Leave Farree for Ankobar.—Description of the road.—Aliu Amba.—Road to Ankobar.—Incidents of the journey.—Vale of the Dinkee river.—Valley of the Airahra.—Effect of denudation.—Ankobar.—British Residency.—Start for Angolahlah.—Ascent of the Tchakkah.—Road to Angolahlah.—The town of Angolahlah.—Meet superior officers of Mission.
May 31st.—Long before the sun had appeared upon the horizon our mules were saddled and bridled; the hotel bill for Mr. Scott and myself duly discharged, by a present of two dollars to the owner of the house where we had been entertained and imprisoned; farewells were exchanged for the last time with some of my Kafilah friends, and of my escort; and we were off on our journey to Angolahlah, just as the distant elevated hills near Ankobar, and the ridge or line of the table land of Shoa beyond these, were brightly gilded by the first rays of the rising luminary. Steadily we descended the loose stony declivity of the hill of Farree, then clattered more briskly along a winding road that, taking us round the base of a much higher eminence, shut us out entirely from the sight of the white tobed townspeople, who sat along the edges of their own cliffs to watch our progress so far on our journey.
We now descended a bank of about four feet high into the bed of the stream, by whose denuding agency the rocky flanks of the adjoining hills had been laid bare. Trees of irregular height, and of very various foliage, bordered the broad pebbly channel, along which a gently rippling brook meandered, its course opposed to ours as it flowed to join the Hawash. Sometimes it scoured a little ledge of gravel, or fell over and among high boulders, the evidences of its power in the time of its fullest might, during the heavy rains of July and August; when its swollen volume, yellow with suspended mud, rushes along its then pent-up bounds, bearing before it rocks, uprooted trees, and the rotting debris of jowarhee, beans, or teff, from the upland fields which it has devastated in its course.
We rode for some time along the bed of the stream, following its serpentine channel, until we turned upon its right bank, and began to ascend a long gradual slope, which having overcome, only led us to a descent equally irksome, both to riders and mules, from its continued inclination downwards. At its base we crossed another stream, and then began to climb another height, and then came again the equally tiresome descent on the opposite side. And thus we proceeded for at least four hours, alternate hill and stream in regular succession, until we arrived at Aliu Amba; a village perched upon a flat-topped isolated rock that, nearly at right angles with the road, juts across the upper end of a pretty little valley, along which we had been coming for the last half hour.
When we had managed to scramble over a series of irregular and quite naturally disposed stone steps, and had gained the level summit of this ridge, I turned to look in the direction from whence we had come, and contemplated it with great satisfaction; congratulating myself at having got two-thirds of the heavy business over of ascending the long flight of hill steps which, gradually increasing in elevation, form a kind of giant staircase from our starting place at Farree to the table land of Shoa.
At Aliu Amba we met numbers of Christian Abyssinians, and were taken to the house of the Governor, also a Christian, but who was absent in attendance upon the King. Every civility was paid to us, and numerous were the inquiries made after Lieut. Barker, who, it appears, had taken up his residence in this town some months previous to his return journey. I was glad to be able to say that I had had a personal interview with him, for I could see, that to be the “Woodage Kapitan,” friend of the Captain, as he was called in Shoa, was a great recommendation; and although a lengthened levee, with a crowd of people whose language you cannot understand, is a terrible bore, still smiling faces, and a friendly welcome, in a strange country, from whatever cause, does the traveller’s heart good, and encourages him to proceed on his undertaking.
We halted for nearly two hours at Aliu Amba, not being able to get away before, as a sheep had been killed, and our servants were determined to take advantage of the hospitality of the townspeople. When their hunger was satisfied, they brought us our mules, for which we had been asking some time in vain, as Mr. Scott and I were anxious to breakfast, if we could, at Ankobar with Dr. Roth, and Mr. Bernatz the artist to the Embassy, A large concourse of the principal people of the town accompanied us across the market-place to the edge of their little table hill, from whence they watched us until shut out from view by the sinuosity of the narrow road, which occupied the summit of a ledge separating the slopes of two small rivulets, running in opposite directions around the hill of Aliu Amba, to join each other in the valley in front.
We now rode between two delightful natural hedge rows of a low thorny bush with dark green leaves, and-bearing clusters of a black sweet berry; over which trailed in most luxuriant profusion a very sweet scented jasmine; and pushing its way through this mass of vegetation, high above all, flowered the common hedge rose of England. Its well-remembered delicately blushing hue, so unexpectedly greeting me here, elicited a feeling that, with but a little more ardent sensitiveness in my nature, would have thrown me on my knees before it, as Linnæus is said to have knelt to the flowering furze, on first witnessing its brilliant blossoms in England.
The road now became most shockingly stony, strewed with detached fragments of the cliffs around, as we approached the bluff termination of the table land above us. A recent earthquake had brought down considerable quantities, and no attempt had been made to remove the blocks, travellers very patiently seeking out a new path around them. In two or three places, where the detour was too great, some desperate spirits had forced their mules or donkeys to breast up the miniature precipices a few feet in height. At one of these situations I dismounted, preferring to walk through the delightfully hanging gardens on either side of me, and along an embowered lane, where a dense shade, and numberless little streams that traversed sometimes considerable distances, contributed to the agreeable coolness of an elevation between 6,000 and 7,000 feet above the level of the sea. Here, as everywhere else, where trees abounded, birds of all characters and colours gave liveliness to the scene. One similar in size and plumage to our sparrow, constructed pensile nests, dropping as it were from the extreme boughs that nodded with these novel appendages. The dove, slattern as she is, here also built her nest, a ragged stage of sticks; whilst in the thick bush beneath, the prying traveller could detect the round black speaking eye of some other little expectant mother of the feathered race, as, with head thrown aside, she confidingly and instinctively expects that the goodness of man’s nature will not allow him to disturb her sacred functions; a pleasing testimony it is to me, nature’s own evidence of the primitive excellence of man, when he and all around were pronounced by the Creator to be good.
Very soon tiring, however, in my weak state and on such a road, I got on to my mule again, which, if she could have spoken, would certainly have echoed the sentiment of the Portuguese traveller, Bermudez, who, in the 16th century, describing the very same road, represents it as giving him an idea of those in hell, from its steepness and roughness. Our poor animals, in fact, were frequently obliged to come to a stand-still to recover their breath; but they soon set their faces to the steep rocks, and managed, in some way or other, to surmount many very queer-looking places, without shedding us into some uncomfortably deep water-cut precipices that, as we got nearer to the end of our journey, began to be exchanged for the verdant hedges of the previous portion. The whole way we were constantly encountering herds of donkeys, heavily laden with grain, which was being brought down from the high land to be exchanged in Efat for cotton and salt. The men who accompanied them were, to my surprise, much darker coloured than the people of the lower country, tall, well made, and armed with spear and shield. With loud cries they encouraged the patient animals before them, to quicken their slow and cautious pace down the stony descent. The friendly salutation as we passed was never forgotten, nor did the laughing fast-talking girls who accompanied them spare their smiles, which was quite a merciful dispensation, that made our difficult and fatiguing ascent, much pleasanter than would have been a macadamized road through a desert.