August 2.—My house was situated on the western face of the rock of Aliu Amba standing upon its own little terrace, which was enclosed partially by a thick-leaved hedge, and where this failed by a row of the yellow-stalks of the high Indian corn plant. It overlooked and was overlooked by a number of other houses similarly constructed, each built upon its own garden platform, one above the other, like a series of high steps, from half way down the steep hill-side, to the summit of a bluff, cone-like eminence, in which the northern extremity, of the otherwise flat-topped hill of Aliu Amba terminated. On this exalted point, the long thatched roof of the largest house of the town was visible over a strong palisading of splintered ted, and over which two tall mimosas towered like giant sentinels. To go near here was considered a crime, and to break through the enclosure would have been a sacrilege. This of course was royal property, the “gimjon bait,” where was preserved until the annual account was made by the Governor to the King, all the fines, lapses by death, and duties, that had accumulated during that time. Beneath this public storehouse was a long terrace, divided into several enclosures, in each of which stood a snug cottage; and these again looking upon one below, the top of which scarcely reached the level of the ground, the upper ones were built upon. Here dwelt a most respectable man, an Islam slave-merchant, who kept a gratuitous school for boys, whom he instructed in Arabic, that is to say, in reading and writing passages of the Koran. Far beneath the level of this my own house stood, and before it, and on either hand, were several others whose gardens all surrounded mine. The hill at this point, too, seemed to assume a more umbrageous aspect, for high “shuahlah,” sycamore fig-trees, and mimosas, sheltered beneath their foliage the unassuming roofs of thatch, which less and less, diminishing as they descended the slope of the hill-side, seemed at a very short distance from my garden to have dropped into the yawning valley that separated Aliu Amba from the opposite height; which still higher, differed in its more gently sloping ascent, and its ridge being occupied by a village inhabited exclusively by Christians. Over this again could be seen still more elevated crests, and beyond these others, until the eye reached the last, the commanding height of Ankobar; which, extending some ten or twelve miles north and south, each extremity then curved towards the east in one vast amphitheatre, that encircled, as in an embrace, an extensive valley of little village-crowned hills and sunny slopes of cultivated fields.
This afternoon, having another serious attack of my fever fit, one of my first acquaintances in Aliu Amba, Hadjji Abdullah, undertook to provide me with a certain cure. He went away, and returned after a short time with a large bundle of green odoriferous herbs. Walderheros was directed to boil these well in my tea-kettle, and having poured out the decoction into an open-mouthed earthen vessel. I was wrapt up in a large tobe, underneath the folds of which the remedy was placed. In this manner I sat for about a quarter of an hour, until a profuse perspiration resulted from this primitive kind of vapour bath, which had certainly one good effect, that of producing at night a long-continued sleep.
August 3d.—As I felt a good deal better this morning, I took a walk as far as the market-place, to see the houses of the new come Hurrahgee people. A great many turned out for my inspection, to gratify themselves by looking at me; which party was most entertained, I or them, at the mutual novelty of our appearance, I do not know, but after exchanging salutations with an old man belonging to them, I returned home with Walderheros.
Finding that I was still laying myself under great obligations to Miriam, who came for a few hours every day to grind flour and bake bread, I determined that Walderheros should send for his wife to come and take up her abode with him as housekeeper. Goodaloo was accordingly sent on this errand, and before night they returned together. As a kind of offering upon the occasion she brought, hanging in her tobe upon her back, a large pumpkin. She was a good-looking girl of about seventeen or eighteen years of age, and had been married to Walderheros for five years. Her father was one of the King’s watchmen, holding a farm for that service, which required his absence one week out of four, at whichever palace of Ankobar or Angolahlah the King should be then absent from.
She was very soon down upon her knees before a broad circular pan of earthenware placed upon three stones, which was being heated for baking-bread over a glaring fire of sticks. Taking a short horn, in which was contained the well-powdered dust of the oily seed of the cotton plant, she scattered a small portion over the surface of the nearly flat dish, which was about a foot and a-half in diameter. She then rubbed this well over the whole with a rag. The leavened batter had been made ready in the morning by Miriam, so Wallata Gabriel, my new housekeeper, had only to take a little out in a basin, and from this pour it upon the heated dish, quickly spreading it into a thin layer, and then placing over all a hollow shield-like cover, also of earthenware, the edges of which, where it rested upon the pan, being luted with wet rags that stood by contained in another spare basin of water.
Sticks, a bundle of which had been brought in by Goodaloo, lay upon the floor of the house, and with these a bright fire was kept flaring away for about five minutes, when the cover being taken off a nice-looking crumpet curled up its edge all round, as if anxious to be taken off and eaten. This was adroitly done by Wallata Gabriel placing upon her lap as she knelt a neat straw mat, something larger than the baking-dish itself, made of a band of grass folded around one end as a centre, and stiched into that situation. Upon this was pulled, by a quick jerk, the warm cellular-surfaced bread, and then getting up, my new handmaiden presented it to me as it lay on the mat, with a look that said “Taste it yourself, and see if I cannot bake bread.”
In this manner she soon turned over six or eight of these pan-cakes, and a fowl having been boiled to-day for the sake of the broth, of which alone I could partake, no other food was cooked for my three servants, they so far observing the fast, and soon after their meal they retired to rest; Walderheros and his wife occupying an ox-skin upon the floor, Goodaloo making his bed in the porch, which was formed by the passage into the house leading through the outer and inner wall, being closed in on either side by a mud-plastered partition.
August 4th.—I was glad to find Tinta come back this morning, he having returned with a message, that if I knew how to make gunpowder, the Negoos wished me to manufacture some for him. On inquiring, I found that my balderabah still continued in the good graces of the Negoos, who, instead of the town of Aliu Amba, which convenience had required should be given to Abdoanarch, had put Tinta into possession of a much more valuable one called Ramsey, in sight from my garden. He was instructed, however, to live as usual in Aliu Amba, to communicate between the Negoos and myself, and to keep, at the same time, a careful watch upon the outgoings and incomings of the great Abdoanarch himself.
I soon satisfied him about the gunpowder, and the next day was appointed for taking the first step in the process, by making some charcoal, for I was led to suppose that the inferiority of the coarse grey-looking sort of native manufacture was owing to the badness of that article. Two of Tinta’s servants were immediately despatched for wood of the “ted” (Juniperus oxycedrus) tree, which I had chosen as best calculated for charcoal. The ted tree is a species of pine, and grows in the characteristic form of that tree. The wood smells exactly like cedar, and is extensively used for fuel in the royal residences. It does not grow on the table land, but only in the upper portions of the valleys of Efat and corresponding situations, at an elevation of between six and eight thousand feet above the level of the sea.
A large euphorbia called kol-qual, sometimes thirty feet high, with strong spreading arms, bearing at their extremities a little red fig-like fruit, was pointed out to me by the Shoans as the tree supposed to produce the best charcoal. This cannot be the tree that Bruce asserts yielded so much milk-like juice upon striking it with his scimitar, although I have heard it asserted that it is. On making the experiment myself on several of different ages, I never could produce more than a mere exudation of a white fluid, which collected in drops, and which I found upon inspissation turned black, and formed a substance not unlike Indian rubber. The most singular circumstance respecting this tree is the four-sided character of its branches, being as angular as if put together by a carpenter. On examining the interior of a decayed portion, I found a shell of hard wood not more than three-fourths of an inch in thickness; and the interior sometimes, from side to side, several inches wide, hollow, but divided into chambers by partitions, consisting of a substance like the paper formed by wasps in constructing their tree-suspended nests.