A share of thirty thousand German crowns, the annual profits accruing
from the sale of three thousand human beings kidnapped in the interior,
renders every native of Tajura a man of competent independence. It is
not, therefore, surprising that the usual rates of transport hire, added
to a knowledge of the exigencies of the Embassy, should have produced in
this avaricious, but indolence-loving race, no particular desire to
bestir themselves. All are camel-owners to a greater or less extent;
but the presence of so many interested parties tended not a little to
increase the difficulties inseparable from dealings with so listless and
dilatory a set of savages--it being of course requisite to consult the
advantage of all, to which, as might be conjectured, all are most
feelingly alive. The ashes of ancient feuds were still smoking on the
arrival of the British; and notwithstanding that it was matter of
notoriety that the amount disbursed at the time of departure for Shoa,
would be diminished in the exact ratio of the delay experienced--and
although, to judge from the surface, affairs looked prosperous enough
towards the speedy completion of carriage, there was ever an adverse
under-current setting; and the apathy of the savage feeding upon
listless delays, the party were doomed for a weary fortnight to endure
the merciless heat of the Tajura sun, whose tardy departure was followed
by a close muggy atmosphere, only occasionally alleviated by the
bursting of a thunder-storm over the peak of Jebel Goodah, and to be
perpetually deceived by the falsest promises, without being able to
discover where to lay the blame. Bribes were lavished, increased hire
acceded to, and camels repeatedly brought into the town; but day after
day found the dupes to Danakil knavery still seated like shipwrecked
mariners upon the shore, gazing in helpless melancholy at endless bales
which strewed the strand, as if washed up by the waves of the fickle
ocean.
During this tedious detention, which, as the sun shone fiercer and the
close nights grew hotter with the rapidly advancing season, waxed daily
more irksome and insupportable, and even threatened to arrest the
journey altogether, the most conflicting accounts were received from
various interested parties, of the actual extent of the Sultan's
jurisdiction, averred by himself to have no limits nearer than the
frontier of Efat. His revenues were ascertained to be restricted to two
hundred head of oxen, camels, sheep, and goats, paid annually by the
adjacent Danakil tribes, and it was certain that he enjoyed
circumscribed prerogatives, based upon ancient usage; but although
nothing is done or undertaken, without his concurrence duly obtained, he
possesses no discretion to punish disobedience of his will, and is
precluded from acting in the most trivial matter without the consent in
full conclave, of the majority of the chiefs. Possessing little or no
power over his nominal subjects, he is merely a puppet, looked up to by
the wild tribes as the head of the principal family--infirmity and utter
imbecility of character rendering His Highness at the same time, little
better than a laughing-stock.
Faithless and rapacious, his insatiable avarice induced him to take
every extortionate advantage of the helpless party at his mercy, whilst
his tottering sway debarred him the power of reserving to himself the
exclusive right of pillage. Private as well as public _kalams_ were
daily held for hours at the sacred threshold of the mosque, during which
new schemes of villainy and plunder were devised; and date leaves were
indolently plaited by a host of apathetic legislators, as the propriety
of permitting the departure inland of the Christian Kafirs was fully
discussed and deliberated over with all the vicious bigotry of the
Moslem zealot.
In order to ascertain how far fraud and impertinence might be carried
with impunity, a deputation of the artful elders beleaguered the
pavilion during the dead of night, to complain, in no measured terms,
that certain of the followers, regardless of orders, had been seen
endeavouring, with beads and trinkets, to betray the virtue of females
who drew water at the well--a tale which proved, on due inquiry
instituted, to be, like other Danakil asseverations, devoid of the
slightest truth or foundation. Not even a paltry water skin was to be
purchased from a schoolboy under the disbursement of a silver _fuloos_,
value four sterling shillings; and a courier, who had, at three times
the established charge, been furnished on the security of the high and
mighty Sultan, to convey to Ankober a letter advising the King of Shoa
of the advent of the Embassy, was, after being three entire days and
nights in possession of his ill-gotten wealth, discovered to be still
snug within his mat-house, in the bosom of his family.
The letter in question had fixed the day of departure, and had been
written in the most public manner before the assembled chiefs, in order,
if possible, to counteract in some measure the tissue of underplots
hourly developing, and to demonstrate to the Danakil capacity, that,
whether camels were forthcoming or not, the journey would positively be
undertaken; and the nefarious detention of the document, after the
receipt of such exorbitant hire, being perfectly in keeping with the
outrageously unprincipled and underhand treatment experienced from the
first moment of arrival, the Sultan was at last plainly informed that
further shuffling and falsehood would avail him nothing; since, if
carriage were not immediately furnished in accordance with the plausible
agreement concluded, the heavy baggage would be reshipped for Cape Aden,
and the party would advance in defiance of opposition, with ten camels
that had been brought by sea from Zeyla, by the nephews of Sheikh
Shermarki. Mohammad Ali, too, was now heart and hand in the cause, and
his jealous rival, on receipt of this unpleasant intimation, began
plainly enough to perceive that his guests were in right earnest, and
that the golden opportunity of filling his coffers was passing rapidly
away.
The royal salute, fired alternately from the decks of the brig and the
schooner, each tricked out in all her colours, with gay signal flags in
honour of the natal day of her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen,
enveloped the town during forty minutes in a dense white smoke,
accompanied by a most unpleasant smell of gunpowder; and during the
entire day the beach in front of the British encampment wore the
semblance of a disturbed ant-hill. European and native--master and
servant--the latter from every nation under the sun, Arab, Persian,
Nubian, Armenian, Egyptian, Syrian, Greek, and Portuguese,--all in a
state of most active bustle, were selecting light baggage for the
approaching departure; whilst crowds of oily savages, squatted on their
hams, looked on in smiling apathy at the heaps of valuable commodities
that were tossing about the sands. Twenty-one British officers
subsequently sate down to dinner in the crimson pavilion, and the health
of Queen Victoria having been given with nine times nine, another salute
bursting from the sides of the vessels of war, shook the frail town to
its foundations, and re-echoed long and loud among the mountain-glens--
flights of rockets ascending at short intervals to illumine the dark
sky.
The deafening din of the 32 pound stern chaser of the "Constance," which
pointed directly towards the royal abode, proved too much for the nerves
of the timid Sultan; and no sooner had the lights been extinguished,
than his spectral figure, which ever shunned the day, glided into the
tent unannounced, and ghostlike, muttered the agreeable intelligence
that His Highness, after consulting the horoscope, and ascertaining
beyond all doubt that the journey would prove propitious--a fact not
previously determined--had come to the resolution, wise though late, of
supplying the desired carriage without further delay, and deputing his
own son as a safeguard through the tribes--services for which the
apparition felt confident of receiving a suitable reward. The voice of
the chieftains had become unanimous. At the last of a long succession
of meetings convened for the purpose of taking the affair into full
consideration, Abdool Rahman, the Kazi, in his capacity of lawgiver, had
risen from his seat in the assembly, and ably demonstrated to his
mat-weaving audience, why all animosities and heart-burnings must be
sunk in the general object of making money, and getting rid as
expeditiously as possible of a party of Kafirs, whose guns, unshotted,
threatened the destruction of the mosque of the true believer, and the
total demolition of Tajura. The Fatheh, being the first chapter of the
holy Koran, was duly read, and the Danakil conclave with one voice
vociferated a loud Ameen, even so let it be!
Volume One, Chapter X.