feet broad, the place was rendered dangerous by the crowd. On one side
stood the devil’s buttress and wall, bristling with wild men and boys.
Opposite it was a row of temporary booths tenanted by barbers, and the
space between swarmed with pilgrims, all trying to get at the enemy of
mankind. A monkey might have run over the heads of the mob. Amongst
them were horsemen flogging their steeds, Bedouins urging frightened
camels, and running footmen opening paths for the grandees, their
masters, by assault and battery. We congratulated each other, the boy
Mohammed and I, when we escaped with trifling hurts. Some Moslem
travellers assert, by way of miracle, that no man was ever killed
during the ceremony of rajm, or lapidation. Several Meccans, however,
assured me that fatal accidents are by no means rare.
After throwing the seven pebbles, we doffed our pilgrim garb, and
returned to ihlal, or normal attire.
The barber placed us upon an earthen bench in the open shop, shaved
our heads, trimmed our beards, and pared our nails, causing us to
repeat after him: “I purpose throwing off my ceremonial attire,
according to the practice of the Prophet――whom may Allah bless and
preserve! O Allah, grant to me for every hair a light, a purity, and a
generous reward! In the name of Allah, and Allah is almighty!” The
barber then addressed me: “Naiman”――“Pleasure to thee!”――and I
responded: “Allah, give _thee_ pleasure!” Now we could at once use
cloths to cover our heads, and slippers to defend our feet from fiery
sun and hot soil, and we might safely twirl our mustachios and stroke
our beards――placid enjoyments of which we had been deprived by the
ceremonial law.
The day ended with the sacrifice of an animal to commemorate the
substitution of a ram for Ishmael, the father of the Arabs. The place
of the original offering is in the Muna Valley, and it is still
visited by pilgrims. None but the Kruma, the Pacha, and high
dignitaries slaughter camels. These beasts are killed by thrusting a
knife into the interval between the throat and the breast, the muscles
of the wind-pipe being too hard and thick to cut; their flesh is
lawful to the Arabs, but not to the Hebrews. Oxen, sheep, and goats
are made to face the Kaabah, and their throats are cut, the sacrificer
ejaculating: “In the name of Allah! Allah is almighty!” It is
meritorious to give away the victim without eating any part of it, and
thus crowds of poor pilgrims were enabled to regale themselves.
There is a terrible want of cleanliness in this sacrifice. Thousands
of animals are cut up and left unburied in this “Devil’s Punchbowl.” I
leave the rest to the imagination. Pilgrims usually pass in the Muna
Valley the Days of Flesh Drying――namely, the 11th, the 12th, and the
13th of the month Zu’l Hijjah――and on the two former the Great, the
Middle, and the Little Satan are again pelted. The standing miracles
of the place are that beasts and birds cannot prey there, nor can
flies settle upon provisions exposed in the markets. But animals are
frightened away by the bustling crowds, and flies are found in
myriads. The revolting scene, aided by a steady temperature of 120°
Fahr., has more than once caused a desolating pestilence at Meccah:
the cholera of 1865 has been traced back to it; in fine, the safety of
Europe demands the reformation of this filthy slaughter-house, which
is still the same.
The pilgrimage rites over, we returned to Meccah for a short sojourn.
Visitors are advised, and wisely, not to linger long in the Holy City
after the conclusion of the ceremonies. Use soon spoils the marvels,
and, after the greater excitements, all becomes flat, stale, and
unprofitable. The rite called umrah, or the “little pilgrimage,” and
the running between Mounts Safa and Marwah, in imitation of Hagar
seeking her child, remain to be performed. And there are many spots of
minor sanctity to be visited, such as the Jannal El Maala, or Cemetery
of the Saints, the mosque where the genii paid fealty to the Prophet,
the house where Mohammed was born, that in which he lived with his
first wife, Khadijah, and in which his daughter Fatimah and his
grandsons Hasan and Hussayn saw the light, the place where the stone
gave the founder of El Islam God-speed, and about a dozen others. Men,
however, either neglect them or visit them cursorily, and think of
little now beyond returning home.
I must briefly sketch the Holy City before we bid it adieu.
