CHAPTER X.
OUR DAILY ROUTINE—BAKING A JERKED KOODOO—LOSS OF AN ELEPHANT—A SEPARATION—MY ILLNESS INCREASES—STARVATION—A GOD-SEND—SAD PLIGHT—FRESH SUPPLIES—A HARD MARCH—NARROW ESCAPE—AN EXCITING HUNT—PRIMITIVE BUTCHERY—A CURIOUS SHOT—CARAVAN—EXCHANGE OF CIVILITIES—"CHURCH"—CHANGE OF AIR—ACCIDENT TO THE KITCHEN—STRANGE VISITORS—A THUNDERSTORM.
Feb. 21.—I have nothing of great importance to tell about this day. I lost my pencil, that I used to write my diary with, and I was obliged to use as a substitute the sad remains of the only quill pen left me, and which I managed to render serviceable by tying it on to a bit of stick. As I have so little to say, I will give you a sketch of our day in camp. It begins mostly at sunrise. The first thing that happens is that the donkeys and mules are untethered and led out to grass. Our water-barrel is taken down to the stream or pool which we are camped by, to be filled; it takes about three men to carry it up again full. When the water is brought up the kettles are put on to boil, and Mahomet, who is my servant, and Fisk, H.'s servant, get ready our things for dressing. We get up and generally perform our ablutions in the open air, with our little basin either propped upon the stump of a tree or else on a heap of stones close to the tent. We breakfast about eight, and then go out shooting—that is to say, I used to do so when I was well. Fisk serves out the servants' rations for the day about ten o'clock, and a very few minutes after this all hands are hard at work making their bread, which is accomplished by mixing flour and water and making the whole mass into a plaster-of-Paris-like paste.
Most of our servants have divided themselves into messes of three or four, and the way in which they bake their bread is both original and primitive. Well-to-do travellers in Abyssinia, generally carry an iron pan, exactly the shape of one of the copper scale pans that grocers weigh tea in, but the poorer natives have to content themselves with a flat stone, numbers of which are to be seen, propped up on other stones, at all the camping-places on the road, with the ashes of recent fires beneath them. While they are making their paste the stone is being heated over a fire, and directly it is hot enough they pour on to it the liquid dough and let it bake; when it is done on one side they turn it over like a pancake. When sufficiently cooked it is a hot doughy sort of flat cake; and those people who are lucky enough to have a little red pepper eat it with the bread. There is nothing of which an Abyssinian is so fond as red pepper, and the quantity he manages to pass down his throat is something surprising. We had a good deal of rice with us, and had found that by grinding the rice between two smooth flat stones, which we got from the bed of the Tackazzee, it made excellent flour; and we had hot rice cakes, baked in Brou's iron pan, every morning for breakfast. After breakfast, if I did not go out shooting, there was generally something to do in camp, either to mend or put the men to work at making ropes, out of the fibre of a certain tree, for lashing our things together, or else sending them to cut grass for our "das," or leaf-house, which we live in during the day, as these bowers are always much cooler when they are well thatched with grass. Sometimes we have tiffin, and sometimes not. It is usually hottest between one and three in the afternoon, and then it is always best to be in camp. In the evening we generally went out shooting till dark. The donkeys and mules, having been taken to water, are brought in about five o'clock and tethered; they are left to stand till dark, when the grass that has been cut is given them for the night. We dined between seven and eight, and after dinner the flour was served out to the servants for their evening meal. Any arrangements were now made for the day following. H. and I sat by the camp fire, generally played a tune upon my banjo, and then, after enjoying a smoke, we turned in to rest.
After dinner is one of the pleasantest times in this beautiful climate; the stars shine brightly, and from the place where we were now encamped the constellations, both of the Great Bear and the Southern Cross, could be seen. For the last week I had been so unwell that I had not written up my journal. Symptoms of dysentery had appeared, and I was afraid I should be laid up. During this week H. had been out shooting, and he and Barrakee had the luck between them to kill a large koodoo. Of course all hands in camp were delighted, and a great portion of the meat was "jerked," that is to say, hung up in the sun and dried. We found, at first, this jerked meat was very hard to eat, but by grinding it between two stones, mixing it with a little rice, fat, and onions, and then making it into a sort of rissole and frying it, it did not make at all a bad meal.
