This Holy Tree Was,
According To The Somal, A Place Of Prayer For The Infidel, And Its Ancient
Honors Are Not Departed.
Here, probably to commemorate the westward
progress of the tribe, the Gudabirsi Ugaz or chief has the white canvass
turban bound about his brows, and hence rides forth to witness the
equestrian games in the Harawwah Valley.
As everyone who passes by, visits
the Halimalah tree, foraging parties of the Northern Eesa and the Jibril
Abokr (a clan of the Habr Awal) frequently meet, and the traveller wends
his way in fear and trembling.
The thermometer showed an altitude of 3,350 feet: under the tree's cool
shade, the climate reminded me of Southern Italy in winter. I found a
butter-cup, and heard a wood-pecker [18] tapping on the hollow trunk, a
reminiscence of English glades. The Abban and his men urged an advance in
the afternoon. But my health had suffered from the bad water of the coast,
and the camels were faint with fatigue: we therefore dismissed the hired
beasts, carried our property into a deserted kraal, and, lighting a fire,
prepared to "make all snug" for the night. The Bedouins, chattering with
cold, stood closer to the comfortable blaze than ever did pater familias
in England: they smoked their faces, toasted their hands, broiled their
backs with intense enjoyment, and waved their legs to and fro through the
flame to singe away the pile, which at this season grows long. The End of
Time, who was surly, compared them to demons, and quoted the Arab's
saying:--"Allah never bless smooth man, or hairy woman!" On the 8th of
December, at 8 A.M., we travelled slowly up the Halimalah Valley, whose
clayey surface glistened with mica and quartz pebbles from the hills. All
the trees are thorny except the Sycamore and the Asclepias. The Gub, or
Jujube, grows luxuriantly in thickets: its dried wood is used by women to
fumigate their hair [19]: the Kedi, a tree like the porcupine,--all
spikes,--supplies the Bedouins with hatchet-handles. I was shown the Abol
with its edible gum, and a kind of Acacia, here called Galol. Its bark
dyes cloth a dull red, and the thorn issues from a bulb which, when young
and soft, is eaten by the Somal, when old it becomes woody, and hard as a
nut. At 9 A.M. we crossed the Lesser Abbaso, a Fiumara with high banks of
stiff clay and filled with large rolled stones: issuing from it, we
traversed a thorny path over ascending ground between higher hills, and
covered with large boulders and step-like layers of grit. Here appeared
several Gudabirsi tombs, heaps of stones or pebbles, surrounded by a fence
of thorns, or an enceinte of loose blocks: in the latter, slabs are used
to make such houses as children would build in play, to denote the number
of establishments left by the deceased. The new grave is known by the
conical milk-pails surmounting the stick at the head of the corpse, upon
the neighbouring tree is thrown the mat which bore the dead man to his
last home, and hard by are the blackened stones upon which his funeral
feast was cooked.
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