Meccah, also called Beccah, the words being synonymous, signifies
according to some a “place of great concourse,” is built between 21°
and 22° of N. Lat. and in 39° E. Long. (Greenwich).[5] It is therefore
more decidedly tropical than El Medinah, and the parallel corresponds
with that of Cuba. The origin of the Bayt Ullah is lost in the glooms
of time, but Meccah as it now stands is a comparatively modern place,
built in A.D. 450 by Kusayr the Kuraysh. It is a city colligated
together like Jerusalem and Rome. The site is a winding valley in the
midst of many little hills; the effect is that it offers no general
_coup d’œil_. Thus the views of Meccah known to Europe are not more
like Meccah than like Cairo or Bombay.
The utmost length of the Holy City is two miles and a half from the
Mab’dah, or northern suburb, to the southern mound called Jiyad. The
extreme breadth may be three-quarters between the Abu Kubays hill on
the east and the Kaykaan, or Kuwaykaan, eminence on the west. The mass
of houses clusters at the western base of Abu Kubays. The mounts
called Safa and Marwah extend from Abu Kubays to Kayhaan, and are
about seven hundred and eighty cubits apart. The great temple is near
the centre of the city, as the Kaabah is near the middle of the
temple. Upon Jebel Jiyad the Greater there is a fort held by Turkish
soldiery; it seems to have no great strength. In olden time Meccah had
walls and gates; now there are none.
The ground in and about the Holy City is sandy and barren, the hills
are rocky and desert. Meat, fruits, and vegetables must be imported
_viâ_ Jeddah, the port, distant about forty-five miles. The climate is
exceedingly hot and rarely tempered by the sea breeze. I never
suffered so much from temperature as during my fortnight at Meccah.
The capital of the Hejaz, which is about double the size of El
Medinah, has all the conveniences of a city. The streets are narrow,
deep, and well watered. The houses are durable and well built of brick
mixed with granite and sandstone, quarried in the neighbouring hills.
Some of them are five stories high, and more like fortresses than
dwelling-places. The lime, however, is bad, and after heavy rain,
sometimes ten days in the year, those of inferior structure fall in
ruins. None but the best have open-work of brick and courses of
coloured stone. The roofs are made flat to serve for sleeping-places,
the interiors are sombre to keep out the heat; they have jutting upper
stories, as in the old town of Brazil, and huge latticed hanging
balconies――the maswrabujah of Cairo, here called the shamiyah――project
picturesquely into the streets and the small squares in which the city
abounds.
The population is guessed at forty-five thousand souls. The citizens
appeared to me more civilised and more vicious than those of El
Medinah, and their habit of travel makes them a worldly-wise and
God-forgetting and Mammonist sort of folk. “Circumambulate and run
between Mounts Safa and Marwah and do the seven deadly sins,” is a
satire popularly levelled against them. Their redeeming qualities are
courage, _bonhomie_, manners at once manly and suave, a fiery sense of
honour, strong family affections, and a near approach to what we call
patriotism. The dark half of the picture is pride, bigotry,
irreligion, greed of gain, debauchery, and prodigal ostentation.
Unlike his brother of El Medinah, the Meccan is a swarthy man. He is
recognised throughout the east by three parallel gashes down each
cheek, from the exterior angles of the eyes to the corners of the
mouth. These mashali, as they call them, are clean contrary to the
commands of El Islam. The people excuse the practice by saying that it
preserves their children from being kidnapped, and it is performed the
fortieth day after birth.
The last pilgrimage ceremony performed at Meccah is the Tawaf el
Widaaf, or circumambulation of farewell, a solemn occasion. The
devotee walks round the House of Allah, he drinks the water of the
Zemzem well, he kisses the threshold of the door, and he stands for
some time with his face and bosom pressed against the multazem wall,
clinging to the curtain, reciting religious formulas, blessing the
Prophet, weeping if possible, but at least groaning. He then leaves
the temple, backing out of it with many salutations till he reaches
the Gate of Farewell, when, with a parting glance at the Kaabah, he
turns his face towards home.
I will not dwell upon my return journey――how, accompanied by the boy
Mohammed, I reached Jeddah on the Red Sea, how my countrymen refused
for a time to believe me, and how I sadly parted with my Moslem
friends. My wanderings ended for a time, and, worn out with fatigue
and with the fatal fiery heat, I steamed out of Jeddah on September
26th in the little _Dwarka_, and on October 3rd, 1853, after six
months’ absence from England, I found myself safely anchored in Suez
Harbour.
