Volume One—Chapter Twenty Five.

Fiálu, a Den of Thieves in the Wóema territories. Barurúdda and Killúlloo.

After a march of three miles on the 22nd, over a stony table-land thickly strewed with the never-ending basaltic boulders, the caravan entered the territory of the Danákil tribe Wóema, under the uncle and father of Mohammad Ali. A desolate hollow passed on the way, which appeared in the rainy season to form an extensive pond, was enlivened by four bee-hive-shaped wigwams, placed as usual on the site where large hot stones were most abundant, and tenanted by goat-herds, whose numerous flocks were being driven forth to graze by the Bedouin females. Their supply of water is derived from a sequestered pool, occupying a deep narrow precipitous ravine, which abounds in the Hyrax, and boasts of a few trees not dissimilar from the Casuarina. Bearing the euphonous title of Korandúdda, this gully wound at the foot of the high terrace selected for the encampment—another right dreary plain, covered with volcanic pebbles, among which the dry yellow grass peeped out in scanty tufts.

No traveller through the bleak barren country of the Ada?el can fail to appreciate the simile of “the shadow of a rock in a weary land;” for a tree is indeed a rare phenomenon—and when a few leafless branches do greet the eye, they are studiously shunned, upon the same principle that induces the savage to eschew the immediate vicinity of water. A few straggling acacias occupied the valley of Fiáloo, half a mile to the southward, which is the usual encamping ground, and here were large herds of cattle, eccentrically marked and brindled, and glorying in superb horns raking gracefully from the brow. A fat ox was purchased without difficulty, together with a supply of fresh milk, which, if not improved by confinement in a greasy skin bag, proved nevertheless an extraordinary luxury.

One of the retainers of Mohammad Ali was now despatched to acquaint Ali Abi of the arrival of the káfilah. It had all along been promised that after entering the territories of the old Sheikh, every danger was to cease, but the goal now gained, the country proved to be a perfect nest of hornets. The thieving propensities of the Galeyla Muda?to having been lately exercised upon the Wóema, it had been resolved to inflict summary chastisement, and rag-a-muffins were collecting from all quarters, preparatory to a “goom.” From morning till night the camp and tent were unceasingly thronged with scowling knaves, amongst whom were several of the Eesah—their heads decorated with white ostrich plumes in token of having recently slain an antagonist in single combat, or more probably murdered some sleeping victim.

Towards evening a gang of the Abli, whose chieftain is appropriately surnamed Jeróaa, or “the thief,” made a desperate attempt to carry off the best horse, upon which they had strongly set their affections; but the rogues were fortunately observed by the lynx-eyed Kákoo, henchman to Mohammad Ali, just in time to admit of the animal being recovered. The war-cry caused all to fly to their arms; blows were exchanged without any blood being spilled, although one of the Wóema shields was perforated by a well-launched spear; and the ringleader of the horse-stealing gang, who had thus narrowly escaped a mortal feud, having been secured to a tree, was by his own tribe severely castigated on the spot.

A dense cloud of dust rolling along from the north-eastward, closed the day. Revolving within its own circumference, and advancing on a spiral axis, it burst in full force in the very centre of the camp. The tent fell on the first outpouring of its wrath, and the consistency being so dense as to render it impossible to keep the eyes open, the party were fain to take refuge beneath tarpaulins, and stretched upon the ground, to listen with quick and difficult respiration, until the whirlwind had expended its violence among chairs, tables, and bottles. A few drops of rain ushered in the night which was passed by a newly-entertained Bedouin guard in carousing upon the choice dates of the Embassy, a bag of which had been unceremoniously put in requisition by the Ras, “in order to keep the savages in good humour,” or, in other words, to save them the trouble of stealing it; and the musket announcing relief of sentries was discontinued by request of the same authority, lest the smell of gunpowder might have a prejudicial effect upon the voracious appetites of the savages.

Before dawn the chief of the nomade tribe Hy Somauli arriving with a hungry and dissatisfied retinue, a halt was proclaimed, to the end that they also might be fed, pacified, and propitiated. The potentate was duly introduced by Izhák as a most particular friend, who had journeyed a long way for the express purpose of making the acquaintance of his English charge; and a deep sense of the honour conferred having been expressed, it was ascertained that the secondary object of the visit was to inquire by whose authority so formidable a party of foreigners were being smuggled through the country, and how it happened that they were suffered to build houses wheresoever they thought proper?—this last allusion having reference to the tent, which had again been pitched, and was very sapiently conjectured to be a permanent edifice.

The “Kafir Feringees” therefore continued to be objects of undiminished curiosity during the whole also of this sultry day; a greasy disorderly rabble, which occupied the tent from an early hour, being continually reinforced by parties weary of the debate held immediately outside, which lasted until the going down of the sun. Each new visitor, after staring sufficiently at the white faces, invariably exclaimed “Nubeeo,” “Holy Prophet,” a mark of undisguised disapprobation, which was further elicited by every occurrence that did not exactly coincide with his nice ideas of propriety, such as eating with a fork, keeping the head cool under a hat instead of under a pound of sheeps’ tail fat, or blowing the nose with a handkerchief in lieu of with the fingers. Paws were nevertheless incessantly thrust in at every door, accompanied by reiterations of the Dankáli verb “to give,” used in the imperative mood; the never-ending din of “Ba, Ba,” being uncoupled with any noun designative of the commodity required—a proof that he who demanded was a ready recipient for any spare article that might be forthcoming.

