I now assumed the dress which had been recommended as the most appropriate for my journey. Over a pair of loose drill trousers, I donned a long yellow frock of nankeen, with sleeves narrowing to the wrist, of a kind which has been used by the Arabs from the time in which the Periplus was written, for among the articles of the commerce of the Red Sea there enumerated, are these very frocks, and the material of which they are made was then principally imported by Indian vessels, as at the present day. A large straw hat, of the double Manilla kind, with a thick layer of cotton wool between the two walls, formed a very light covering for the head, and being quite impenetrable to the direct rays of an almost vertical sun, was a sufficient protection against the evil most to be feared, “a coup de soleil.”
The morning after our arrival, a survey was taken of the stores which, during the past night, had been brought from the bogalow, and placed, part in the lower room of our house, and part in the little court adjoining, so that they might be under the eye of Nassah, one of the Arab servants of Mr. Cruttenden, who was appointed to watch over, and who in fact slept among and upon, the boxes and packages. The apartment occupied by Mr. Cruttenden and myself was the elevated cabin, immediately adjoining the residence of the Sultaun. It was rather a long room, with a sloping roof, the centre of which was a few inches above our heads, but at the sides was only two feet high from the floor. The walls consisted of frames, in which were sliding shutters of most irregular construction, and of every dirty colour that can be conceived. The floor of the upper end was raised about a foot into a kind of dais, or, as Mr. Cruttenden styled it, a spare bed, not being more than five feet in its longest direction, and upon which had been spread his sleeping carpets for the night. The entrance into our novel residence was a square hole in the farther corner of the floor, through which we ascended and descended, like stage ghosts, carefully inserting our toes in any little crevices we could see among sundry dry and rotten sticks, which assisted the mats in forming the wall of our lower apartment.
Besides Nassah and a young man named Abdullah, a native of Mocha, who officiated as cook, we had another attendant, a slave who had been lent to us by Shurmalkee, on account of his acquaintance with the Arabic and Dankalli languages, and who was of considerable use to us as our private interpreter.
Whilst we staid in Tajourah, our daily occupations were not of a very varied character, yet still they were such that did not fatigue us with their sameness. Every morning at sunrise, attended by Nassah, we strolled down to the beach, and indulged ourselves in the health-giving bath. Towards evening, accompanied by some of the chief men of the town, we amused ourselves and astonished them by our dexterity with the rifle. The Tajourah people themselves only boasted the possession of a solitary matchlock, and the daring proprietor of this not unfrequently joined us, trying his piece with a new silver mounted one which we had brought with us as a present from Capt. Haines to Izaak, but as no inducement could prevail either upon him or his son to discharge it, Nassah was always called upon to relieve these gentlemen from the danger and honour of firing.
The features of our orderly Nassah were a good specimen of those which characterize a numerous class of Arabs, living on the sea-coast of Arabia, who are decidedly of negro origin. The word which designates them, in fact, expresses this; Seedee being derived from the word Assuard, which signifies in the Arabic language, black. His face was nearly triangular, the apex at the chin, the base a long flat forehead, whilst his nose was the exact reverse of this, the apex being between the eyes, and its base below spreading out into two large and flat-like nostrils, which seemed to repose upon, rather than arise from, his dusky cheeks. His mouth was an awful gap; but all the deformity of his countenance was more than compensated by the pleasing expression of his humorous looking little eyes, that told of single purposeness, fidelity, and contentment; and that quiet resignment to circumstances, which was a great characteristic of his manner and mode of expressing himself, “If it please Allah,” “Allah has me in his keeping,” being favourite replies of his. Tall and erect; his posture graceful without effort, in his well arranged Arab costume his appearance was very picturesque. Always on his guard from any surprise, and proud of his occupation, I could see that he was sincerely attached to his master, Mr. Cruttenden. He acquitted himself very well as a marksman, with the clumsy but handsome matchlock, and was certainly the “magnus Apollo” of the black beauties of Tajourah.
Our rendezvous on occasions of these shooting matches, was generally on the summit of a low cliff of coral limestone, which stood a few hundred yards in rear of the town, and which extended two miles inland to the base of a gravel bank, perhaps 100 feet high, capped by a thin stratum of coarse black lava. The undermining of this bank is very rapid and considerable during the rainy season, so that large masses of the superincumbent lava are continually breaking off and rolling into the beds of numberless temporary torrents below. The period of the first appearance of this lava cannot have been more than a few hundred years ago, and volcanoes have certainly existed on this coast within the recorded history of the earth. A few miles in the interior, between Raheita and Tajourah, is still a range of hills evidently of igneous origin, called by the natives Jibel Jann, or Demon Mountains. The same name is also given to a more recently active, but very small volcano situated on the road to Shoa; and which was represented by the natives to be the residence of some turbulent genius confined there by Soloman, in accordance with some of the commonly received Arabic traditions.