[5] Both latitude and longitude are disputed points, as the
following table shows. The Arabs, it must be remembered,
placed the first meridian at the Fortunate Islands:
The Atwal makes the latitude 21° 40′, longitude 67° 13′
Kanun ” ” 21° 20′ ” 67° 0′
Ibu Said ” ” 21° 31′ ” 67° 31′
Rasm ” ” 21° 0′ ” 67° 0′
Khúshyar ” ” 21° 40′ ” 67° 10′
Masr el Din ” ” 21° 40′ ” 77° 10′
D’Anville ” ” 22° 0′ ” 77° 10′
Niebuhr ” ” 21° 30′ ” 77° 10′
Humbodlt, therefore, is hardly right to say: “L’erreur est
que le Mecque paraissait déjà aux Arabes de 19° trop a
l’est” (“Correspondence,” p. 459).
_A RIDE TO HARAR_
1854-1855
_A RIDE TO HARAR_
The pilgrimage to Meccah being a thing of the past, and the spirit of
unrest still strong within me, I next turned my thoughts to the hot
depths of the Dark Continent. Returning to Bombay early in 1854, I
volunteered to explore the Land of the Somali, the eastern horn of
Africa, extending from Cape Guardafui (N. Lat. 12°) to near the
Equator. For many years naval officers had coasted along it; many of
our ships had been lost there, and we had carefully shot their
wreckers and plunderers. But no modern traveller had ventured into the
wild depths, and we were driven for information to the pages of Father
Lobo, of Salt, and de Rienzi.
My project aimed at something higher; and indeed it was this journey
which led directly to the discovery of the sources of the Nile, so far
as they are yet discovered.
I had read in Ptolemy (I., par. 9) the following words: “Then
concerning the navigation between the Aromata Promontory (_i.e._,
Guardafui) and Rhapta (the ‘place of seven ships,’ generally supposed
to be north of Kilwa), Marianus of Tyre declares that a certain
Diogenes, one of those sailing to India … when near Aromata and having
the Troglodytic region on the right (some of the Somali were still
cave-dwellers), reached, after twenty-five days’ march, the lakes
(plural and not dual) whence the Nile flows and of which Point Raphta
is a little south.”
This remarkable passage was to me a revelation; it was the _mot de
l’enigme_, the way to make the egg stand upright, the rending of the
veil of Isis. The feat for which Julius Cæsar would have relinquished
a civil war, the secret which kings from Nero to Mahommet Ali vainly
attempted to solve, the discovery of which travellers, from Herodotus
to Bruce, have risked their lives, was reduced to comparative
facility. For the last three thousand years explorers had been
working, literally and metaphorically, against the stream, where
disease and savagery had exhausted health and strength, pocket and
patience, at the very beginning of the end. I therefore resolved to
reverse the operation, and thus I hoped to see the young Nile and to
stultify a certain old proverb.
The Court of Directors of the Honourable East India Company
unwillingly sanctioned my project: I was too clever by half, and they
suspected that it concealed projects of annexation or conquest. All
that my political views aimed at was to secure the supremacy of my
country in the Red Sea. Despite Lord Palmerston and Robert Stephenson,
I foresaw that the Suez Canal would be a success, and I proposed to
purchase for the sum of £10,000 all the ports on the East African
shore as far south as Berbera. This was refused; I was sternly
reprimanded, and the result will presently appear.
In July of the same year we reached Aden from Bombay. Our little party
was composed of Lieutenant Herne and Lieutenant Stroyan, with myself
in command. Before setting out I permitted Lieutenant J. H. Speke to
join us; he was in search of African sport, and, being a stranger, he
was glad to find companions. This officer afterwards accompanied me to
Central Africa, and died at Bath on Thursday, September 15th, 1864.
Aden――“eye of Yemen,” the “coal-hole of the East” (as we call it), the
“dry and squalid city” of Abulfeda――gave me much trouble. It is one of
the worst, if not _the_ worst, places of residence to which
Anglo-Indians can be condemned. The town occupies the crater floor of
an extinct volcano whose northern wall, a grim rock of bare black
basalt known as Jebel Shamsham, is said to be the sepulchre of Kabil,
or Cain, and certainly the First Murderer lies in an appropriate spot.
Between May and October the climate is dreadful. The storms of unclean
dust necessitate candles at noon, and not a drop of rain falls, whilst
high in the red hot air you see the clouds rolling towards the
highlands of the interior, where their blessed loads will make Arabia
happy. In Yemen――Arabia Felix――there are bubbling springs and fruits
and vineyards, sweet waters, fertilising suns, and cool nights. In
Aden and its neighbourhood all is the abomination of desolation.
