The Life and Adventures of Bruce, the African Traveller

by Sir Francis Bond Head

Although the dangers and difficulties which had attended Bruce's residence at Masuah and Arkeeko, and which still threatened, though in a different shape, to oppose his journey into Abyssinia, would have been sufficient to deter any ordinary traveller, yet on the 16th he cheerfully left Laherhey, and for two days travelled along a dry, gravelly plain, thickly covered with acacia-trees, which were in blossom, bearing a round yellow flower. Entering a narrow opening in the mountains, which seemed to have been formed by the violent torrents of the rainy season, they travelled up a sandy bed, the verdant banks of which, shaded from the sun by the impending mountains, were covered with rack-trees, capers, and tamarinds.

Following the course of this ravine, they proceeded among mountains of no great height, but bare, stony, and full of terrible precipices, until, oppressed and overpowered by the sun, they halted under the shade of the trees before mentioned. Great numbers of Shiho, with their wives and families, were descending from the tops of the high mountains of Habbesh (Abyssinia), and passed, driving their flocks to the pasture, which, in the months of October and November, is found on the plains near the sea.

The Shiho were once very numerous, but, like all the nations which communicate with Masuah, they have been much diminished by the smallpox. They have neither tents nor cottages, but live in caves in the mountains, or under small huts built of reeds or thick grass. The men are generally naked above the waist; the women are covered with a sort of gown, loose in the sleeves and body, and held together by a leather girdle. The children of both sexes are completely naked. The party of these people which passed Bruce consisted of about fifty men and about thirty women; each of the former held a lance in his hand, while a knife was peeping from his girdle.

Although they were on higher ground, they appeared uneasy at the sight of strangers. Bruce saluted the chief, asking him if he would sell a goat out of their large flock; but the man seemed to think it prudent to decline entering into conversation, and the whole tribe passed in silence onward. In the evening Bruce resumed his journey, and at night pitched his tent at Hamhammou, on the side of a small green hill, some hundred feet from the bed of the torrent. The weather had been perfectly good since he left Masuah; but this afternoon the mountains were quite hid, and heavy clouds were sweeping along the sides of the lower range of hills; the lightning was frequent, in broad flakes, and deeply tinged with blue, and long, rumbling peals of thunder were heard at a distance. As Bruce's description of this storm is one of the parts of his narrative which have been marked as exaggerated, we give it in his own words: "The river," he says, "scarcely ran at our passing it, when, all on 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 the breadth of the whole bed it used to occupy. The water was thickly 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."

Salt says: "Bruce passed a night on the same spot (Hamhammou), and it was his fortune, as well as ours, to encounter here a terrible storm, which, as usual, he describes with some exaggeration."

In Sicily and in Greece we have known people to be carried away by the violent "fiumaras," which are even there produced by the sudden rains; and Bruce's description of a storm within the tropics does not appear at all exaggerated. But it seems that Mr. Salt's storm was not quite equal to the one described by poor Bruce, and he therefore makes up the difference by raising a little tempest of his own against a fellow-traveller: still, in a very few pages after, he says, "We heard that the dead bodies of three men had been found washed down by the torrent on this side of Tarenta." "Dead men," it has been said, "tell no tales!" yet in this instance they certainly do very strongly corroborate Bruce's account of the storm he witnessed: but Lord Valentia and his secretary seem to have fancied that they were to find everything in Abyssinia, elements and all, precisely as Bruce left them forty years before.

Leaving Hamhammou, Bruce first saw "the dung of elephants, which was full of thick pieces of undigested branches." He also observed the paths where these enormous animals had passed; trees were torn up by the roots, some were even broken in the middle, and branches, half eaten, were lying on the ground.

Hamhammou is a desert mountain of black stones, apparently almost calcined by the heat of the sun: it forms the boundary of a district that belongs to the Hazorta. This tribe, who, from inhabiting a higher country, have a much lighter complexion than their neighbours the Shihos, are exceedingly active; they inhabit caves, or else cabanes, like cages, which, covered with hides, are just large enough to hold two persons. They live in constant defiance of the Naybe of Masuah, against whom their attacks have generally proved successful. As their nights are here cold even in summer, the Hazorta, as well as their children, are clothed.

Bruce now proceeded through a plain which, he says, "was set so thick with acacia-trees that our hands and faces were all torn and bloody with the strokes of their thorny branches." They suddenly came to the mouth of a narrow valley, through which a stream of beautiful water ran very swiftly over a bed of pebbles. It was the first clear water which Bruce had seen since he left Syria; and it naturally gave him that indescribable pleasure which sweet water always affords to a tired, thirsty traveller. The shade of the tamarind-tree and the coolness of the air invited them to rest on this delightful spot. "The caper-tree," says Bruce, "here grows as high as the tallest English elm; its flower is white, and its fruit, though not ripe, was fully as large as an apricot. I went at some distance to a small pool of water to bathe, and took my firelock with me; but none of the savages stirred from their huts, nor seemed to regard me more than if I had lived among them all their lives, though surely I was the most extraordinary sight they had ever seen; whence I conclude that they are a people of small talents or genius, having no curiosity."

Proceeding along the side of the river, among large timber-trees, Bruce pitched his tent by the side of another stream, as clear, as shallow, and as beautiful as the first; yet in every direction he was surrounded by bleak, black, desolate mountains, covered with loose stones, and, besides these, there was nothing to be seen but the heavens. Their road for some time wound between mountains, the banks of the torrent being still covered with rack and sycamore trees, which, being under a burning sun, and well watered, were naturally of an enormous size. In the evening they reached Tubbo; and as Salt says "Bruce has well described this place," we shall give the picture in his own words: