Volume One—Chapter Fifteen.

Dismal Night-March along the Inhospitable Shores of the Great Salt Lake.

Scarcely had the moon dipped her first flickering beam into the unruffled surface of the oval lake, and lighted the bluff cliffs for some hours previously shrouded in gloomy obscurity, than a loud war-cry from the adjacent heights echoed the assembly to arms, and the shrill blast of the Ada?el conch summoned all to the rescue. Abandoning his occupation, each stalwart warrior seized spear and buckler, which had been laid aside whilst he aided in the task of reloading the camels for the approaching night-march, and with respondent yells rushed towards the spot whence the alarm proceeded. The Europeans, springing from their broken slumbers on the parched sands, stood to their arms. A long interval of silence and suspense succeeded, which was at last relieved by the return of Mohammad Ali, one of whose beasts had unfortunately slidden with its burden over a steep precipice, when the water-skins bursting incontinently, had scattered the filthy but precious contents over the thirsty soil—an irreparable catastrophe which had occasioned the call for assistance, believed by all to indicate a hostile gathering of the wild Bedouin clans.

Of two roads which lead to Goongoonteh from the shores of the dreary Bahr Assál, one skirts the margin of the lake by a route utterly destitute of fresh water; whilst the other, although somewhat more circuitous, conducts over high lava banks stretching some distance inland to Haliksitan, and past the small well of Hanlefánta, where the drained pitcher of the fainting wayfarer may be refilled. On finally quitting the bivouac under the scraggy boughs of the dwarf acacia, where the tedious and most trying day had been endured—which each of the half-stifled party did with an inward prayer that it might never fall to his lot to seek their treacherous shelter more—a fierce dispute arose amongst the leaders of the caravan as to which path should be adopted. “What matters it,” urged the intolerant Mohammadan from Shoa, who had accidentally been found starving at Ambábo, and been since duly fed by the embassy—“what matters it if all these Christian dogs should happen to expire of thirst? Lead the Kafirs by the lower road, or, Allahu akbar, God is most powerful, if the waters of the well prove low, what is to become of the mules of the Faithful?”

But the breast of the son of Ali Abi fortunately warmed to a more humane and charitable feeling than the stony heart of the “red man.” With his hand upon the hilt of his creese, he swore aloud upon the sacred Korán to take the upper path, and stoutly led the way, in defiance of all, after Izhák and the ruthless bigots in his train had actually entered upon a route, which the event proved must have involved the destruction of all less inured than the savage to the hardships of the waste wilderness.

’Twas midnight when the thirsty party commenced the steep ascent of the ridge of volcanic hills which frown above the south-eastern boundary of the fiery lake. The searching north-east wind had scarcely diminished in its parching fierceness, and in hot suffocating gusts swept fitfully over the broad glittering expanse of water and salt whereon the moon shone brightly—each deadly puff succeeded by the stillness that foretells a tropical hurricane—an absolute absence even of the smallest ruffling of the close atmosphere. Around, the prospect was wild, gloomy, and unearthly, beetling basaltic cones and jagged slabs of shattered larva—the children of some mighty trouble—forming scenery the most shadowy and extravagant. A chaos of ruined churches and cathedrals, eedgahs, towers, monuments, and minarets, like the ruins of a demolished world, appeared to have been confusedly tossed together by the same volcanic throes, that when the earth was in labour, had produced the phenomenon below; and they shot their dilapidated spires into the molten vault of heaven, in a fantastic medley, which, under so uncertain a light, bewildered and perplexed the heated brain. The path, winding along the crest of the ridge, over sheets of broken lava, was rarely of more than sufficient width to admit of progress in single file; and the livelong hours, each seeming in itself a century, were spent in scrambling up the face of steep rugged precipices, where the moon gleamed upon the bleaching skeleton of some camel that had proved unequal to the task—thence again to descend at the imminent peril of life and limb, into yawning chasms and dark abysses, the forbidding vestiges of bygone volcanic agency.

The horrors of that dismal night set the efforts of description at defiance. An unlimited supply of water in prospect, at the distance of only sixteen miles, had for the brief moment buoyed up the drooping spirit which tenanted each way-worn frame; and when an exhausted mule was unable to totter further, his rider contrived manfully to breast the steep hill on foot. But owing to the long fasting and privation endured by all, the limbs of the weaker soon refused the task, and after the first two miles, they dropped fast in the rear.

Fanned by the fiery blast of the midnight sirocco, the cry for water, uttered feebly and with difficulty by numbers of parched throats, now became incessant; and the supply of that precious element brought for the whole party falling short of one gallon and a half, it was not long to be answered. A tiny sip of diluted vinegar for a moment assuaging the burning thirst which raged in the vitals, and consumed some of the more down-hearted, again raised their drooping souls; but its effects were transient, and after struggling a few steps, overwhelmed, they sunk again, with husky voice declaring their days to be numbered, and their resolution to rise up no more. Dogs incontinently expired upon the road; horses and mules that once lay down, being unable from exhaustion to rally, were reluctantly abandoned to their fate; whilst the lion-hearted soldier, who had braved death at the cannon’s mouth, subdued and unmanned by thirst, finally abandoning his resolution, lay gasping by the wayside, and heedless of the exhortation of his officers, hailed approaching dissolution with delight, as bringing the termination of tortures which were not to be endured.

