K. had told me that Rass Barea, the chief of Tigré, had written to the chief of Adiaboo to say that hunters were to be placed at our disposal, and that men were to accompany us down into the country where elephants and other large game were to be found. Adik, the chief of Adiaboo, was in camp ready to pay his compliments and to ask us what we wanted. He and his followers all sat on the ground a short way off, with their shamas thrown across their shoulders and covering their mouths; this is always considered, in Abyssinia, a most dignified position. Here we found letters from home waiting for us, which of course we were very pleased to get. Any scrap of news from his own country and friends, to a traveller quite out of the march of civilisation, is a great luxury. H. had not come in when I arrived, as I had gone on rather fast in front of him: there were also letters for him, so I took them and walked a little way out of the camp to meet him with them, and never saw anybody so delighted; in fact, we were both in the best of spirits. After I had read the letters, I asked K. to come round the market of Adiaboo with me to see the people, and also to look if there was anything worth buying.
The large tree, mentioned before, was the centre of attraction, and those who brought horses with them had them tied up under the shade of the tree. The tree was hung all round with shields, some for sale and others belonging to the owners of the horses; as every Abyssinian, whenever he goes even the shortest way from home, always takes with him his shield and his spear—just in the same way as an Irishman carries his stick. I bought two shields for five dollars; one I gave to Goubasee, my gun-bearer, and the other to Guyndem, my second gun-bearer: they both seemed mightily pleased and proud, and said they would take the greatest care of them. The shields were made of the skin of a species of large deer; they were thick and tough. The old merchant from whom I bought them was a very communicative person; he had a large silver ring on his finger which I admired; he very kindly took it off, and said he would give it to me. I, of course, said no; but, as he still pressed, I said, well, I would pay him a little more for the shields—which arrangement he seemed to agree to. The rest of the day we spent in reading our letters and discussing the contents of all of them, and also in writing others in return, as there would be no chance of sending messengers to the post after we left Adiaboo.
A man named John—at least that was the name he went by—had come into our camp from Adowa; he was said to be the son of an Englishman who had been in the country some time before. He stood about six feet two, and would have been rather good-looking but that he was marked with small-pox. He brought a very welcome present to us, and that was some potatoes. These vegetables are only grown near Adowa, as it is only within a few years that they have been introduced into the country, to which they were brought by a Frenchman, whose name, we hope, will be as immortal as that of Sir Walter Raleigh. The potatoes were very small, in fact, wretched-looking things, but were excellent eating; and we were very glad to get them, as we had been excessively hard up for vegetables; in fact, we had had scarcely any since leaving Gindar. John said he would go down into the jungle with us. The only words of English he knew were, "How do you do?" and "Good morning," which he uttered whenever one addressed him. His trade was that of a silversmith, in Adowa, which I am told is a very lucrative one, as dollars are given to make into silver ornaments, such as the decorations of a shield, etc., and then as the dollars, which are already of rather base metal, are mixed with a good amount of tin, by the time the ornaments are made there is not much original metal left in them. Mansfield Parkyns, in his very entertaining book on Abyssinia, gives an account of the silversmiths at Adowa. One of the young chiefs at Adiaboo, a relation of Adik the old chief, also said he would go down into the jungle with us and help us to hunt. This young man was about eighteen or nineteen, and was accompanied by a sort of bear-leader, a much older Abyssinian, who, in fact, had been his tutor all his life—a man named Barrakee. This old fellow was chief of a small village on the frontiers of Abyssinia, and close to the Baria tribe. Some part of the Baria country is supposed to belong to Abyssinia; and Barrakee told us that he actually received tribute of wild honey and other small things from the Baria. This man played a very important part during the rest of our journey; and, when the young chief left us while we were on the Tackazzee, he chose to stay behind to help in the hunting and to guide us through this part of the country, which he knew very well.
Jan. 31.—To-day we killed a young cow in camp, and also paid our coolies who had come from Koudoofellassie. The coolies, after they had been paid, could not agree upon the division of some extra money that had been given them—in fact, the man who gave the most trouble about it was my old friend who had shammed ill while travelling up to our last camp. They all came to me to settle the dispute; and, after one party had arranged themselves on one side, and the other party on the other—the latter consisting of only one—I heard the cause of dispute. It was very clear that the coolie who had shammed ill wanted to get the best of his friends; so, as most of the rest were against him, I said, "Two heads are better than one—and you must give up your claim." The men in whose favour the decision had been given went away shouting, laughing, and dancing about; the beaten party retired rather crestfallen. I asked if any of them would volunteer to come down into the jungle with us. There was one young fellow among them who had always been first on the march, and when in camp always singing and laughing. I particularly wanted to get him as a servant; but he said he had a wife and family and could not manage to come. After a deal of persuasion I got one of them to stay, a man named Philookus. I think most of them thought that they had had enough of marching, and, if the marches in future were to be anything like the two former ones, they were quite right in turning back.
It is a great mistake, during travelling in rough countries, to force your marches; it not only tires yourself and harasses your coolies, but also wears out your beasts of burden, a most important consideration. The Italian proverb, Che va piano va sano, is daily exemplified when you are away from civilisation and railways. The best method is to start early in the morning, make a short march, and then rest during the heat of the day. After everybody and all the beasts are well rested start again, and get into camp in good time before the sun goes down, so as to get everything comfortable and snug for the night. By the bye, one is very much struck, on first arriving in the East, by the astonishment with which the natives receive an Englishman's protestations that he is in a hurry—that he must go on at once. I believe Arabs have a saying, in the spirit of which they certainly act, that "haste is devilish."
