However, A Letter Was Written Reminding The Gerad Of "The Word
Spoken Under The Tree," And Containing, In Case Of Recusance, A Threat To
Cut Off The Salt Well At Which His Cows Are Periodically Driven To Drink.
Then Came The Bargain For Safe Conduct.
After much haggling, especially on
the part of the handsome Igah, they agreed to receive twenty Tobes, three
bundles of tobacco, and fourteen cubits of indigo-dyed cotton.
In addition
to this I offered as a bribe one of my handsome Abyssinian shirts with a
fine silk fringe made at Aden, to be received by the man Beuh on the day
of entering the Gerad's village.
I arose early in the next morning, having been promised by the Abbans
grand sport in the Harawwah Valley. The Somal had already divided the
elephants' spoils: they were to claim the hero's feather, I was to receive
two thirds of the ivory--nothing remained to be done but the killing.
After sundry pretences and prayers for delay, Beuh saddled his hack, the
Hammal mounted one mule, a stout-hearted Bedouin called Fahi took a
second, and we started to find the herds. The End of Time lagged in the
rear: the reflection that a mule cannot outrun an elephant, made him look
so ineffably miserable, that I sent him back to the kraal. "Dost thou
believe me to be a coward, 0 Pilgrim?" thereupon exclaimed the Mullah,
waxing bold in the very joy of his heart. "Of a truth I do!" was my reply.
Nothing abashed, he hammered his mule with heel, and departed ejaculating,
"What hath man but a single life? and he who throweth it away, what is he
but a fool?" Then we advanced with cocked guns, Beuh singing, Boanerges-
like, the Song of the Elephant.
In the Somali country, as amongst the Kafirs, after murdering a man or
boy, the death of an elephant is considered _the_ act of heroism: most
tribes wear for it the hair-feather and the ivory bracelet. Some hunters,
like the Bushmen of the Cape [30], kill the Titan of the forests with
barbed darts carrying Waba-poison. The general way of hunting resembles
that of the Abyssinian Agageers described by Bruce. One man mounts a white
pony, and galloping before the elephant, induces him, as he readily does,
--firearms being unknown,--to charge and "chivy." The rider directs his
course along, and close to, some bush, where a comrade is concealed; and
the latter, as the animal passes at speed, cuts the back sinew of the hind
leg, where in the human subject the tendon Achilles would be, with a
sharp, broad and heavy knife. [31] This wound at first occasions little
inconvenience: presently the elephant, fancying, it is supposed, that a
thorn has stuck in his foot, stamps violently, and rubs the scratch till
the sinew is fairly divided. The animal, thus disabled, is left to perish
wretchedly of hunger and thirst: the tail, as amongst the Kafirs, is cut
off to serve as trophy, and the ivories are removed when loosened by
decomposition. In this part of Africa the elephant is never tamed. [32]
For six hours we rode the breadth of the Harawwah Valley: it was covered
with wild vegetation, and surface-drains, that carry off the surplus of
the hills enclosing it. In some places the torrent beds had cut twenty
feet into the soil. The banks were fringed with milk-bush and Asclepias,
the Armo-creeper, a variety of thorns, and especially the yellow-berried
Jujube: here numberless birds followed bright-winged butterflies, and the
"Shaykhs of the Blind," as the people call the black fly, settled in
swarms upon our hands and faces as we rode by. The higher ground was
overgrown with a kind of cactus, which here becomes a tree, forming shady
avenues. Its quadrangular fleshy branches of emerald green, sometimes
forty feet high, support upon their summits large round bunches of a
bright crimson berry: when the plantation is close, domes of extreme
beauty appear scattered over the surface of the country. This "Hassadin"
abounds in burning milk, and the Somal look downwards when passing under
its branches: the elephant is said to love it, and in many places the
trees were torn to pieces by hungry trunks. The nearest approaches to game
were the last year's earths; likely places, however, shady trees and green
thorns near water, were by no means uncommon. When we reached the valley's
southern wall, Beuh informed us that we might ride all day, if we pleased,
with the same result. At Zayla I had been informed that elephants are
"thick as sand" in Harawwah: even the Gudabirsi, when at a distance,
declared that they fed there like sheep, and, after our failure, swore
that they killed thirty but last year. The animals were probably in the
high Harirah Valley, and would be driven downwards by the cold at a later
period: some future Gordon Cumming may therefore succeed where the Hajj
Abdullah notably failed.
On the 15th December I persuaded the valiant Beuh, with his two brothers
and his bluff cousin Fahi, to cross the valley with us, After recovering a
mule which had strayed five miles back to the well, and composing sundry
quarrels between Shehrazade, whose swains had detained her from camel-
loading, and the Kalendar whose one eye flashed with indignation at her
conduct, we set out in a southerly direction. An hour's march brought us
to an open space surrounded by thin thorn forest: in the centre is an
ancient grave, about which are performed the equestrian games when the
turban of the Ugaz has been bound under the Holy Tree. Shepherds issued
from the bush to stare at us as we passed, and stretched forth the hand
for "Bori:" the maidens tripped forwards exclaiming, "Come, girls, let us
look at this prodigy!" and they never withheld an answer if civilly
addressed. Many of them were grown up, and not a few were old maids, the
result of the tribe's isolation; for here, as in Somaliland generally, the
union of cousins is abhorred.
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