lion! the lion!”—and saw a multitude of lions that night.
After crossing the desert prairie, we entered the hills of the agricultural Somali, the threshold of the South Abyssinian mountains. The pastoral scene now changed for waving crops of millet, birds in flights, and hedged lanes, where I saw with pleasure the dog-rose. Guided by a wild fellow called Altidon, we passed on to the Sagharah, the village of the Gerad, or chief, Adan. He had not a good name, and I was afterwards told he was my principal danger. But we never went anywhere without our weapons, and the shooting of a few vultures on the wing was considered a great feat where small shot is unknown. “He brings down birds from the sky!” exclaimed the people.
I must speak of the Gerad, however, as I found him—a civil and hospitable man, greedy, of course, suspicious, and of shortsighted policy.
His good and pretty wife Kayrah was very kind, and supplied me with abundance of honey wine, the merissa of Abyssinia. It tasted like champagne to a palate long condemned to total abstinence, without even tea.
We were now within thirty direct miles of Harar, and my escort made a great stand. The chief Adan wanted to monopolise us and our goods. My men, therefore, were threatened with smallpox, the bastinado, lifelong captivity in unlit dungeons, and similar amenities.
On June 2nd, 1855, sent for our mules. They
were missing. An unpleasantness was the consequence, and the animals appeared about noon. I saddled my own—no one would assist me. When, mounted and gun in hand, I rode up to my followers, who sat sulkily on the ground, and observing that hitherto their acts had not been those of the brave, I suggested that before returning to Aden we should do something of manliness. They arose, begged me not to speak such words, and offered to advance if I would promise to reward them should we live and to pay blood-money to their friends in case of the other contingency. They apparently attached much importance to what is vulgarly termed “cutting up well.”
Now, however, we were talking reason, and I settled all difficulties by leaving a letter addressed to the Political Resident at Aden. Mohammed and Guled were chosen to accompany me, the rest remaining with the Gerad Adan. I must say for my companions that once in the saddle they shook off their fears; they were fatalists, and they believed in my star, whilst they had the fullest confidence in their pay or pension.
The country now became romantic and beautiful—a confusion of lofty stony mountains, plantations of the finest coffee, scatters of villages, forests of noble trees, with rivulets of the coolest and clearest water. We here stood some five thousand five hundred feet high, and although only nine degrees removed from the Line, the air was light and pleasant. It made me remember the climate of Aden, and hate it.
We slept en route, and on January 3rd we first sighted Harar City. On the crest of a hill distant two miles it appeared, a long sombre line strikingly contrasting with the whitewashed settlements of the more civilised East, and nothing broke the outline except the two grey and rudely shaped minarets of the Jami, or Maritz (cathedral). I almost grudged the exposure of three lives to win so paltry a prize. But of all Europeans who had attempted it before me not one had succeeded in entering that ugly pile of stones.