Inner walls divided the centre room from two narrow verandahs, intended for the reception of mules, horses, and household lumber. The floor was precisely as nature made it, depressed rather than raised, and little improved by the many recent inundations to which it had been subjected. Torrents of muddy water filled the trench which environed the entire structure, and occasionally bursting the banks of the dyke, oozed copiously between the palisades, to cover the soil with artificial lakes; whilst the small open area beyond, into which it disembogued—hemmed in on all sides by rank vegetation, stinging nettles, and half-ruined but noisily inhabited hovels—was, without any exaggeration, eighteen inches deep in honest mire.
Although our pilgrimage had at last terminated, the prospect, both within and without, was still far from encouraging. The mercury in Fahrenheit’s thermometer stood at 58 degrees, and it became necessary to adopt immediate measures towards the exclusion of the cold driving mist and the whistling wind, which the absence of a fire rendered far from agreeable. The union flag of old England, stretched across the hall, lent the aid of its ample folds to enliven the interior. Tent walls and tarpaulins composed tolerably comfortable cabins in the verandah closets. Gun-cases, placed on end, and connected by the lid of a chest, formed a temporary table, and with a puncheon as a washing-stand, and two swinging shelves overhead, completed the furniture of each apartment. Boxes and bales, as they continued to arrive, were piled around the inner walls, and soon reaching to the ceiling, the appearance of a booth at a country fair, on a rainy day, ere the wares have been exposed for sale, was gradually imparted to this highly unique residency in the capital of Shoa.
Volume Two—Chapter Two.
Residence in Ankóber.
But darkness now reigned within our cheerless abode. Candles that will burn for more than ten minutes together, or afford light sufficient either to read or write, are luxuries which have no existence in so primitive and benighted a land; and strips of old cotton rag dipped in unpurified bees’ wax, forming, like most other good things in the empire, a royal monopoly, are doled out by the purveyor-general to the favoured few with but a niggard hand; whilst the absence of glass or other transparent substance, and the continued presence of rain, sleet, clouds, and fog thicker than the steam of a wash-house, rendered it for some time difficult to admit the scanty light of heaven during its fitful visits through the overcast atmosphere.
Wood, too, belongs exclusively to the despot, and is far from being abundant in the timberless realm; but packing cases, as they became empty, were furnished with a sheet of oiled parchment, and these admirable substitutes for glazed sashes, were, in defiance of exhortations not to deface the king’s walls, inserted therein from time to time. A chafing dish, raised upon a high mud pedestal, at length cheered the long dreary evenings, although the wet sodden fuel yielded a very feeble blaze, whilst its dense smoke, choking the chimneyless room, covered walls and roof with soot. Last, but not least among our improvements, were tallow dips, which we manufactured of the fat tail of the Ethiopian sheep, and these afforded us sufficient light by which to retire to bed, where fleas, revived by the unwonted warmth of English blankets, denied all rest.
The low moaning of the storm behind Mamrat, and the distant growl of the thunder, usually ushered in the night. There was a sound as of the surf breaking over a rocky shore, and before many minutes the hurricane was at its height. Crashing reverberations of thunder rattled among the serrated cliffs, whilst the gates of heaven poured forth a deluge, which rendered every lane and footpath throughout the town, ankle deep in running water.
Often after one of those falls of rain so common in tropical countries, the face of the lowlands for fifty miles would be concealed under an impenetrable fog. The spectator rode upon a sea of billowy clouds which rolled beneath his foot, lashing with their spray the dark islands formed by the peaks of the higher mountains: and beyond, in the hot Adel plain might be seen the Háwash winding through the distance, until melted into the limits of the horizon. As the great bank ascended, all around became wet and clammy to the touch; and the mist, although sluggish and slow to move, was of a nature so keenly searching, that in defiance of all muffling, it seemed to penetrate to our very bones.