As we neared Imé the view became very fine. The Shabéleh or Haines river lay before us, flowing in a tortuous course from north-east to south-west, its banks marked by a line of very tall casuarina-trees, with dense undergrowth of many varieties of evergreen bush of great size and beauty. The lines of high trees, following the winding river banks, and covering the long narrow islands, reminded me of the banks of the Seine at Rouen, the casuarina growing in the shape of a poplar. The tall tops of these trees are constantly waving when there is any breeze at all, the gray-green foliage reflecting the light and giving a peculiarly lively character to the landscape. On the southern side were two low rocky hills, rising from the alluvial plain, wooded round their base; and in these woods, which were crowned by tall graceful “toddy” palms like those of India, lay the large cluster of beehive villages of the Adone, which are collectively called Imé.
Most of the open flats near the river banks are cultivated by these negroes, or are left as pasture-land, to be grazed over by the Adone cattle and by the frequent herds of water antelopes and Sœmmering’s gazelles. Behind the broad river valley, some fifteen miles to the south, rose a wall of lofty blue mountains, piled in picturesque confusion of peak and plateau to a height which I judged to be not less than eight or nine thousand feet above sea-level. The long slope of broken ground rising from the river to the base of the mountains was covered over its entire surface with monotonous thorn jungle. The Arussi Gállas, who are camel-owning nomads like the Somális, occupy these mountainous districts. These highlands are mysterious and attractive to the traveller, for the reason that no European penetrated them until the entry of the two well-armed expeditions of Captain Bottiga and of Prince Ruspoli, which, so far as I could ascertain from the Somális, were even then fighting their way through the Gálla tribes in front of me.
The difficulty and expense of fitting out a Somáli expedition may be realised when it is explained that in the four or five hundred miles between Berbera and Imé, on the routes I took, there was no permanent village. The karias are merely Somáli temporary kraals, and the huts are packed on camels when the natives move for change of pasture three or four times in the year; and in all my journeys, except during the week’s visit to Harar, I was never able to obtain anything but occasionally milk and mutton or other meat. Rations of rice, dates, and clarified butter were carried for the men for every day we spent in the interior; also water-casks capable of supplying us for six days when crossing the Haud. All these supplies had to be carried on camel-back, making a very large caravan for four and a half months, which was the time that elapsed before we returned to Berbera, and during which we covered about one thousand two hundred miles of route. By much cutting down of weight I had managed to do with thirty-three baggage camels, each carrying two hundred and seventy-five pounds, the cost price of each camel being £2. I took no furniture, sleeping on the ground or on camel-mats laid over store-boxes, in a double-fly tent weighing eighty pounds.
As we rode over the flats near the river, I sent Jáma Deria and his son forward to the villages, hidden among the palm clusters two thousand yards away, to warn Gabba Oboho, the Adone chief of Imé, of our arrival. He took, wrapped up in the end of his tobe, an Arabic letter from Sheikh Abdul Káder. With the other five Somális I sat down under a shady gudá tree in the open plain and awaited developments, at the same time hobbling the animals and turning them out to graze.
This was an exciting crisis in the course of my expedition. Between my advanced party and the camp which we had left behind at Dambaswerer lay seventy-five miles of uninhabited wilderness. We were eight men in all, with four rifles. A mile away from us was a cluster of more than a dozen large villages teeming with suspicious and ignorant negroes, who were of a different race, and had lately been the enemies of the Amáden Somális who formed my escort. The only white men they had ever seen were Baudi and Candeo, and possibly Robecchi, and the party of Italians which had lately gone into Gállaland under circumstances by no means peaceful.
While we were waiting in suspense watching the long dark masses of beehive huts, the smoke of wood fires curling up among the palm-trees, and wondering what reception the first Englishman would meet at the hands of the Adone, a Sœmmering’s gazelle came along cropping at the short grass till within range of our tree. Unable to resist the tempting shot, resting my elbows on my knees, I fired, and dropped him dead. I had now given the alarm! We knew that all the villages had heard the shot, and so we caught all the animals, and tethering them to our tree, sat in a semicircle round them, knowing that if the Imé people should prove hostile we were in for it, and half expecting to see Jáma and his son come galloping to us in a cloud of dust followed by an excited, spear-throwing mob, which we might have to stop with our four rifles!
At the end of a quarter of an hour of suspense, Jáma Deria and his son appeared as two dots issuing from the forest and galloped up to us; and after circling their ponies a few times in triumph, and crying “Mót!” they dismounted, and shook hands with us all round delightedly, in the good old Somáli way, and we knew the suspense was over. Two good-natured-looking, flat-nosed negroes, who had followed behind them, then ran up, laughing, and shook hands. They were naked save a piece of dirty tobe thrown carelessly over the shoulders. They explained, through my interpreter, that Gabba Oboho had told them to bid me welcome to Imé; we were to drink first at the river, and then come to his village, where he was waiting with his counsellors to receive us.
Jáma Deria said that he and his son had suddenly come on the two Adone just inside the forest, and they, recognising the Amáden saddlery, had run at him spear in hand; but circling his horse round the bushes, he avoided them, and shouted out in Somáli the purport of Abdul Káder’s letter to Gabba Oboho. He had then left the letter on the ground, and retired a little way. The Adone picked up the letter, and were arguing whether this was a ruse or not, when they heard my shot at the Sœmmering’s gazelle, and knew that Jáma Deria had spoken the truth, and that an Englishman had really come. And so they had run off to tell Gabba Oboho, at his hut in the nearest village. The shot had had a very different effect in the other Imé villages, for the inhabitants had ferried the women and children across the river on rafts, to a place of refuge, believing the gun to have been fired by an Abyssinian force; and when we advanced into Imé we saw them perched in hundreds among the caves and recesses of the small hills across the water; but on seeing us enter the first village peacefully, and observing our meeting with their chief, they soon flocked down to look at the wonderful stranger.
We rode through a succession of jowári fields to the river. After we had allayed our thirst, our guides led us to a large darei, or fig-tree, standing in a small glade, and here we found Gabba Oboho and all the elders of the Adone seated in solemn conclave on the grass, to the number of about a hundred. My advent was a great event to these negroes, whose dull lives are only enlivened by Abyssinian or Amáden raids, and who live their otherwise quiet existence on the banks of the Webbe, cultivating the ground or herding cows.