The pass by which we entered the mountains is called Karin Marda, and is very prettily wooded, the road having a greatest elevation of about six thousand five hundred feet above sea-level. A great change came over the landscape as we topped the pass. Behind us lay a thickly-wooded slope descending to the immense Marar Prairie, covered generally with short grass without a single bush, which is a thousand square miles in area, and has a greatest length of fifty miles and a greatest breadth of thirty-six miles, with a mean elevation of five thousand five hundred feet above sea-level. In front of us, at our feet, the road wound through picturesque forest for half a mile, and then the whole face of the country was covered with jowári cultivation and clusters of substantial villages. Beyond, to the south-west, rose ridge upon ridge of blue hills and deep valleys, among which, some forty miles away, lay the city of Harar. To the right towered the tremendous mass of Kondurá (or Kondudo) to about ten thousand feet, and beyond Harar a similar mass, called Gara Muláta, shut out the view to the west.
At this season we found the signs of cultivation to consist only of old stubble; the land was being ploughed up to receive the new seed, the dry season being nearly at an end and the monsoon rains expected shortly.[37] Everywhere, in pairs or singly, oxen were drawing the primitive Bertiri plough, and the country had a peaceful look after the thorn forests and open grass plains of the nomad Somális, where sheep and camel paths, and zeríbas, had been almost the only evidences of human occupation.
The Shúm kindly gave me his house, a very substantial dwelling fifteen feet high and eighteen feet in diameter, made in a circular form, of stout saplings and jowári stalks, with a beehive-shaped roof of the same material, covered by ten inches of neat layers of thatched grass; and altogether it formed as clean, well-built, and comfortable a dwelling, for the climate, as one could wish. As we got intensely cold night winds at this elevation (five thousand five hundred feet), I was glad indeed to exchange my “Cabul” tent for Abadigal’s hut. The state of the thermometer, which sometimes can go down to 49° and 50° Fahr. in the early mornings, does not accurately describe the cutting nature of a Somáli night wind, the more keenly felt when one has been travelling all day under a burning Jilál sun.
An Abyssinian soldier brought me a present of fifteen fresh hen’s eggs; I offered payment, but he refused, saying that eggs were of no value, and a great many good ones were daily thrown away as refuse. Somalis do not keep fowls, so I was delighted at the change of food.
Mahomed Ahmed, the Gerád of the Bertiri tribe, visited me at Abadigal’s hut, with the same old story; he said that the Bertiri wished for the arrival of anybody in European shape who would administer the country and save them from the Abyssinians. He said, as an inducement, that any Europeans taking over the country would make plenty of money; he added that ever since I had come to Jig-Jiga he had been kept on the run, carrying messages to various villages many miles away, or looking for cattle, because the Abyssinians wanted to prevent his coming to me. He had crept to my hut stealthily by night; and of course I warned him of the danger he exposed himself to. He said that my arrival threw the Jig-Jiga garrison into a great state of alarm. My friends the Bertiri, I found, loving to make mischief, had magnified my difficulties with Banagúsé into a great British victory over the Abyssinians! I believe that half the Abyssinian suspicion of English designs on the frontier is due to Somáli gossip.
We set out from Hádo at daylight, and leaving cultivation after an hour, we descended by a road, bad for camels, into the beautiful valley of Helmók, camping by the margin of a running stream. This valley, which leads into the Tug Fáfan to the south-east, is covered with forest and dense undergrowth, where the latter has not been burnt off by jungle fires. It has been a favourite resort of elephants and rhinoceroses, but since the Abyssinians came to Harar their numbers have diminished, and we only saw the track of one bull rhinoceros, which had come to drink at the stream two nights before.
Marching from Helmók in the afternoon, we arrived at the village of Kanyasmatch Basha-Basha, which lies on the saddle between two very remarkable hills called Eilalami, the village itself being called Bakaka. To the west of the Eilalami ridge is Feyambiro, and to the east is Bursúm.
The country between Helmók stream and the Eilalami ridge is a beautiful, well-watered valley, covered with forest, uncultivated and used as pasture by the Géri and Bertiri flocks at the proper season. The ascent to the saddle on which Bakaka village stood was steep for camels, and we wound through this large village after dark, threading our way through a crowd of Abyssinian, Gálla, and Harari villagers, and yelping pariah dogs, till we reached Basha-Basha’s house.
The rank of Kanyasmatch may be described as that of General commanding the right wing of an Abyssinian army. Fi Taurari Banagúsé and Kanyasmatch Basha-Basha are the two commanders who respectively lead the Abyssinian advance into the Bertiri and Habr Awal countries to the north, and the Ogádén to the east.
I was led into a large stockaded enclosure behind Basha-Basha’s house, where a tent had been prepared for me. This tent was fourteen feet in diameter across the floor and of bell shape, with perpendicular walls seven feet high hanging to the ground all round. The centre pole was twelve feet high, of male bamboo grown, I think, in Abyssinia, and the material of the tent was a single thickness of American shirting. We had to wait outside a while, among a crowd of gaping villagers and dogs, while the tent was being prepared with carpets for my reception. On entering it I met Basha-Basha, who welcomed me to his village. He was a little man, sparely built, and had lost his left eye. He had an abrupt, peremptory way of talking, but he was said to be very popular and to have a great reputation for straightforwardness, being kind to his inferiors and “very terrible in war.” Fortunately I had not to test his fighting powers, but I found him everything that could be wished for as a host, and he impressed me more favourably than any of the Abyssinians whom I had met. He apologised for not being in his dress of ceremony on the ground that he was in mourning; but next day he very kindly condescended to put on his cape of lion-skin and a black velvet waistcoat covered with embroidery, to show me the costume. He admired my big-game rifles, being much delighted with the double four-bore, weighing twenty-two pounds, which he said was the right gun to kill elephants with. I heard that Basha-Basha when a child was adopted by the wife of Rás Makunan, and through this connection with the family of the Rás and his own ability he had advanced to his present post.