These people, like
most barbarians, have a horror of death and all that reminds them of it:
on several occasions I have been begged to throw away a hut-stick, that
had been used to dig a grave.
The bier is a rude framework of poles bound
with ropes of hide. Some tie up the body and plant it in a sitting
posture, to save themselves the trouble of excavating deep: this perhaps
may account for the circular tombs seen in many parts of the country.
Usually the corpse is thrust into a long hole, covered with wood and
matting, and heaped over with earth and thorns, half-protected by an oval
mass of loose stones, and abandoned to the jackals and hyenas.
We halted a day at Gudingaras, wishing to see the migration of a tribe.
Before dawn, on the 30th November, the Somali Stentor proclaimed from the
ridge-top, "Fetch your camels!--Load your goods!--We march!" About 8 A.M.
we started in the rear. The spectacle was novel to me. Some 150 spearmen,
assisted by their families, were driving before them divisions which, in
total, might amount to 200 cows, 7000 camels, and 11,000 or 12,000 sheep
and goats. Only three wore the Bal or feather, which denotes the brave;
several, however, had the other decoration--an ivory armlet. [24] Assisted
by the boys, whose heads were shaved in a cristated fashion truly
ridiculous, and large pariah dogs with bushy tails, they drove the beasts
and carried the colts, belaboured runaway calves, and held up the hind
legs of struggling sheep. The sick, of whom there were many,--dysentery
being at the time prevalent,--were carried upon camels with their legs
protruding in front from under the hide-cover. Many of the dromedaries
showed the Habr Awal brand [25]: laden with hutting materials and domestic
furniture, they were led by the maidens: the matrons, followed, bearing
their progeny upon their backs, bundled in the shoulder-lappets of cloth
or hide. The smaller girls, who, in addition to the boys' crest, wore a
circlet of curly hair round the head, carried the weakling lambs and kids,
or aided their mammas in transporting the baby. Apparently in great fear
of the "All" or Commando, the Bedouins anxiously inquired if I had my
"fire" with me [26], and begged us to take the post of honour--the van. As
our little party pricked forward, the camels started in alarm, and we were
surprised to find that this tribe did not know the difference between
horses and mules. Whenever the boys lost time in sport or quarrel, they
were threatened by their fathers with the jaws of that ogre, the white
stranger; and the women exclaimed, as they saw us approach, "Here comes
the old man who knows knowledge!" [27]
Having skirted the sea for two hours, I rode off with the End of Time to
inspect the Dihh Silil [28], a fiumara which runs from the western hills
north-eastwards to the sea. Its course is marked by a long line of
graceful tamarisks, whose vivid green looked doubly bright set off by
tawny stubble and amethyst-blue sky. These freshets are the Edens of Adel.
The banks are charmingly wooded with acacias of many varieties, some
thorned like the fabled Zakkum, others parachute-shaped, and planted in
impenetrable thickets: huge white creepers, snake-shaped, enclasp giant
trees, or connect with their cordage the higher boughs, or depend like
cables from the lower branches to the ground. Luxuriant parasites abound:
here they form domes of flashing green, there they surround with verdure
decayed trunks, and not unfrequently cluster into sylvan bowers, under
which--grateful sight!--appears succulent grass. From the thinner thorns
the bell-shaped nests of the Loxia depend, waving in the breeze, and the
wood resounds with the cries of bright-winged choristers. The torrent-beds
are of the clearest and finest white sand, glittering with gold-coloured
mica, and varied with nodules of clear and milky quartz, red porphyry, and
granites of many hues. Sometimes the centre is occupied by an islet of
torn trees and stones rolled in heaps, supporting a clump of thick jujube
or tall acacia, whilst the lower parts of the beds are overgrown with long
lines of lively green colocynth. [29] Here are usually the wells,
surrounded by heaps of thorns, from which the leaves have been browsed
off, and dwarf sticks that support the water-hide. When the flocks and
herds are absent, troops of gazelles may be seen daintily pacing the
yielding surface; snake trails streak the sand, and at night the fiercer
kind of animals, lions, leopards, and elephants, take their turn. In
Somali-land the well is no place of social meeting; no man lingers to chat
near it, no woman visits it, and the traveller fears to pitch hut where
torrents descend, and where enemies, human and bestial, meet.
We sat under a tree watching the tribe defile across the water-course:
then remounting, after a ride of two miles, we reached a ground called
Kuranyali [30], upon which the wigwams of the Nomads were already rising.
The parched and treeless stubble lies about eight miles from and 145° S.E.
of Gudingaras; both places are supplied by Angagarri, a well near the sea,
which is so distant that cattle, to return before nightfall, must start
early in the morning.
My attendants had pitched the Gurgi or hut: the Hammal and Long Guled
were, however, sulky on account of my absence, and the Kalendar appeared
disposed to be mutinous. The End of Time, who never lost an opportunity to
make mischief, whispered in my ear, "Despise thy wife, thy son, and thy
servant, or they despise thee!" The old saw was not wanted, however, to
procure for them a sound scolding. Nothing is worse for the Eastern
traveller than the habit of "sending to Coventry:"--it does away with all
manner of discipline.
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