The miseries of our unfortunate troops might have been lightened had
we originally occupied the true key of the Red Sea, the port of
Berbera on the Somali coast opposite Aden. But the step had been
taken; the authorities would not say “Peccavi” and undo the past.
Therefore we died of fever and dysentery; the smallest wound became a
fearful ulcer which destroyed limb or life. Even in health, existence
without appetite or sleep was a pest. I had the audacity to publish
these facts, and had once more to pay the usual penalty for telling
the truth.
The English spirit suffers from confinement behind any but wooden
walls, and the Aden garrison displayed a timidity which astonished me.
The fierce faces, the screaming voices, and the frequent faction
fights of the savage Somali had cowed our countrymen, and they were
depressed by a “peace at any price” policy. Even the Brigadier
commanding, General (afterwards Sir) James Outram, opposed my
explorations, and the leader was represented as a madman leading
others to a certain and cruel death.
I at once changed my plans. To prove that the journey presented no
real danger, I offered to visit alone what was considered the most
perilous part of the country and explore Harar, the capital of the
_terra incognita_. But to prevent my being detained meanwhile, I
stationed my companions on the African coast with orders to seize and
stop the inland caravans――a measure which would have had the effect of
releasing me. This is a serious danger in Abyssinian travel: witness
the case of Pedro Cavilham in 1499, and the unfortunate Consul Cameron
in our own day. Those “nameless Ethiopians,” the older savages,
sacrificed strangers to their gods. The modern only keep them in
irons, flog them, and starve them.
At the time I went few but professed geographers knew even the name of
Harar, or suspected that within three hundred miles of Aden there is a
counterpart of ill-famed Timbuctu. Travellers of all nations had
attempted it in vain; men of science, missionaries, and geographers
had all failed. It was said that some Hamitu prophet had read decline
and fall in the first footsteps of the Frank, and that the bigoted
barbarians had threatened death to the infidel caught within their
walls. Yet it was worth seeing, especially in those days, when few
were the unvisited cities of the world. It has a stirring history, a
peculiar race and language, it coins its own money, and it exports the
finest coffee known. Finally it is the southernmost town in Tropical
Africa.
On April 28th, 1854, in an open boat, I left Aden alone, without my
companions, re-becoming El Hajj Abdullah, the Arab. My attendants were
Mohammed and Guled, two Somali policemen bound to keep my secret for
the safety of their own throats. I afterwards engaged one Abdy Abokr,
a kind of hedge-priest, whose nickname was the “End of Time,” meaning
the _ne plus ultra_ of villainy. He was a caution――a bad tongue, a
mischievous brain, covetous and wasteful, treacherous as a hyena,
revengeful as a camel, timorous as a jackal.
Three days of summer sail on the “blind billows” and the “singing
waves” of the romantic Arab geographers landed us at Zayla, _alias_
Andal, the classical Sinus Avaliticus, to the south-west of Aden.
During the seventh century it was the capital of a kingdom which
measured forty-three by forty days’ march; now the Bedouin rides up to
its walls. The site is the normal Arabo-African scene, a strip of
sulphur-yellow sand with a deep blue dome above and a foreground of
indigo-coloured sea; behind it lies the country, a reeking desert of
loose white sand and brown clay, thinly scattered with thorny shrub
and tree. The buildings are a dozen large houses of mud and coralline
rubble painfully whitewashed. There are six mosques――green little
battlemented things with the Wahhali dwarf tower by way of minaret,
and two hundred huts of dingy palm-leaf.
The population of fifteen thousand souls has not a good name――Zayla
boasting or vanity and Kurayeh pride is a proverb. They are managed by
forty Turkish soldiers under a Somali Governor, the Hajj Shermarkuy,
meaning “one who sees no harm.” The tall old man was a brave in his
youth; he could manage four spears, and his sword-cut was known. He
always befriended English travellers.
The only thing in favour of Zayla is its cheapness. A family of six
persons can live well on £30 per annum. Being poor, the people are
idle, and the hateful “Inshalla bukra”――“To-morrow if Allah
pleases”――and the Arab “tenha paciencia,” “amanha,” and “espere um
pouco” is the rule.
I was delayed twenty-seven days whilst a route was debated upon, mules
were sent for, camels were bought, and an abban, or protector-guide,
was secured. Hereabouts no stranger could travel without such a
patron, who was paid to defend his client’s life and property.
Practically he took his money and ran away.
