trotting, moss-trooping Bedouin that was now trying by a series of bending and extending movements of the feet, to squeeze out of the splits in the leather, as much as possible of the mud contained in his boots.

Having got quite clear of the marshy district, we entered upon a fine grassy plain, where we perceived two buffaloes, but at too great a distance for us to think of pursuing them. I learnt, on this occasion, that of the hide of these animals, the Dankalli manufacture their shields. These are well made, and formed of a circular slab of the still moist skin, about twenty inches in diameter, moulded into the required concave form, by being dried upon a corresponding convexity of heaped-up, hard clay. The rim is, at the same time, curled outwards and upwards by being well pecked as with a mattock, all around by a wooden instrument, exactly identical with the so-called wooden hoe, contained in the Egyptian room in the British Museum, and corresponding in form with the handle of the Dankalli axe I have before described. The shield is held in one hand by a strong and hard ring of twisted hide that, like a bar of metal, crosses over the centre, its size being such as to admit of the shield being slung sometimes upon the arm, like a basket. The centre of the front is ornamentedby a small boss, from which depends a long tuft of horsehair, sometimes white, tinged with henna, sometimes black. This tuft is the characteristic symbol of a brave, as it is only assumed after the bearer has slain a man. On the inside of the shield, corresponding to the raised boss, is a depression, about one inch deep, and an inch and a-half in diameter, where generally is placed any little portable valuable, that can be stowed away in it. Gum myrrh, not unfrequently, occupies this place, and sometimes “eltit,” or assafœtida, or some other valued medicine. Assafœtida is not indigenous to Adal; the Dankalli obtain it in small quantities from Arabia.

One trait in the character of these people, is the great attention they pay to the condition of their arms. Brightening or sharpening them is their favourite amusement, and no fiercer scowls are excited than by the accidental disturbance of the carefully-deposited shield or spear. No traveller in Adal can help observing this; and in the description of a war-dance of these people, in a recent work upon Ethiopia, its imaginary character is betrayed by the alleged beating of the shields; which, however characteristic it may be of the peaceable Abyssinian, when he endeavours to represent the turmoil of strife, is quite out of place when speaking of Dankalli customs and manners.

We halted in a very open spot, amidst high grass, no trees being in sight, except toward the north and west, where a low mimosa forest extendedas far as the bases of the hills of Hyhilloo and Abhidah. In the south-west the table mountain of Afrabah, cut off as it seemed from the ridge of Goror and of Oburah, on which is situated the celebrated city of Hurrah, at the distance of about sixty miles. Our halting-place was called Mullu, and the whole plain, north and south, bore the same general designation.

After getting into my hut, my first business was to send for Ohmed Mahomed, to consult respecting the letter that was to be forwarded to Shoa. Esau Ibrahim was sent for, and willingly undertook, for two dollars, to be the bearer. The letter was written and ready for him long before evening, but as the tribes now between us and the Hawash were hostile to Kafilahs or their messengers proceeding through their country, he was obliged to defer his departure until night. As he asserted that he should be able to deliver the letter in three days, I began to entertain some hopes of getting through the country; and before he started, by the interpreting assistance of my servant Allee, I charged him with an abundance of verbal messages to the officers of the British Mission in Ankobar, to induce them to come and meet me, which, in my ignorance of Shoan policy, I thought they might do, even so far as the banks of the Hawash. A most affectionate and sincere leave-taking passed between Esau Ibrahim and myself, and very soon after he had taken his departure, I went to sleep in peace.

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