The bed of the torrent was our only road; and, as it was all sand, we could not wish for a better. The moisture it had strongly imbibed protected it from the sudden effects of the sun, and produced, all alongst its course, a great degree of vegetation and verdure. Its banks were full of rack-trees, capers, and tamarinds; the two last bearing larger fruit than I had ever before seen, though not arrived to their greatest size or maturity.
We continued this winding, according to the course of the river, among mountains of no great height, but bare, stony, and full of terrible precipices. At half past eight o’clock we halted, to avoid the heat of the sun, under shade of the trees before mentioned, for it was then excessively hot, though in the month of November, from ten in the morning till two in the afternoon. We met this day with large numbers of Shiho, having their wives and families along with them, descending from the tops of the high mountains of Habesh, with their flocks to pasture, on the plains below near the sea, upon grass that grows up in the months of October and November, when they have already consumed what grew in the opposite season on the other side of the mountains.
This change of domicil gives them a propensity to thieving and violence, though otherwise a cowardly tribe. It is a proverb in Abyssinia, “Beware of men that drink two waters,” meaning these, and all the tribes of Shepherds, who were in search of pasture, and who have lain under the same imputation from the remotest antiquity.
The Shiho were once very numerous; but, like all these nations having communication with Masuah, have suffered much by the ravages of the small-pox. The Shiho are the blackest of the tribes bordering upon the Red Sea. They were all clothed; their women in coarse cotton shifts reaching down to their ancles, girt about the middle with a leather belt, and having very large sleeves; the men in short cotton breeches reaching to the middle of their thighs, and a goat’s skin cross their shoulders. They have neither tents nor cottages, but either live in caves in the mountains under trees, or in small conical huts built with a thick grass like reeds.
This party consisted of about fifty men, and, I suppose, not more than thirty women; from which it seemed probable the Shiho are Monogam, as afterwards, indeed, I knew them to be. Each of them had a lance in his hand, and a knife at the girdle which kept up the breeches. They had the superiority of the ground, as coming down the mountain which we were ascending; yet I observed them to seem rather uneasy at meeting us; and so far from any appearance of’ hostility, that, I believe, had we attacked briskly, they would have fled without much resistance. They were, indeed, incumbered with a prodigious quantity of goats and other cattle, so were not in a fighting trim. I saluted the man that seemed to be their chief, and asked him if he would sell us a goat. He returned my salute; but either could not speak Arabic, or declined further conversation. However, those of our people behind, that were of a colour nearer to themselves, bought us a goat that was lame, (dearly they said) for some antimony, four large needles, and some beads. Many of them asked us for kisserah, or bread. This being an Arabic word, and their having no other word in their language signifying bread, convinces me they were Icthyophagi; as, indeed, history says all those Troglydite nations were who lived upon the Red Sea. It could not indeed be otherwise: the rich, when trade flourished in these parts, would probably get corn from Arabia or Abyssinia; but, in their own country, no corn would grow.
At 2 o’clock in the afternoon we resumed our journey through a very stony, uneven road, till 5 o’clock, when we pitched our tent at a place called Hamhammou, on the side of a small green hill some hundred yards from the bed of the torrent. The weather had been perfectly good since we left Masuah: this afternoon, however, it seemed to threaten rain; the high mountains were quite hid, and great part of the lower ones covered with thick clouds; the lightning was very frequent, broad, and deep tinged with blue; and long peals of thunder were heard, but at a distance. This was the first sample we had of Abyssinian bad weather.
The river scarcely ran at our passing it; when, all of a sudden, we heard a noise on the mountains above, louder than the loudest thunder. Our guides, upon this, flew to the baggage, and removed it to the top of the green hill; which was no sooner done, than we saw the river coming down in a stream about the height of a man, and breadth of the whole bed it used to occupy. The water was thick tinged with red earth, and ran in the form of a deep river, and swelled a little above its banks, but did not reach our station on the hill.
An antelope, surprised by the torrent, and I believe hurt by it, was forced over into the peninsula where we were, seemingly in great distress. As soon as my companions saw there was no further danger from the river, they surrounded this innocent comrade in misfortune, and put him to death with very little trouble to themselves. The acquisition was not great; it was lean, had a musky taste, and was worse meat than the goat we had bought from the Shiho. The torrent, though now very sensibly diminished, still preserved a current till next morning.
Between Hamhammou and Shillokeeb we first saw the dung of elephants, full of pretty thick pieces of indigested branches. We likewise, in many places, saw the tracks thro’ which they had passed; some trees were thrown down from the roots, some broken in the middle, and branches half-eaten strewed on the ground.
Hamhammou is a mountain of black stones, almost calcined by the violent heat of the sun. This is the boundary of the district; Samhar, inhabited by the Shiho from Hamhammou to Taranta, is called Hadassa; it belongs to the Hazorta.