On the evening of November 27th, 1864, the caravan was ready. It
consisted of five camels laden with provisions, cooking-pots,
ammunition, and our money――that is to say, beads, coarse tobacco,
American sheeting, Indian cotton, and indigo-dyed stuffs. The escort
was formed by the two policemen, the “End of Time,” and Yusuf, a
one-eyed lad from Zayla, with the guide and his tail of three
followers. My men were the pink of Somali fashion. They had stained
their hair of a light straw colour by plastering it with ashes; they
had teased it till it stood up a full foot, and they had mutually
spirted upon their wigs melted tallow, making their heads look like
giant cauliflowers that contrasted curiously with the bistre-coloured
skins. Their tobes (togas) were dazzlingly white, with borders
dazzlingly red. Outside the dress was strapped a horn-hilted two-edged
dagger, long and heavy; their shields of rhinoceros hide were brand
new, and their two spears poised upon the right shoulder were freshly
scraped and oiled, and blackened and polished. They had added my spare
rifle and guns to the camel loads――the things were well enough in
Aden, but in Somali we would deride such strange, unmanly weapons.
They balanced themselves upon dwarf Abyssinian saddles, extending the
leg and raising the heel like the _haute école_ of Louis XIV. The
stirrup was an iron ring admitting only the big toe, and worse than
that of the Sertanejo.
As usual in this country, where the gender masculine will not work, we
had two cooks――tall, buxom, muscular dames, chocolate skinned and
round faced. They had curiously soft and fluted voices, hardly to be
expected from their square and huge-hipped figures, and contrasting
agreeably with the harsh organs of the men. Their feet were bare,
their veil was confined by a narrow fillet, and the body-cloth was an
indigo-dyed cotton, girt at the waist and graceful as a winding sheet.
I never saw them eat; probably, as the people say of cooks, they lived
by sucking their fingers.
And here a few words about the Somali, amongst whom we were to travel.
These nomads were not pure negroes; like the old Egyptians, they were
a mixed breed of African and Arab. The face from the brow to the
nostrils is Asiatic, from the nostrils to the chin showed traces of
negro blood. The hair was African; they decorated it by a sheep-skin
wig cut to the head and died fiery orange with henna. The figure was
peculiar, the shoulders were high and narrow, the trunk was small, the
limbs were spider-like, and the forearm was often of simian
proportions.
The Somali were a free people, lawless as free. The British Government
would not sanction their being sold as slaves. Of course they enslaved
others, and they had a servile caste called Midyan, who were the only
archers. They had little reverence for their own chiefs except in
council, and they discussed every question in public, none hesitating
to offer the wildest conjectures. At different times they suggested
that I was a Turk, an Egyptian, a Marah man, a Banyan, Ahmad the
Indian, the Governor of Aden, a merchant, a pilgrim, the chief of
Zayla or his son, a boy, a warrior in silver armour, an old woman, a
man painted white, and lastly, a calamity sent down from heaven to
tire out the lives of the Somali.
The Somali were bad Moslems, but they believed in a deity and they
knew the name of their Prophet. Wives being purchased for their value
in cows or camels, the wealthy old were polygamous and the young poor
were perforce bachelors. They worked milk-pots of tree-fibre like the
beer-baskets of Kaffir-land. They were not bad smiths, but they
confined their work to knives, spear-heads, and neat bits for their
unshod horses. Like the Kaffirs, they called bright iron “rotten,” and
they never tempered it. Like all Africans, they were very cruel
riders.
These nomads had a passion for independence, and yet when placed under
a strong arm they were easily disciplined. In British Aden a merry,
laughing, dancing, and fighting race, at home they were a moping,
melancholy people; for this their lives of perpetual danger might
account. This insecurity made them truly hard-hearted. I have seen
them when shifting camp barbarously leave behind for the hyenas their
sick and decrepit parents. When the fatal smallpox breaks out, the
first cases are often speared and the huts burned over the still warm
corpse.
The Somali deemed nothing so noble as murder. The more cowardly the
deed is, the better, as showing the more “nous.” Even the midnight
butchery of a sleeping guest is highly honourable. The hero plants a
rish, or white ostrich feather, in his tufty pole and walks about the
admired of all admirers, whilst the wives of those who have not
received this order of merit taunt their husbands as _noirs
fainéants_. Curious to say, the Greek and Roman officers used to
present these plumes to the bravest of their officers for wearing on
their helmet.