They Were Similar In Appearance, The Usual Wady About
100 Yards Wide, Pearly Sand Lined With Borders Of Leek Green, Pitted With
Dry Wells Around Which Lay Heaps Of Withered Thorns And A Herd Of Gazelles
Tripping Gracefully Over The Quartz Carpet.
After spanning the valley we began to ascend the lower slopes of a high
range, whose folds formed like a curtain the bold background of the view.
This is the landward face of the Ghauts, over which we were to pass before
sighting the sea.
Masses of cold grey cloud rolled from the table-formed
summit, we were presently shrouded in mist, and as we advanced, rain began
to fall. The light of day vanishing, we again descended into a Fiumara
with a tortuous and rocky bed, the main drain of the landward mountain
side. My companions, now half-starved,--they had lived through three days
on a handful of dates and sweetmeats,--devoured with avidity the wild
Jujube berries that strewed the stones. The guide had preceded us: when we
came up with him, he was found seated upon a grassy bank on the edge of
the rugged torrent bed. We sprang in pleased astonishment from the saddle,
dire had been the anticipations that our mules,--one of them already
required driving with the spear,--would, after another night of
starvation, leave us to carry their loads upon our own hacks. The cause of
the phenomenon soon revealed itself. In the rock was a hole about two feet
wide, whence a crystal sheet welled over the Fiumara bank, forming a
paradise for frog and tadpole. This "Ga'angal" is considered by the Somal
a "fairies' well:" all, however, that the Donkey could inform me was, that
when the Nomads settle in the valley, the water sinks deep below the
earth--a knot which methinks might be unravelled without the interposition
of a god. The same authority declared it to be the work of the "old
ancient" Arabs.
The mules fell hungrily upon the succulent grass, and we, with the most
frugal of suppers, prepared to pass the rainy night. Presently, however,
the doves and Katas [12], the only birds here requiring water, approached
in flights, and fearing to drink, fluttered around us with shrill cries.
They suggested to my companions the possibility of being visited in sleep
by more formidable beasts, and even man: after a short halt, an advance
was proposed; and this was an offer which, on principle, I never refused.
We remounted our mules, now refreshed and in good spirits, and began to
ascend the stony face of the Eastern hill through a thick mist, deepening
the darkness. As we reached the bleak summit, a heavy shower gave my
companions a pretext to stop: they readily found a deserted thorn fence,
in which we passed a wet night. That day we had travelled at least thirty-
five miles without seeing the face of man: the country was parched to a
cinder for want of water, and all the Nomads had migrated to the plains.
The morning of the 29th January was unusually fine: the last night's rain
hung in masses of mist about the hill-sides, and the rapid evaporation
clothed the clear background with deep blue. We began the day by ascending
a steep goat-track: it led to a sandy Fiumara, overgrown with Jujubes and
other thorns, abounding in water, and showing in the rocky sides, caverns
fit for a race of Troglodytes. Pursuing the path over a stony valley lying
between parallel ranges of hill, we halted at about 10 A.M. in a large
patch of grass-land, the produce of the rain, which for some days past had
been fertilising the hill-tops. Whilst our beasts grazed greedily, we sat
under a bush, and saw far beneath us the low country which separates the
Ghauts from the sea. Through an avenue in the rolling nimbus, we could
trace the long courses of Fiumaras, and below, where mist did not obstruct
the sight, the tawny plains, cut with watercourses glistening white, shone
in their eternal summer.
Shortly after 10 A.M., we resumed our march, and began the descent of the
Ghauts by a ravine to which the guide gave the name of 'Kadar.' No sandy
watercourse, the 'Pass' of this barbarous land, here facilitates the
travellers' advance: the rapid slope of the hill presents a succession of
blocks and boulders piled one upon the other in rugged steps, apparently
impossible to a laden camel. This ravine, the Splugen of Somaliland, led
us, after an hour's ride, to the Wady Duntu, a gigantic mountain-cleft
formed by the violent action of torrents. The chasm winds abruptly between
lofty walls of syenite and pink granite, glittering with flaky mica, and
streaked with dykes and veins of snowy quartz: the strata of the
sandstones that here and there projected into the bed were wonderfully
twisted around a central nucleus, as green boughs might be bent about a
tree. Above, the hill-tops towered in the air, here denuded of vegetable
soil by the heavy monsoon, there clothed from base to brow with gum trees,
whose verdure was delicious to behold. The channel was now sandy, then
flagged with limestone in slippery sheets, or horrid with rough boulders:
at times the path was clear and easy; at others, a precipice of twenty or
thirty feet, which must be a little cataract after rain, forced us to
fight our way through the obstinate thorns that defended some spur of
ragged hill. As the noontide heat, concentrated in this funnel, began to
affect man and beast, we found a granite block, under whose shady brow
clear water, oozing from the sand, formed a natural bath, and sat there
for a while to enjoy the spectacle and the atmosphere, perfumed, as in
part of Persia and Northern Arabia, by the aromatic shrubs of the desert.
After a short half-hour, we remounted and pursued our way down the Duntu
chasm.
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