The source of the Blue Nile

by Arthur J. Hayes

In one of the photographs which I obtained, the curious plaits in which the married women wear their hair are clearly shown. Stern thus describes the manner in which the coiffure is preserved from disarrangement at night. “The woman whose hair has undergone the tedious process of plaiting, must also have it protected from becoming dishevelled while she sleeps; and as this cannot so easily be done in a country where a bullock’s hide or a mat forms the bed, necessity has contrived a bowl-shaped stool, in which the neck is wedged. . . . In Abyssinia, where the women are particularly proud of their copper-coloured charms, very few, even on a journey and with fifty pounds weight on their backs, will forget to take the wooden pillow and the hollow grease-filled gourd,” from the contents of which the hair is “dressed.”[100]

I purchased a leopard’s skin in the market for a dollar, but it was not a good specimen. During the afternoon I received a visit from another Abyssinian artist, who presented me with two pictures in return for a black lead-pencil and a part of a blue one. And I had a constant stream of patients, who claimed attention very freely. I am bound to say that the maladies from which the majority of them suffered fully justified the allegation of Dr. Stecker, to which I have already referred.

The letter from the Ras to the Fituari’s son was delivered early in the morning. In the evening we heard that no sooner had he received it than he disappeared, and nobody seemed to know his whereabouts. No doubt it was his intention to declare afterwards that he had not been in the village when we arrived. If his conduct came to the Ras’s knowledge, I have little doubt the vainglorious youth was flogged—this has been the penalty inflicted on other Habashes who have shown rudeness to travellers provided with the King’s safe-conduct letter.

Our tents at Zegi were in a pleasant position, under a spreading fig tree; these trees are found throughout Abyssinia and in the “rain country,” and give abundant shade. I have never seen them growing thickly, in a clump.

We made an early start on the morning of February the 7th, and trotted ahead at a good speed, as the donkeys were very fresh after their rest. The country is similar to that which we traversed in approaching Zegi. At eleven o’clock we reached the bank of the Abai. At the ford where we were to cross, it is a broad river, more than a hundred yards in width, as I should judge. The water was running in a fairly rapid current, and I was told that the stream is perennial. The banks of the river are steep, and the bed is stony. The water, at that season of the year, was almost clear. But during the rains, when the stream is in flood, it brings down vast quantities of the deposits of the white ants and other detritus. The flat island of Dek has been formed by siltage of alluvial soil thus brought, and it is matter in solution which renders the course of the Abai traceable in Lake Tsana.

At the ford we found that the water came just above a man’s knee. The crossing gave us little trouble, and there was no serious mishap. The larger loads and our valises—of the “Wolseley” pattern—were wetted, but the sun soon dried them. One donkey collapsed, and fell with his burden into the stream about two yards from the further bank; but there were many to help, and he was soon put on his feet again. He was not carrying anything which would be ruined by a soaking. The rise beyond the ford was steep, and the drippings from the wet animals made it slippery, so we had to throw earth on it to give them a foothold, as in crossing the Gelda.

After passing the Abai, we entered a flat district full of the long dry grass, of which we had seen so much on the north side of the lake. The country hereabouts is full of the kind of gazelle called oribi. We had not elsewhere in Abyssinia found these creatures in herds. Game birds abound in this region, which appeared to be almost deserted. We passed scarcely any villages, and those which we saw consisted of only five or six huts.

Our camping-ground was an open space not far from a papyrus swamp. We should not have selected this spot by choice, as the proximity of marshy soil was a danger to health. But we were obliged to halt there because no water was to be had for a considerable distance on the road ahead. All around were ruins of houses built of stone, with thatched roofs that had fallen in. The number of them showed that a town or a large village must have existed here at one time. Stone dwellings are not usual in this region, and I inquired what the name of the place was and tried to learn its history, but could get no information.

Dupuis and Crawley went out with their rifles, and added three oribis to the store in the larder. I stayed in camp “on duty,” and after treating a patient sat reading outside my tent. My servant rushed up to me, and said that I was wanted to shoot a snake that had crept under some brushwood. I hastened to unpack my gun and ran after the boy, and soon came to where our men, in a state of great excitement, had formed a cordon round a patch of dry grass, to which they had set fire. Finally the snake came out, and all our fellows shouted at it. They were in mortal terror of it, as a fact, and certainly it looked “an ugly customer.” It was too big to be stopped by shot unless I could make sure of hitting it in the head, and this I was not able to manage before it crawled under a saddle belonging to one of the soldiers. The saddle was lifted by the aid of a long pole, and in a moment the snake’s head was smashed by the same means. I measured it, and found that it was just over two yards in length. The back was brown and the belly white, and the skull had the typical shape of the adder family. Generally speaking, we saw fewer reptiles in Abyssinia than we had expected.

After this incident, I strolled round the camp with my gun, and presently noticed a little grey animal scampering among the stones of a ruined house. It was of the same colour exactly as the stones, but presently I believed I could discern an eye, and, being anxious to ascertain what creature it was, took aim and fired. I walked up to the spot but found nothing, looked around and wondered how the animal could have vanished. At the moment I heard the rustling of a leaf beyond the tumbledown wall on the left, and, guided by the sound, discovered the animal just dead. It was a specimen of the hyrax—an interesting creature to biologists, which Huxley described as “the type of a distinct order, in many respects intermediate between the Ungulata, on the one hand, and Rodentia and Insectivora on the other.”[101] It is found only in Syria and Africa. I thought the skin worth preserving, and one of the soldiers flayed it for me.