At 7 A.M. we started through the mist, and trotted eastwards in search of a well. The guide had deceived us: the day before he had promised water at every half mile; he afterwards owned with groans that we should not drink before nightfall. These people seem to lie involuntarily: the habit of untruth with them becomes a second nature. They deceive without object for deceit, and the only way of obtaining from them correct information is to inquire, receive the answer, and determine it to be diametrically opposed to fact.
I will not trouble you, dear L., with descriptions of the uniform and uninteresting scenery through which we rode,—horrid hills upon which withered aloes brandished their spears, plains apparently rained upon by a shower of stones, and rolling ground abounding only with thorns like the "wait-a-bits" of Kafir land, created to tear man's skin or clothes. Our toil was rendered doubly toilsome by the Eastern travellers' dread—the demon of Thirst rode like Care behind us. For twenty-four hours we did not taste water, the sun parched our brains, the mirage mocked us at every turn, and the effect was a species of monomania. As I jogged along with eyes closed against the fiery air, no image unconnected with the want suggested itself. Water ever lay before me—water lying deep in the shady well—water in streams bubbling icy from the rock—water in pellucid lakes inviting me to plunge and revel in their treasures. Now an Indian cloud was showering upon me fluid more precious than molten pearl, then an invisible hand offered a bowl for which the mortal part would gladly have bartered years of life. Then—drear contrast!—I opened my eyes to a heat- reeking plain, and a sky of that eternal metallic blue so lovely to painter and poet, so blank and deathlike to us, whose [Greek kalon] was tempest, rain-storm, and the huge purple nimbus. I tried to talk—it was in vain, to sing in vain, vainly to think; every idea was bound up in one subject, water. [8]
As the sun sank into the East we descended the wide Gogaysa valley. With unspeakable delight we saw in the distance a patch of lively green: our animals scented the blessing from afar, they raised their drooping ears, and started with us at a canter, till, turning a corner, we suddenly sighted sundry little wells. To spring from the saddle, to race with our mules, who now feared not the crumbling sides of the pits, to throw ourselves into the muddy pools, to drink a long slow draught, and to dash the water over our burning faces, took less time to do than to recount. A calmer inspection showed a necessity for caution;—the surface was alive with tadpoles and insects: prudence, however, had little power at that time, we drank, and drank, and then drank again. As our mules had fallen with avidity upon the grass, I proposed to pass a few hours near the well. My companions, however, pleading the old fear of lions, led the way to a deserted kraal upon a neighbouring hill. We had marched about thirty miles eastward, and had entered a safe country belonging to the Bahgoba, our guide's clan.
At sunrise on the 28th of January, the Donkey, whose limbs refused to work, was lifted into the saddle, declaring that the white man must have been sent from heaven, as a special curse upon the children of Ishak. We started, after filling the water-bottle, down the Gogaysa valley. Our mules were becoming foot-sore, and the saddles had already galled their backs; we were therefore compelled to the additional mortification of travelling at snail's pace over the dreary hills, and through the uninteresting bush.
About noon we entered Wady Danan, or "The Sour," a deep chasm in the rocks; the centre is a winding sandy watercourse, here and there grassy with tall rushes, and affording at every half mile a plentiful supply of sweet water. The walls of the ravine are steep and rugged, and the thorny jungle clustering at the sides gives a wild appearance to the scene. Traces of animals, quagga and gazelle, every where abounded: not being however, in "Dianic humour," and unwilling to apprise Bedouins of our vicinity, I did not fire a shot. As we advanced large trees freshly barked and more tender plants torn up by the roots, showed the late passage of a herd of elephants: my mule, though the bravest of our beasts, was in a state of terror all the way. The little grey honey-bird [9] tempted us to wander with all his art: now he sat upon the nearest tree chirping his invitation to a feast, then he preceded us with short jerking flights to point out the path. My people, however, despite the fondness for honey inherent in the Somali palate [10], would not follow him, deciding that on, this occasion his motives for inviting us were not of the purest.
Emerging from the valley, we urged on our animals over comparatively level ground, in the fallacious hope of seeing the sea that night. The trees became rarer as we advanced and the surface metallic. In spots the path led over ironstone that resembled slag. In other places the soil was ochre-coloured [11]: the cattle lick it, probably on account of the aluminous matter with which it is mixed. Everywhere the surface was burnt up by the sun, and withered from want of rain. Towards evening we entered a broad slope called by the Somal Dihh Murodi, or Murodilay, the Elephants' Valley. Crossing its breadth from west to east, we traversed two Fiumaras, the nearer "Hamar," the further "Las Dorhhay," or the Tamarisk waterholes. They were similar in appearance, the usual Wady about 100 yards wide, pearly sand lined with borders of leek green, pitted with dry wells around which lay heaps of withered thorns and a herd of gazelles tripping gracefully over the quartz carpet.
