Settling this affair was a very serious business. Two of the Wahamas were severely wounded, Himyah had got the muscles of the upper arm transfixed by a spear, and numbers of others had received sundry cuts, stabs, and scratches. Then there were broken spears, lost knives, torn tobes, and injured shields, for all of which compensation was claimed.
I was desired to go to the assistance of the Wahama by some of their friends, but both Ohmed Medina and Ohmed Mahomed insisted on my not moving until the peace assembly had been convened. Some design was evidently intended against my person by the determined “Cutta” with which Moosa and Adam Burrah sent away the friends of the wounded men, and who would not have done so had they not suspected something unfair. Heaven only knows what those intentions were; but as the Wahamas desired nothing so much as to see the Tajourah people foiled in any attempt to take up an English Kafilah to Shoa, and which they asserted could be only done by their own country-man Mahomed Allee, I dare say they would have attempted to assassinate me, to contribute so much to the discomfiture of their hated rivals. Even the half-bloods, who formed part of our own Kafilah, always disliked to converse, on the subject of the transmission of stores, through the country of Adal. Some preference and especial marks of favour bestowed upon Mahomed Allee by the Embassy and Salie Selasse, King of Shoa, seemed, in their minds, to have constituted a right of monopoly, as regarded this business, in his favour and that of his tribe.
Nature’s last daily care, the star-spangled curtain of night, was drawn around her tumultuous children, and we all retired from the scene of strife; my injured hand paining me much less than I could have anticipated. Ohmed Medina, Ebin Izaak, and fifteen or sixteen others, were now engaged in chanting a noisy zekar, whilst Ohmed Mahomed, supported by Moosa, sat in a large calahm of the Kafilah men and Hy Soumaulee until long after midnight, arranging the offerings or presents intended to be given as compensation to the injured in the late conflict. The two dying Wahamas were lively enough upon this subject, and although they could not join in the discussion, insisted on being placed on two mats in the centre of the circle, instead of being carried, as was proposed, to Herhowlee. Their case was first discussed, and after a deal of arguing, five dollars’ worth of blue sood and a tobe each, was received by them as satisfaction for their wounds, they undertaking also to accompany us through their own country, on purpose to obviate the effects of the evil reports it was expected their friends, who ran away from the conflict, would spread. A drawback from one of these wounded men was one dollar’s worth of sood, paid to Himyah for the wound in his arm. The old man on whose account the quarrel commenced had to pay for two spears and to receive one, in lieu of which he consented to take one of the shields that had been thrown away by the fugitives. In this manner all injured articles, every deep cut or smallest bruise, was fairly balanced according to their ideas of the market value of such commodities, against every kind of merchandise, from a cow or sheep down to a handful of tobacco.
Long before this business was concluded, Zaido, who, in addition to his other duties, was cashier to Ohmed Mahomed, had come to a conclusion that our halt at Barradudah would be a very expensive one. Already he had manufactured into the currency of the country one entire piece of blue calico, and still fresh comers, demanding their compensation, kept him measuring cubits with his fore arm, and then tearing each half dollar’s worth away, with a wrench that seemed every time to dislocate his heart. It was too dark to observe the expression of his countenance, but, no doubt, it was dolorous in the extreme; if I could judge from his sighs and often-repeated oaths, that “twenty times the value of all the good the camels had received by their halt had been paid by him to men, who”—here he muttered some scandal, I suppose, for he did not think it expedient to whisper even to me, (he was sitting close under the side of my hut,) his real opinion of the Bedouins, who had occasioned all the tumult. Another trouble that disturbed his mind not a little, was the great probability of our being obliged to pay all over again in the Wahama country, the inhabitants of which, he was convinced, would be all up in arms, to resent the insult and injury committed by us upon their heralds.
I fell asleep at last, tired out with the excitement and noise, nor did I awake the next morning, until roused by Zaido and the two Allees walking away with the boxes of my hut, which were the only loads that had yet to be placed upon the backs of the camels.
CHAPTER XIX.
Journey from Barradudda to Thermadullah, general direction south by west, time marching three hours and a-half.—Quarrel with Ras ul Kafilah.—Cooking scene.—Dankalli improvisatore.—April 29th. Staying at Thermadullah.—Camel saddles.—Stung by scorpion.—Cure.—Account of some neighbouring hot springs.
April 28th.—We started from Barradudda by sunrise, travelling nearly due south for the first two hours, and south-west for the remainder of to-day’s journey. The road was all the way excellent, being over a dry hard clay covered with high coarse grass, which was alive with hares, floricans, and guinea-fowl. To the north and east were long continuous lava plateaus, one portion of which formed the western boundary of Lake Abhibhad, and beyond which Owssa was said to be at the distance of twenty miles. In a wide fissure plain of this table-land, about fifteen miles to the westward of Abhibhad, another long and narrow lake, called Killaloo, terminated the river Wahahumbilla coming from the south, part of which, in the direction of the lake, was visible from some situations during our march this morning.
I took the opportunity when I saw Ohmedu and Ohmed Medina together, to ask the latter if he had crossed over any stream when he went to Owssa from Arabderah. As he replied that he had not, I recalled to Ohmedu’s recollection that, when at Gobard, he said the river Wahahumbilla went into the Hawash, just before this latter entered lake Abhibhad, but which could not be the case, for if so, Ohmed Medina must have observed it on the occasion of his late journey to Owssa. Ohmedu readily admitted that he might be wrong, and I have therefore represented in my map the river Wahahumbilla as terminating at Killaloo, although it is probable that during very great floods that lake may overflow, and then communicate with the river Hawash.