Whilst many of the escort and followers were thus unavoidably left stretched with open mouths along the road, in a state of utter insensibility, and apparently yielding up the ghost, others, pressing on to arrive at water, became bewildered in the intricate mazes of the wide wilderness, and recovered it with the utmost difficulty. As another day dawned, and the round red sun again rose in wrath over the Lake of Salt, towards the hateful shores of which the tortuous path was fast tending, the courage of all who had hitherto home up against fatigue and anxiety began to flag. A dimness came before the drowsy eyes, giddiness seized the brain, and the prospect ever held out by the guides, of quenching thirst immediately in advance, seeming like the tantalising delusions of a dream, had well nigh lost its magical effect; when, as the spirits of the most sanguine fainted within them, a wild Bedouin was perceived, like a delivering angel from above, hurrying forward with a large skin filled with muddy water. This most well-timed supply, obtained by Mohammad Ali from the small pool at Hanlefánta, of which, with the promised guard of his own tribe, by whom he had been met, he had taken forcible possession in defiance of the impotent threats of the ruthless “red man,” was sent to the rear. It admitted of a sufficient quantity being poured over the face and down the parched throat, to revive every prostrate and perishing sufferer; and at a late hour, ghastly, haggard, and exhausted, like men who had escaped from the jaws of death, the whole had contrived to straggle into a camp, which, but for the foresight and firmness of the son of Ali Abi, few individuals indeed of the whole party would have reached alive.

A low range of limestone hillocks, interspersed with strange masses of coral, and marked by a pillar like that of Lot, encloses the well of Hanlefánta, where each mule obtained a shield full of water. From the glittering shores of the broad lake, the road crosses the saline incrustation, which extends about two miles to the opposite brink. Soiled and mossy near the margin, the dull crystallised salt appears to rest upon an earthy bottom; but it soon becomes lustrous and of a purer colour, and floating on the surface of the dense water, like a rough coarse sheet of ice, irregularly cracked, is crusted with a white yielding efflorescence, resembling snow which has been thawed and refrozen, but which still, as here, with a crisp sound, receives the impress of the foot. A well trodden path extends through the prismatic colours of the rainbow, by the longitudinal axis of the ellipse, to the northeastern extremity of the gigantic bowl, whence the purest salt is obtainable in the vicinity of several cold springs, said to cast up large pebbles on their jet, through the ethereal blue water.

At some distance from the beach was a caravan of Bedouin salt-diggers, busily loading their camels for the markets of Aussa and Abyssinia, where it forms on article of extensive traffic and barter. Two other basins of a similar stamp, but inferior extent, which exist at no great distance to the northward, are styled “Ullool” and “Dus.” The first of these producing salt of most exquisite lustre, is preferred by the Muda?to tribes, from whose capital Aussa, it is not more remote than Doba, as they term the Bahr Assál, the right to frequent which is asserted as an exclusive privilege by the Danákil, who for centuries have actually held the monopoly undisputed. Transferred in bulk in long narrow mat bags, wrought of the date-leaf, it is exchanged for slaves and grain, and not only forms, as in other climes, one of the chief necessaries of life, but possesses a specific value for the rock salt of the north, which, cut into rectangular blocks, passes as a circulating medium.

A second low belt of hills, gypsum and anhydrite, succeeded by limestone overstrewed with basaltic boulders, forms the western bank of the molten sea, and opens into a mountain ravine. Taking its source at Allooli, the highest point of the Gollo range, this torrent strives to disembogue into the extremity of the lake, although its waters seldom arrive so far, save during the rainy season. The high basaltic cliffs that hem in the pebbly channel, approximating in the upper course as they increase rapidly in altitude, form a narrow waist, where the first running stream that had greeted the eye of the pilgrims since leaving the shores of Asia, trickled onwards, leaving bright limpid pools, surrounded by brilliant sward.

Bowers, for ever green, enlivened by the melodious warbling of the feathered creation, and the serene and temperate air of the verdant meadows of Elysium, were absent from this blessed spot, but it was entered with feelings allied for the moment to escape from the horrors of purgatory to the gates of Paradise; and under the shade cast by the overhanging cliffs, which still warded off the ardent rays of the ascending sun, it was with thankful hearts that the exhausted party, after the terrors of such a night, turned their backs upon the deadly waters of the stagnant lake, to quaff at the delicious rivulet of Goongoonteh an unlimited quantity of cool though brackish fluid.

Here terminated the dreary passage of the dire Teháma—an iron-bound waste, which, at this inauspicious season of the year, opposes difficulties almost overwhelming in the path of the traveller. Setting aside the total absence of water and forage throughout a burning tract of fifty miles—its manifold intricate mountain passes, barely wide enough to admit the transit of a loaded camel, the bitter animosity of the wild bloodthirsty tribes by which they are infested, and the uniform badness of the road, if road it may be termed, everywhere beset with the huge jagged blocks of lava, and intersected by perilous acclivities and descents—it is no exaggeration to state, that the stifling sirocco which sweeps across the unwholesome salt flat during the hotter months of the year, could not fail, within eight and forty hours, to destroy the hardiest European adventurer. Some idea of the temperature of this terrible region may be derived from the fact of fifty pounds of well packed spermaceti candles, having, during the short journey from Tajúra, been so completely melted out of the box as to be reduced to a mere bundle of wicks. Even the Danákil, who from early boyhood have been accustomed to traverse the burning lava of the Teháma, never speak of it but in conjunction with the devouring element, of whose properties it partakes so liberally, and when alluding to the Lake of Salt, invariably designate it “Fire.”