CHAPTER XXX
ERIOSH AND KADHOUP
After four days waiting for camels, and the usual wrangling over the price and casting lots for us, which here they do with stones instead of wood as in Arabia, we started late on Christmas Day, going of course only a short way. As all were mounted on the baggage we could trot all the way; the camels were not tied in strings. The first night we stopped at Isèleh, an interesting place at the entrance of Wadi Gàhai below Mount Lèhe Diftom, about two hours from Kalenzia, whence at night we could see the numerous fires of troglodytes high up on the sides of the mountains; and were able next day to ride nearly all the way, except over a pass to Lim Ditarr, a depression in the hills sometimes filled with water, though there was none for us. A little was fetched, but we had to keep the water from our evening wash to serve next morning. This depression had in former times been used as a reservoir, for we could detect the remains of a stone embankment, a good deal despoiled for Moslem tombs.
Our onward journey took us past a lovely creek, called Khor Haghia, running two miles inland, with silted mouth and overhanging yellow and white rocks. The bright blue water and green mangroves made a brilliant picture.
About a quarter of a mile inland there is a deep pot of salt water, evidently left behind by the ocean when it receded from the shores of Sokotra; it is about 200 feet across, and has its little beach and seaweeds all complete, with its trees and bushes in its cliffs.
We lunched at the brackish well of Dia, and at sunset reached the hideous plain of Eriosh, or Eriush, which has a flat surface of rock, about a quarter of a mile in extent and partly covered with dried mud, and of such soft stone that we could easily cut into it with pebbles. It is covered with purely Ethiopic graffiti, almost exactly similar to those we saw on the steps of the church and on the hillsides around Aksum in Abyssinia—long serpent-like trails of Ethiopic words, with rude drawings interspersed of camels, snakes, and so forth. Riebeck, who went inland from Itur, says these are Greek. Conspicuous amongst them are the numerous representations of two feet side by side, frequently with a cross inserted in one of them; there are many separate crosses, too, on this flat surface—crosses in circles, exactly like what one gets on Ethiopic coins. We met with another inscribed stone to the east of the island, bearing similar lettering.
Hard by this flat, inscribed surface are many tombs of an ancient date. These tombs, which are found dotted over the island, bear a remarkable resemblance to the tombs of the Bedja race, once dwelling on the shores of the Red Sea to the north of Sawakin, and subject to the Ethiopian emperor; they consist of enormous blocks of unhewn stone, inserted in the ground to encircle and cover the tombs, and this forms another link connecting the remains on the island with Abyssinia.
The Plain of Eriosh, Sokotra