This coral reef, however, afforded the most interesting proof of the raising of the coast having occurred during the present existing state of things, as regards the direction of winds and currents in the surrounding sea, as also of its being constructed by the same species of Zoophites, who are now producing its counterpart in the present bay. I have stood on this old inland reef during the afternoon, when the reflection of the sun’s rays from the surface of the present immersed bed of coral, in front of Tajourah, has plainly showed the parallelism of its outer edge with that of the reef upon which I was standing, and a separation or indenture in the latter also corresponded exactly with the narrow channel in which anchorage is now found near to the present shore, and which must have been produced, in both cases, by the operation of similar natural causes, acting under exactly similar circumstances. More alteration in this part of the world has been produced by volcanic action than can be conceived by endeavouring to form an idea of it by comparison with the changes effected by the occasional outbreaks of Vesuvius or Etna. Convulsions of the earth, and ejection of molten lava upon a most extensive scale, can only account for the great alteration which has evidently, in modern times, taken place in the physical geography of the whole country of Arabia, the eastern shore of Africa, and probably over a considerable portion of the bed of the Indian Ocean in this neighbourhood.
Sir G. M‘Kenzie’s description of the phenomena which have attended volcanic action in Iceland, approaches somewhat to that which may be supposed was here once exhibited, or that a succession of convulsions, similar to the great earthquake of Kutch, in Scinde, of which Sir S. Raffles gives such an interesting account, have here, at some former period, exerted the same appalling agents, and produced the extensive alterations in the previous character of this once blessed land, abounding with life and with natural beauty, but which is now, even by the Arab, wandering over his almost equally miserable desert, designated, and most appropriately, as the “deserted quarter of the world.”
The day after our arrival was occupied in preparing and presenting such presents as were intended for the chief people of Tajourah, generally consisting of long robes or body-cloths of white calico, and fotahs, or finely manufactured parti-coloured waistcloth, much prized by both the Arabs and the Dankalli. After this important business was concluded to the satisfaction of all, some conferences were held respecting the number of camels we should require, to apportion fairly among the numerous owners of them, the stores to be conveyed up; for the remuneration that was determined upon being very high, plenty of applicants were found putting in their claim to be employed. The competition would have been very beneficial, could it have been brought to bear upon the price required for each camel; but the unsophisticated Adal savage was as acute upon such matters as the craftiest Chinese, and the system of the Hong merchants of monopolizing the trade was fully acted upon by the chief men of Tajourah. Mr. Cruttenden, as Wakeel of the English Government, was obliged to transact all business through the hands of the Sultaun’s agents, who were Izaak, the brother of the Sultaun, and his friend and seconder on all matters of State policy, Mahomed Cassim. These worthies really deserved whatever present they received subsequently to my departure from Mr. Cruttenden, for the trouble, anxiety, and real danger they must have incurred in satisfying, pacifying, and denying the crowd of bullying murderers, who all required a share of the hard, bright dollars, which were always sure to be poured into the town in payment of those services the English Government might require from them. Calahms, or councils, were being continually held, now to settle quarrels arising out of the discussion, and then to discuss again some other subject, until another quarrel had arisen.
Nearly a month was spent in this unsatisfactory manner, when Mr. Cruttenden resolved upon immediately returning to Aden, taking with him the packages, thus putting an end to the deception and procrastination we had submitted to so long. He accordingly sent a letter to Captain Young, who was still at Berberah, requesting him to send again Shurmalkee’s boat to receive us. Immediately this transpired, which it did only so soon as the messenger had departed, we observed a remarkable increase of energy on the part of Izaak and Cassim, for during that day we were disturbed by the continual succession of parties coming to examine, and endeavouring to form some judgment as to the weight of, the different boxes, favouritism showing itself in allowing friends to make these surreptitious visits by night also, to determine the choice of loads for their camels. Excuses the next day were also made for our long detention, and assurances that we should certainly start the first propitious day, which was considered to be the next Friday, at the time of the afternoon prayer.