An hour after midnight the loading commenced, and the steep rocky hill having been surmounted by a path strewed with loose stones, a terrace of slow ascent, presenting the same dreary appearance of rocks and lava boulders, continued during the residue of the moon’s reign. At break of day, however, the aspect of the country began rapidly to improve. Gaining the higher and more salubrious level of Gulámo, the bare sterile land, strewed with black blocks of lava which tore the feet with their jagged edges, was fast giving place to sandy plains covered with dry yellow grass—a most welcome prospect for the exhausted cattle. Heretofore, saving in the wadys, no tree had been seen except small stunted leafless acacias, few and far between, and scarcely deserving of the name. Several small ravines were now choked with continuous groves, and a mountain stream termed Chekaïto, which rises in the country of the Eesah, and in the rainy season disembogues into the lake at Aussa, was thickly clothed on both sides with green belts of tamarisk, wild caper, and other wood, overhung with creeping parasites, and affording food and shelter to birds. The pensile nests of the long-tailed loxia depended from the boughs; and whilst the stems, covered with drift to the height of fifteen feet, gave evidence of a headlong course during the rains, water, even at this season, was here and there to be obtained.
Heaps of loose stones thrown carelessly together, mark in almost every direction the spot where the victim lies who has been cut off by some cold-blooded miscreant—melancholy monuments connected each with a tale of assassination. But on the banks of the Chekaïto many acres of ground are covered with stones of memorial, such as were raised over Absalom, and over Achan the king of Ai, each surrounded by a circular cordon which bears the stamp of high antiquity, and has evidently witnessed the passage of ages. These sepulchres are said to cover the bones of the heroes who fell in a battle fought on the spot at the period that the country was first wrested from the shepherds. “Hai,” the designation of the spot itself, is applied also to the entire surrounding district, which is stated to have been formerly peopled by the Gitteréza, a gigantic pastoral race, who, under the chief Sango, were at enmity with all the surrounding tribes, but are now extinct.
After five times crossing the serpentine bed to the point of junction with the Sagulli, where ostriches cropped the grass around numerous deserted sheep-pens, the caravan finally halted at Dúddee, no great distance from Ramudéle. For days together the pilgrimage had led across dreary and desolate wastes, and through sterile ravines where no verdure relieved the eye, no melody broke upon the ear, and so few living creatures were to be seen, that the unwonted appearance of a solitary butterfly which had become bewildered in the desert, was duly hailed as an event. The general character is that of a stern wilderness, parched by the intolerable heat of a vertical sun blazing in fierce refulgence over the naked landscape, of which the chief varieties consist in immense plains of dry cracked mud, or in barren rocks towering towards an unclouded and burning sky. The utter sterility of the soil is rather marked than alleviated by occasional sickly plants of most puny growth, and by the scanty verdure of the few valleys wherein water is to be found, generally in a state of stagnation. But at Dúddee, forage and fuel were abundant. The water obtained by digging in the channel of the stream was no longer brackish. The heat, although the thermometer rose to 110 degrees, was infinitely more endurable than it had hitherto proved; and the insatiable thirst by which all had been incessantly tormented on the lower ground, had well nigh disappeared.
A march of twelve miles over a succession of grassy plains, untenanted by man or beast, but presenting the first cone of the termites that had been seen, brought the party on the 15th to the enclosed valley of Gobaad, a thousand and fifty-seven feet above the ocean. Volcanic ashes, jasper, chalcedony, and quartz, strewed the sandy route, low volcanic ridges, of comparatively recent formation, intersecting the landscape from west to east. The encamping ground, among heaps of hard gravel, near which water was good and plentiful, had only two years previously formed the scene of the discomfiture of the Ras el Káfilah and his party, who had been plundered of all they possessed by two hundred and fifty mounted Eesah. The recollection of the disaster being green in his memory, he had, before leaving Dúddee, donned his folio Korán, in the place of a duodecimo edition which previously graced his shoulder. This was a not-to-be-mistaken sign of “khouf fee” (i.e. There is danger to be apprehended) and with a terror-stricken face he now came to intimate, that the presence of a band of these lawless ruffians in the opposite hills, together with a gathering of the Mudaïto at the neighbouring pools of Sábala and Dagatéli, leaving no sort of doubt upon his mind of a meditated attack during the night, it behoved every man to be more than usually on the alert.
The equanimity of the brother of the Sultán of Tajúra was somewhat disturbed at the assurance in reply to this exhortation, that the Danákil camel-owners were the thieves most to be dreaded, their dirty and dishonest fingers being unhesitatingly thrust into the bags of rice and dates, whensoever opportunity proved favourable; and that the hired escort, whose business it was to prevent this malappropriation of the property of the Embassy, far from assisting to keep watch, left the duty to be performed by the Europeans, and invariably went to sleep on their posts.
“Not one of them shall close his eyes to-night, at all events,” grumbled the Ras. “I shall myself superintend the business, and see to the safety of the camp; for, by the life of the Prophet, this is an evil spot!”
As the red sun went down there was certainly a considerable display of erect spears; but their number gradually diminished as the night closed in; and when the ten o’clock sentry was relieved, Izhák was snoring aloud, according to his wont, whilst each doughty warrior lay fast asleep, with his greasy head upon his shield, and his broad lance in the precise position that it assumed, when it fell from the relaxed grasp of the slumberer.