In this unventilated and diabolical hollow, dreadful indeed were the
sufferings in store both for man and beast. Not a drop of fresh water
existed within many miles; and, notwithstanding that every human
precaution had been taken to secure a supply, by means of skins carried
upon camels, the very great extent of most impracticable country to be
traversed, which had unavoidably led to the detention of nearly all,
added to the difficulty of restraining a multitude maddened by the
tortures of burning thirst, rendered the provision quite insufficient;
and during the whole of this appalling day, with the mercury in the
thermometer standing at 126 degrees under the shade of cloaks and
umbrellas--in a suffocating Pandemonium, depressed five hundred and
seventy feet below the ocean, where no zephyr fanned the fevered skin,
and where the glare arising from the sea of white salt was most painful
to the eyes; where the furnace-like vapour exhaled, almost choking
respiration, created an indomitable thirst, and not the smallest shade
or shelter existed, save such as was afforded, in cruel mockery, by the
stunted boughs of the solitary leafless acacia, or, worse still, by
black blocks of heated lava, it was only practicable, during twelve
tedious hours, to supply to each of the party two quarts of the most
mephitic brick-dust-coloured fluid, which the direst necessity could
alone have forced down the parched throat, and which, after all, far
from alleviating thirst, served materially to augment its insupportable
horrors.
It is true that since leaving the shores of India, the party had
gradually been in training towards a disregard of dirty water--a
circumstance of rather fortunate occurrence. On board a ship of any
description the fluid is seldom very clean, or very plentiful. At Cape
Aden there was little perceptible difference betwixt the sea-water and
the land water. At Tajura the beverage obtainable was far from being
improved in quality by the taint of the new skins in which it was
transferred from the only well; and now, in the very heart of the
scorching Tehama, when a copious draught of _aqua pura_ seemed
absolutely indispensable every five minutes, to secure further existence
upon earth, the detestable mixture that was at long intervals most
parsimoniously produced, was the very acme of abomination. Fresh hides
stripped from the rank he-goat, besmeared inside as well as out with old
tallow and strong bark tan, filled from an impure well at Sagallo,
tossed, tumbled, and shaken during two entire nights on a camel's back,
and brewed during the same number of intervening days under a strong
distilling heat--poured out an amalgamation of pottage of which the
individual ingredients of goat's hair, rancid mutton fat, astringent
bark, and putrid water, were not to be distinguished. It might be smelt
at the distance of twenty yards, yet all, native and European, were
struggling and quarrelling for a taste of the recipe. The crest-fallen
mules, who had not moistened their cracked lips during two entire days,
crowding around the bush, thrust their hot noses into the faces of their
masters, in reproachful intimation of their desire to participate in the
filthy but tantalising decoction; and deterred with difficulty from
draining the last dregs, they ran frantically with open mouths to seek
mitigation of their sufferings at the deceptive waters of the briny
lake, which, like those of Goobut el Kharab, were so intensely salt, as
to create smarting of the lips if tasted.
Slowly flapped the leaden wings of Time on that dismal day. Each weary
hour brought a grievous accession, but no alleviation, to the fearful
torments endured. The stagnation of the atmosphere continued
undiminished; the pangs of thirst increased, but no water arrived; and
the sun's despotic dominion on the meridian, appeared to know no
termination. At four o'clock, when the heat was nothing abated,
distressing intelligence was received that one of the seamen, who during
the preceding night had accompanied the captain of the schooner-of-war
from Goobut el Kharab, and had unfortunately lost his way, could nowhere
be found--the gunner, with six men, having long painfully searched the
country side for their lost messmate, but to no purpose; Abroo, the son
of whom old Aboo Bekr was justly proud, and who was indeed the flower of
his tribe, immediately volunteered to go in quest of the missing sailor,
and he subsequently returned with the cheering intelligence that his
efforts had been crowned with success. Overwhelmed by heat and thirst,
the poor fellow, unable to drag his exhausted limbs further, had crept
for shelter into a fissure of the heated lava, where he had soon sunk
into a state of insensibility. Water, and the use of a lancet, with
which the young midshipman who heroically accompanied the exploring
party had been provided, restored suspended animation sufficiently to
admit of his patient being conveyed on board the "Constance" alive; but,
alas! he never reached Tajura; neither did one of the brave tars who
sought their lost comrade under the fierce rays of the sun, nor indeed
did any of the adventurous expedition, escape without feeling, in after
severe illness, the unwholesome influence upon the human constitution of
that waste and howling wilderness.