After spanning the valley we began to ascend the lower slopes of a high range, whose folds formed like a curtain the bold background of the view. This is the landward face of the Ghauts, over which we were to pass before sighting the sea. Masses of cold grey cloud rolled from the table-formed summit, we were presently shrouded in mist, and as we advanced, rain began to fall. The light of day vanishing, we again descended into a Fiumara with a tortuous and rocky bed, the main drain of the landward mountain side. My companions, now half-starved,—they had lived through three days on a handful of dates and sweetmeats,—devoured with avidity the wild Jujube berries that strewed the stones. The guide had preceded us: when we came up with him, he was found seated upon a grassy bank on the edge of the rugged torrent bed. We sprang in pleased astonishment from the saddle, dire had been the anticipations that our mules,—one of them already required driving with the spear,—would, after another night of starvation, leave us to carry their loads upon our own hacks. The cause of the phenomenon soon revealed itself. In the rock was a hole about two feet wide, whence a crystal sheet welled over the Fiumara bank, forming a paradise for frog and tadpole. This "Ga'angal" is considered by the Somal a "fairies' well:" all, however, that the Donkey could inform me was, that when the Nomads settle in the valley, the water sinks deep below the earth—a knot which methinks might be unravelled without the interposition of a god. The same authority declared it to be the work of the "old ancient" Arabs.
The mules fell hungrily upon the succulent grass, and we, with the most frugal of suppers, prepared to pass the rainy night. Presently, however, the doves and Katas [12], the only birds here requiring water, approached in flights, and fearing to drink, fluttered around us with shrill cries. They suggested to my companions the possibility of being visited in sleep by more formidable beasts, and even man: after a short halt, an advance was proposed; and this was an offer which, on principle, I never refused. We remounted our mules, now refreshed and in good spirits, and began to ascend the stony face of the Eastern hill through a thick mist, deepening the darkness. As we reached the bleak summit, a heavy shower gave my companions a pretext to stop: they readily found a deserted thorn fence, in which we passed a wet night. That day we had travelled at least thirty- five miles without seeing the face of man: the country was parched to a cinder for want of water, and all the Nomads had migrated to the plains.
The morning of the 29th January was unusually fine: the last night's rain hung in masses of mist about the hill-sides, and the rapid evaporation clothed the clear background with deep blue. We began the day by ascending a steep goat-track: it led to a sandy Fiumara, overgrown with Jujubes and other thorns, abounding in water, and showing in the rocky sides, caverns fit for a race of Troglodytes. Pursuing the path over a stony valley lying between parallel ranges of hill, we halted at about 10 A.M. in a large patch of grass-land, the produce of the rain, which for some days past had been fertilising the hill-tops. Whilst our beasts grazed greedily, we sat under a bush, and saw far beneath us the low country which separates the Ghauts from the sea. Through an avenue in the rolling nimbus, we could trace the long courses of Fiumaras, and below, where mist did not obstruct the sight, the tawny plains, cut with watercourses glistening white, shone in their eternal summer.
Shortly after 10 A.M., we resumed our march, and began the descent of the Ghauts by a ravine to which the guide gave the name of 'Kadar.' No sandy watercourse, the 'Pass' of this barbarous land, here facilitates the travellers' advance: the rapid slope of the hill presents a succession of blocks and boulders piled one upon the other in rugged steps, apparently impossible to a laden camel. This ravine, the Splugen of Somaliland, led us, after an hour's ride, to the Wady Duntu, a gigantic mountain-cleft formed by the violent action of torrents. The chasm winds abruptly between lofty walls of syenite and pink granite, glittering with flaky mica, and streaked with dykes and veins of snowy quartz: the strata of the sandstones that here and there projected into the bed were wonderfully twisted around a central nucleus, as green boughs might be bent about a tree. Above, the hill-tops towered in the air, here denuded of vegetable soil by the heavy monsoon, there clothed from base to brow with gum trees, whose verdure was delicious to behold. The channel was now sandy, then flagged with limestone in slippery sheets, or horrid with rough boulders: at times the path was clear and easy; at others, a precipice of twenty or thirty feet, which must be a little cataract after rain, forced us to fight our way through the obstinate thorns that defended some spur of ragged hill. As the noontide heat, concentrated in this funnel, began to affect man and beast, we found a granite block, under whose shady brow clear water, oozing from the sand, formed a natural bath, and sat there for a while to enjoy the spectacle and the atmosphere, perfumed, as in part of Persia and Northern Arabia, by the aromatic shrubs of the desert.