A long and tedious palaver, in which voices occasionally ran extremely high, at length terminated in a general uprising of the senators. Izhák was seen curling his scanty side locks in token of victory. The chief had become satisfied of the temporary nature of the tenement inhabited by the “Christian dogs,” after one or two of the savages had thrust a spear-blade through the canvass; and the malcontents having to a man been sufficiently crammed with dates, coffee, and tobacco, finally took their departure, chuckling at the success of the foray, and having ingeniously contrived to turn their time to account by stealing one of the mules.

Many significant glances had been exchanged over portions of the baggage that had unavoidably been exposed; but a night of redoubled vigilance was cut short by a summons to relinquish sleep and bedding at two in the morning, and a march of sixteen miles over a vast alluvial flat conducted past the Bedouin station of Ulwúlli to Barurúdda, on the plain of Kelláli. The road led along the base of the low range of Jebel Eesah, through abundance of coarse grass concealing lava pieces and volcanic detritus, the prospect being bounded by distant blue mountains towering to the peak of Kúffal Ali. A korhaan rose at intervals, wild and noisy as his chattering kindred in the south, but few other signs of animated nature enlivened the long sultry march. In the grey of the morning, a solitary Bedouin horseman ambled past with some message to the savages at Amádoo, and from him was obtained the disagreeable intelligence, which subsequently proved too true, that not a drop of water existed over the whole of the wide plain within a day’s journey, and that the station beyond was thronged with tribes, collected with their flocks and herds from all the country round, at this, the oasis.

After a hot dusty day the sky was again overcast, and sufficient rain fell to render every one wet and uncomfortable, without filling the pools, or checking the dire persecutions of a host of cattle ticks, which covered every part of the ground. Absence of water led to another midnight march, and the moon affording little light, the road was for some time lost, though eventually recovered by the sagacity of a female slave of Mohammad Ali’s, when all the lords of the creation were at fault. This damsel, who always led the foremost string of camels, was one of those frolicsome productions of Nature, which the wanton dame pawns on the world in her most laughing moods, and the appearance of her daughter could scarcely fail to elicit the mirth of the most sedate beholder. A small round bullet head, furnished with a well-greased mop, and a pair of moist brilliant eyes, formed the apex of a figure, which, in all other respects, was that of the concentrated amazon, exhibiting a system of globes both before and behind, agitated by a tremulous vibration as the short fat legs imparted progressive motion. A blue kerchief tied jauntily over the head—ponderous wooden ear-rings, fashioned on the model of Chubb’s largest lock—a necklace of white beads, and a greasy leathern apron slung about the unwieldy hips without any remarkable regard to decency—set off the corpulent charms of the good-natured Hásseinee, the exhibition of whose monstrous eccentricities in Europe, must infallibly have ensured a fortune to the showman.

The road continued to skirt the low Eesah range for several miles (see Note 1) to the termination of the plain, which becomes gradually shut in by rounded hills enclosing a dell choked with low thorns, and tenanted by the galla-fiela (i.e. camel-goat), a strange species of antelope, having a long raking neck, which imparted the appearance of a lama in miniature. As the day broke, flocks and herds were observed advancing from every quarter towards a common focus, and on gaining the brow of the last hill overhanging the halting ground, a confused lowing of beeves and bleating of sheep arose from the deep ravine below, whilst the mountain sides were streaked with numberless white lines of cattle and goats descending towards the water.

Arriving at the Wady Killulloo, a most busy scene presented itself. Owing to the general want of water elsewhere throughout the country, vast numbers of flocks and herds had assembled from far and wide, and they were tended by picturesque members of all the principal tribes of Danákil composing the Débenik-Wóema, as well as from the Eesah, the Muda?to, and their subordinate subdivisions. Dogs lay basking on the grassy bank beside their lounging masters; women, screaming to the utmost of their shrill voices, filled up their water-skins with an ink-black fluid stirred to the consistency of mire, and redolent of pollution; thousands of sheep, oxen, and goats, assembled in dense masses in and around the dark, deep, pools, were undergoing separation by their respective owners, before being driven to pasture; and, with the long files that ascended and descended the mountain side in every direction, imparted the bustling appearance of a great cattle fair.

The temporary mat huts of all these nomade visitors who boasted of habitations were erected at a distance on the table-land to the south-westward of this important wady, which occupies a rugged rocky chasm opening upon the Kelláli plain, and, receiving the drainage of all the southern portion of the Oobnoo range, disembogues during the rainy season into the lake at Aussa. Even during this, the hottest portion of the year, when the entire country elsewhere is dry, its rocky pools embedded in soft limestone, tainted with sulphuretted hydrogen, and abounding in rushes and crocodiles, afford an inexhaustible supply, without which the flocks and herds of the entire arid districts by which it is surrounded, could not exist.

To it the horses and mules of the Embassy were indebted for a new lease of life, short though it proved to many. Two of the former and eleven of the latter had already been left to the hyaenas, in addition to the animal feloniously abstracted by the Hy Somauli, of the recovery of which Mohammad Ali affected to be sanguine. But although the pleasure of another meeting with the robber chief, whereupon he rested his delusive hopes, was shortly realised, and brought with it a train of concomitant inconvenience, no mule was ever restored. Not one of these petty Ada?el tribes are subject to that abject despotism which controls the turbulent spirits of the more powerful African nations, and, bad as absolute power must ever be acknowledged, often tends to their ultimate improvement. The influence of a chieftain is here little more than nominal. All affairs are decided in council by a majority of voices; and, were it not for the fact, that, save during the existence of a common danger, no component member of his clan works for other than individual advantage, the wild and lawless community over whom he affects to preside, might in all respects be appropriately designated a republic.

Note 1. The reader who may not feel thoroughly satiated with miles and furlongs, as embodied in this narrative, is referred to the Appendix, where they will be found detailed in a tabular form.