After lunch I went out with my gun, and shot, besides a brace of pigeons, a pair of fly-catchers of a very pretty kind. Their plumage seemed to be worth preserving and I skinned them in the afternoon. Later I had a complimentary visit from the priest. We exchanged our respects in silence, by pantomime. He bowed and displayed his deference ceremoniously in dumb-show, and I bowed in return, and then the formalities ended. After this I talked to him by the aid of Johannes. This priest was a leper suffering from the form of the malady called “nerve leprosy.” He, poor fellow, had not known the fact until I told him. I almost regretted that I had unwittingly ended his ignorance. He showed the greatest astonishment and interest while he listened to an account of the methods employed in the treatment of the disease in Europe.
I was up early on the morning of January 21, and set to work to put a coat of paint on the boat, but patients soon found me out and changed my occupation. One case interested me much. It was that of an old lady, a dear old lady, who told me that she was a hundred years old! Why she reversed feminine tradition by saying that, I cannot tell; upon closer observation I judged her age to be about fifty-five, allowing for the earlier senescence of Oriental people. She had heard of me in Tigre, eighty-five miles distant, and had come all the way to Sara that I might examine her broken wrist. The fracture was a fortnight old, and I found that the bone had been set very sensibly, and bound up with a ligature made of strips of cane strung together upon a piece of leather. This made an excellent splint. The injury was in a favourable position, and the soi-disant centenarian had full use of her fingers. I set up the fracture just as it had been bound before, only with cotton-wool, a couple of bits of cardboard and a neat new bandage. I thought that, as the patient had made such a journey to consult me, she deserved that much treatment, and she would have been sorely disappointed if she had returned to Tigre with no outward and visible sign of the European doctor’s attention to show to her friends. As it was, she was pleased and grateful, and took the homeward road forthwith in all contentment.
About four o’clock in the afternoon my companions returned from Debra Tabor. They had been received three times “in audience” by the Ras, but I did not gather that any very deep impression had been made upon them. They were, in fact, relieved to think that no more visits of ceremony were in prospect. To the grief of all, one of our soldiers had died on the journey. He was seized with fever the day after he started, rapidly became worse, had to be left in a hut some six miles out of Debra Tabor, and succumbed during the evening of the second day of his illness. From a description of the symptoms, I judged that his death was caused by severe intestinal irritation, probably due to ptomaine poisoning. This, in all probability, resulted from eating putrescent meat, a practice which we could not suppress among our men, though it was particularly likely to be fatal in such a climate as that of Abyssinia.
My companions brought with them some guinea-fowl and a sheep, and we bought an ox in camp, which was to be killed the next day at Korata. The cost of it was seven dollars, or about twelve shillings and six pence, the vendor reserving the hide for his own purposes as a condition of the bargain. That night a hyena was prowling round my tent. I was not sure what manner of beast it was until Crawley enlightened me next day. It certainly would not be safe for a traveller to sleep in the open in places haunted by these creatures.
On the morning of January 22, after some delay in starting, we made a steady jog-trot journey, through dried grass in a well-timbered country, down the gentle slope that trends away from the plateau. The track which we followed was rocky for the most part, and lay in cultivable land. We saw enclosed fields here and there and numerous villages—one in every four miles or so. There was no mishap, except when the donkeys stuck in the mud at the bottom of the watercourses, or lay down in it. And then it was dirty work to get them on, or up. Just before one o’clock we arrived in Korata Bay and pitched our camp there.
THE ‘CANDELABRA EUPHORBIA’ ON THE EDGE OF A DRY WATER-COURSE.
See [p. 66.]
BETWEEN SARA AND KORATA.