One day during this week H. went out after elephants, and saw a very large herd; he said there must have been about eighty of them, but when the herd winded the hunters, they trumpeted and separated about the country. Two of them were making down a little ravine, close to where H., Barrakee, and the gun-bearer, were standing. H. told me that Plowden Gubrihote, his gun-bearer, was in a dreadful "funk," and assured him that these elephants were the man-killing elephants, well known in this part of the world; that they would surely kill them if they did not immediately take to their heels and run away. H. told him to sit still, or else he would "lick" him. The elephants came nearer and nearer, and one of Barrakee's men put up his gun to fire. This would have been ridiculous, as they were nearly eighty yards off. H. knocked the gun out of his hand, and told him to sit quiet. The elephants were now fast approaching, when Barrakee and his man both fired. This was exceedingly annoying, as from all accounts the elephants would have passed by close to where the party were concealed, and H. would have had a capital shot.
We stopped in the jungle here rather more than a week. I thought perhaps another change of air would do me good, and we moved up to Kourasa, where we had been camped before. I did not know at the time that I was so ill, nor did H., or else I should not have made the proposal I did when we got here. I told H. that our time was short in the country, and it was of very little use his stopping with me; I thought he had better move on with Barrakee, who assured us that, in the country near his village on the frontier, we should find very good shooting, even much better than we had had before. H. left me a few servants behind, and four or five donkeys. We were getting short of flour, and we agreed that he should go on to Barrakee's village, send me back flour for the servants, and that I, on the day after he left, would move up to Coom-Coom-Dema and stop there till the flour arrived. Accordingly the next day he started away in the morning. Just as he left, luckily I said to him, "I think you had better leave me five dollars of our money, in case of accidents." This was literally all the coin I had with me when I started to go to the coast.
I started the next day for Coom-Coom-Dema, and very nearly lost my way; my gun-bearers did not seem to remember it, and it was only by chance that I recollected some trees and a low hill which guided me across the plain to where we had been encamped before. When I arrived I felt very bad indeed, and I was really exceedingly ill. The flour had run out, and I had to serve out some rice that evening to my servants; for myself I had some biscuits to eat. I hoped by the morning of the next day to receive flour from H., but it never came, and the servants had no food nearly all that day, except some scraps that they had managed to save. The next morning I had nothing to give them, but they seemed to bear it all without complaint. I went out to try and kill some of the little sand-grouse for myself, but I did not succeed. When I came into camp Petros informed me the donkey-boy had broken down; and when he had brought in the animals to tie them up for the night, that he had begun to cry and had said, "Where's master? for I want something to eat." I was at my wit's-end what to do, as it was two long days' march to the nearest village, which was Azho, and I had only just enough rice for one meal.
Things looked very bad; the evening closed in, and, just before it got dark, Petros shouted out, "Oh, here is the flour!" It was not our own flour, it was a leading party of a caravan which was going through to Walkait. This was indeed a God-send! I saw there was no time to be lost, so I called for my rifle, and the first donkey I saw that looked as if it was loaded with flour I seized, led to the camp, unloaded it, and poured out the flour on the tarpaulin sheet which generally formed the floor of our tent. The owner of the donkey, as well as some of the rest of the caravan, were, I believe, going to expostulate; but I told one of my servants to tell them if they moved I would shoot them, and that we were starving and we must have food. At that moment the chief of the caravan—or rather the man who is generally appointed to lead these people through the country, and arrange all payments to the customs—appeared. He made everything all right, and we kept the flour; and, as he rode away to the place where they were going to stop that night, he sent me back, by one of my servants, some bread of his own.
Feb. 26.—I find in my journal this day that I was very ill, and went out in the morning and shot two brace of little sand-grouse, as I had not had fresh meat for some little time. I did not take any more medicine, as I found it made me so weak. I caused the servants to make me a large "das," long and narrow; in one end I used to sit most of the day, and in the other my guns and what few provisions I had were hung up. They watered the ground all round, and also the grass walls of the "das," so that it made me pretty cool during the heat of the day, whilst the darkness kept the flies out: certainly it was rather miserable work feeling and being ill all alone in the jungle; indeed long before this I ought to have started for home, as, when once dysentery gets hold of you, nothing but complete change of air, good food, and medicine, is likely to effect a cure. I still hung on to the thought that I should get better, but, if I had known what was really the matter, I should never have hesitated.