After
Advancing Six Miles In Line We Turned To The Right, And Recited A Fatihah
Over The Heap Of Rough Stones, Where, Shadowed By Venerable Trees, Lie The
Remains Of The Great Shaykh Abd El Malik.
A little beyond this spot, rises
suddenly from the plain a mass of castellated rock, the subject of many a
wild superstition.
Caravans always encamp beneath it, as whoso sleeps upon
the summit loses his senses to evil spirits. At some future day Harar will
be destroyed, and "Jannah Siri" will become a flourishing town. We
ascended it, and found no life but hawks, coneys, an owl [5], and a
graceful species of black eagle [6]; there were many traces of buildings,
walls, ruined houses, and wells, whilst the sides and summit were tufted
with venerable sycamores. This act was an imprudence; the Bedouins at once
declared that we were "prospecting" for a fort, and the evil report
preceded us to Harar.
After a mile's march from Jannah Siri, we crossed a ridge of rising
ground, and suddenly, as though by magic, the scene shifted.
Before us lay a little Alp; the second step of the Ethiopian Highland.
Around were high and jagged hills, their sides black with the Saj [7] and
Somali pine [8], and their upper brows veiled with a thin growth of
cactus. Beneath was a deep valley, in the midst of which ran a serpentine
of shining waters, the gladdest spectacle we had yet witnessed: further in
front, masses of hill rose abruptly from shady valleys, encircled on the
far horizon by a straight blue line of ground, resembling a distant sea.
Behind us glared the desert:
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