The Jig-Jiga post is a work pushed out by the Abyssinians into the Bertiri part of the Marar Prairie, and it commands the route from Berbera to Harar. It is a strong redoubt surmounted by a rough stockade, the thin tops of the interlaced branches being about thirteen feet from the ground outside. The earthwork is a banquette four or five yards wide, rising in two steps to seven feet above the ground. The banquette and stockade are continuous round the enclosed space, which is a circle of about one hundred yards in diameter. It is strong enough against attacks by spearmen, but would give imperfect cover against musketry fire. On the outside the small branches of the stockade are bent outwards to form very flimsy chevaux de frise. There is one doorway, with a platform above on which a sentry can stand. Inside the enclosure were some very good circular huts, with perpendicular sides and conical thatched roofs.
A small watercourse, about eight feet deep, which would give cover for men running along the bottom, goes half-way round the stockade on the east side, at about fifty yards’ distance, so that men could collect there at night, and with the help of straw and kerosene oil the place might be burnt down and the inmates stabbed while trying to put out the fire. The work stands on the southern side of the Jig-Jiga Valley within three hundred yards of the usual wells, the Jig-Jiga Valley here being merely a depression in the open grass plains of the Marar Prairie.
The Abyssinian garrison varies in strength; sometimes the work is left deserted, as on the occasion of our visit, when the garrison had gone to the Harrawa Valley for a few days, leaving the wells to the Bertiri and their cattle.[32]
We were glad to have hit off our visit to this post so fortunately, and without having come into collision with the Abyssinians. Our men were very disinclined to come here, but we had been cautiously feeling our way since leaving Milmil to avoid any chance of a hostile attack. The Bertiri were very civil to us, bringing us more milk than our men, with all their great capacity, could drink. Crowds of the people came to our camp and begged us not to go away, but to stay with them, as they said the Abyssinians would never return while we were camped here.
Having satisfied our curiosity, in the evening we marched to Eil Bhai wells, arriving there as night closed in during a rain-storm. Hartebeests abounded everywhere, and between Jig-Jiga and Eil Bhai I shot a beautiful wild goose, which I afterwards found common in Ogádén.
On the 3rd September, having halted for two hours to let things dry a little, we marched at 8.30 to Makanis Hill, arriving there at midday, the whole march being over the open grass plains. Vast squadrons of hartebeests and of Sœmmering’s gazelles, and some herds of oryx, were passed by us. We also saw thirteen ostriches. It rained as night fell, and on the 4th of September a high wind blew, with rain and sleet, keeping us in camp all day. On 5th September we descended into the Harrawa Valley in the Gadabursi country, and back on to the high ban again at Sarír, four days later. We then marched along the base of the Harar Highlands, reaching Sala Asseleh on 13th September. We had experienced heavy thunder-storms with deluges of rain daily, and had found the whole country deserted.
At Sala Asseleh we met a few Esa Somális who had just left the Abyssinian post of Gildessa, now only half a day’s march distant. They said that the Abyssinians were there in force. We could get no one to go forward to warn the garrison of our approach and peaceful intentions, the only native who knew the country being required as a survey guide.
The next morning we made our final march into Gildessa. We started early, and winding up a watercourse we entered low trap hills, and after going four miles we came in sight of an Abyssinian sentry-hut, perched on the top of a rocky hillock, at a place where the path emerges from the hills and makes an abrupt turn to the right into the Gildessa Gorge, down the side of which it runs towards Zeila. On the rocks around us was a large troop of dog-faced baboons, and there was no evidence, beyond the small hut, that we were approaching a town.
I was marching a little ahead of the caravan, with my brother and five or six camelmen; and turning to the right, round a shoulder of the hill, we suddenly found, only one hundred paces in front of us, the town of Gildessa—a group of some hundred mat huts, with a few thatched ones and stone houses. In the middle of the town is a stone zeríba sixty yards square, with walls ten feet high, having an opening five yards broad to allow of the ingress and egress of laden animals.
The hut we had noticed was the Abyssinian guard-house, on a mound overlooking the two converging roads from Harar and from Abósa to Gildessa, the latter being the road we had traversed. On the west of the guard-house was the bed of the Tug Gildessa, by the side of which wound the road to Zeila, and this channel now contained a stream of running water, which flowed to the east of the town.