A number of little sand-grouse, early in the morning, had come circling round the tent and settling on some ploughed ground close to us; I went out and killed a brace and a half. These little birds are very good eating, one part of their flesh being white and the other brown. We agreed to-day that here at Adiaboo we should buy donkeys to carry our things down to the Tackazzee, so we told the chief to get us as many as he could. He said that to-morrow he would tell the people round to bring in what donkeys they had for sale. I went out in the evening into the marshy ground which lay below our camp, to try to get some snipe; I only saw one, but he was too far off for a shot. We had a very good dinner to-night, for we had killed fresh meat, which we were very glad to get, as the two days that we had been travelling we had had very little with us, although K. had made every preparation for us, and boiled down some excellent jelly, which he had corked up in a few empty gin-bottles and carefully placed in H.'s tin-case among his clothes; but, whether it was the heat or the shaking that the tin-case got on the journey I do not know: when we opened it, in order to take some jelly for soup, we found that the corks had flown out of the bottles, and a sort of mayonnaise had been made of H.'s socks, boots, and trousers. Such are the pleasures of rough travelling!
Feb. 1.—To-day we began buying donkeys, and a more disagreeable task I had never had to do; such haggling and bargaining as had to be undergone was enough to drive one mad. They brought up the donkeys sometimes singly and sometimes in pairs; we had on an average to pay six dollars a-piece for them, which was a great deal too much. This included the pads on which the package was strapped, and also the "mechanias," or leather thongs which strap the baggage on. The only thing to be assured of in buying donkeys is that they are not suffering from recent sores on their backs; and a very good way of testing their strength is to put both hands in the small of their back and to press down with all your weight: a good donkey's back will yield very little, but a bad one cannot bear it at all. Cassa, the man who had charge of our transport arrangements, helped me greatly in buying the donkeys. The very minute I bought one and paid for it I marked it by clipping a square patch on its rump with a pair of nail scissors: this was quite enough for all present purposes. The great difficulty was to make the natives bring the pads and straps, as without them of course the donkeys were perfectly useless. We here employed some servants in making sandals for themselves out of cow-skin that I had bought at Deevaroua; in fact, most of them asked me to allow them to make some, as the paths through the jungle are very thorny and stony, and not like travelling through the cultivated fields of Tigré. Plowden Gubrihote, H.'s gun-bearer, was shoe—or rather sandal—maker to the rest; he had been, when a little boy, servant to Consul Plowden, who was murdered in South Abyssinia, and he was a capital servant, but rather cowardly.
In the evening Barrakee, the young chief's tutor, proposed that we should go up to the top of a high-peaked hill close by, and see the country we were approaching. We rode up some distance, and at last had to get off our mules as the way became very steep. Certainly a more glorious view I never saw. To the north-west we could see the plains through which the Mareb runs, and to the south-west were the mountains among whose gorges that splendid river the Tackazzee flows; beyond the Tackazzee to the west, in fact in front of us, might be seen two mountains, one of which is of a very peculiar shape—these mark the province of Walkait. On the top of one of these mountains is a fort or stronghold which cannot be reached except by ropes—no human being can climb up to it. Due south of where we were standing lay crowded together that mass of mountains called the Siemien range, the tops of which, the natives informed us, were covered with snow the whole year round. This I cannot vouch for, as I certainly did not see any at that time; and I almost think, if there had been snow, it would have caught the rays of the setting sun, and it could have been seen quite distinctly. The Tackazzee rises in the Siemien from springs; at least, this I think and believe is the case, on the authority of an old servant we had with us, called Hadji Mahomet, who came from that part of the world. As we looked below us we could see the inmates of some huts that were clustered round the mountain engaged in celebrating a marriage. All the company were assembled in a large "das," or leafy bower, drinking and dancing, and every now and then a shot would be fired off in the air in celebration of the auspicious event. As I looked towards the distant view which lay before us I little thought that on my return journey I should be as anxious to get home as I was then to explore those regions. We waited till the sun set behind the mountains of Walkait, and then came down the hill and made for camp.
H. and I very much wished, before leaving the country, to try and get some black leopard skin, and some of the silver-mounted shields which are made at Adowa, and which are carried by the great chiefs of the country. K. said that if we wrote out an order and sent it to Adowa it would be attended to. I wrote out a couple of orders, one for the black leopard skins and the other for the shields, and we both signed them and got John to transcribe them into Amharic. While I was writing them he remarked that English writing was very quick and very different from writing Amharic, in which every letter has to be formed separately, in the same way as when we "print" with a pen in English.
Whenever we were in camp for two or three days in one place it was invariably the custom of the natives to bring their sick to be healed by the white men, or else to beg for medicines. They even on one occasion brought a cripple, carried in a sort of frame: I suppose they expected me to perform a miracle. On the present occasion a man came into camp with a large sore, about the size of the palm of one's hand, on his shin; he had evidently had it for some time, and the wound was covered with cow-dung, for what reason I do not know. I told him to go away and wash his leg and come back to me with it clean. I then consulted with Brou what was best to be done in the case. I had no caustic with me, so I determined to cauterize it with boiling grease. We had saved some fat from the cow we had killed; I took a portion of this, put it into a pan on the fire to boil, and I informed the man what I was going to do, and that it would hurt him a great deal, but that if he liked to let it be done he might. He said, "Do what you like; I do not care." The grease was very soon melted and bubbling; I took it off the fire and was going to apply it, when the servants, who were looking on with interest, thought it was too hot, and that I should hurt the man too much, so I let it get cold a little and poured it on to his leg. He did not seem to feel it, nor did he wince at all; so I said that would not do, and that next time I should give it him boiling hot. I put the pan on the fire again, and when next I poured the grease on, it fizzed and crackled in the same way that bacon does; but the most curious part of the operation was that the man, who a person would have supposed would have almost fainted with pain, only winced, much in the same way as people may be seen to do when they have had a tooth drawn.