But the longest day must close at last, and the great luminary had at
length run his fiery and tyrannical course. String after string of
loaded camels, wearied with the passage of the rugged defile of Rah
Eesah, were with infinite difficulty urged down the last steep
declivity, and at long intervals, as the shadows lengthened, made their
tardy appearance upon the desert plain; those carrying water, tents, and
the greater portion of the provisions most required, being nevertheless
still in the rear when the implacable orb went down, shorn of his last
fierce ray. The drooping spirits of all now rose with the prospect of
speedy departure from so fearful a spot. The commander of the friendly
schooner, which had proved of such inestimable service, but whose
protecting guns were at length to be withdrawn, shortly set out on his
return to the vessel with the last despatches from the Embassy, after
bidding its members a final farewell; and in order to obtain water, any
further deprivation of which must have involved the dissolution of the
whole party, no less than to escape from the pestilential exhalations of
the desolate lake, which, as well during the night as during the day,
yielded up a blast like that curling from a smith's forge--withering to
the human frame--it was resolved as an unavoidable alternative, to leave
the baggage to its fate, and to the tender mercies of guides and
camel-drivers, pushing forward as expeditiously as possible to
Goongoonteh, a cleft in the mountains that bound the opposite shore,
wherein water was known to be abundant. Pursuant to this determination,
the European escort, with the servants, followers, horses, and mules,
were held in readiness to march so soon as the moon should rise above
the gloomy lava hills, sufficiently to admit of the path being traced
which leads beyond the accursed precincts of a spot, fitly likened by
the Danakil to the infernal regions.
Dismal, deadly, and forbidding, but deeply interesting in a geological
point of view, its overwhelming and paralysing heat precluded all
possibility of minute examination, and thus researches were of necessity
confined to the general character of the place. Latitude, longitude,
and level were however accurately determined [These will be found in the
Appendix, Number One], and many were the theories ventured, to account
for so unusual a phenomenon. Obviously the result of earthquake and
volcanic eruption--a chaos vomited into existence by
"Th' infuriate hill that shoots the pillar'd flame,"
Dame Nature must indeed have been in a most afflicting throe to have
given birth to a progeny so monstrous; and there being no locality to
which the most vivid fancy could assign aught that ever bore the name of
wealth or human population, little doubt can exist that the sea must
have been repelled far from its former boundaries. The oviform figure
of the bowl, hemmed in on three sides by volcanic mountains, and on the
fourth by sheets of lava, would at the first glance indicate the site of
an extensive crater, whose cone having fallen into a subterranean abyss,
had given rise to the singular appearance witnessed. But it is a far
more probable hypothesis that the Bahr Assal, now a dead sea, formed at
some very remote period a continuation of the Gulf of Tajura, and was
separated from Goobut el Kharab by a stream of lava six miles in
breadth, subsequently upheaved by subterranean action, and now forming a
barrier, which, from its point of greatest elevation, where the traces
of many craters still exist, gradually slopes eastward towards the deep
waters of the bay, and westward into the basin of the Salt Lake. Whilst
no soundings are found in the estuary of Tajura, Goobut el Kharab gives
one hundred and fifteen fathoms, or six hundred and ninety feet; and
premising the depression of the lake to have been formerly correspondent
therewith, one hundred and twenty feet may be assumed as its present
depth. To this it has been reduced by the great annual evaporation that
must take place--an evaporation decreasing every year as the salt
solution becomes more intensely concentrated, and evinced by the saline
incrustation on the surface no less than by a horizontal efflorescence,
in strata, at a considerable height on the face of the circumjacent
rocks.
In the lapse of years, should the present order of things continue
undisturbed from below, the water win probably disappear altogether,
leaving a field of rock salt, which, when covered in by the debris
washed down from the adjacent mountains, will form an extensive depot
for the supply of Danakil generations yet unborn; and the shocks of
earthquakes being still occasionally felt in the neighbourhood, it seems
not improbable--to carry the speculation still further--that Goobut el
Kharab, divided only by a narrow channel from the Bay of Tajura, will,
under subterranean influence, be, in due process of time, converted into
a salt lake, in no material respect dissimilar from the Bahr Assal--
another worthy type of the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
Volume One, Chapter XV.