The _Baise Main_ Was Repeated, And We Backed Out Of
The Audience-Shed In High Favour.
According to grandiloquent Bruce, "the
Court of London and that of Abyssinia are, in their principles, one:" the
loiterers in the Harar palace yard, who had before regarded us with cut-
throat looks, now smiled as though they loved us.
Marshalled by the guard,
we issued from the precincts, and after walking a hundred yards entered
the Amir's second palace, which we were told to consider our home. There
we found the Bedouins, who, scarcely believing that we had escaped alive,
grinned in the joy of their hearts, and we were at once provided from the
chief's kitchen with a dish of Shabta, holcus cakes soaked in sour milk,
and thickly powdered with red pepper, the salt of this inland region.
When we had eaten, the treasurer reappeared, bearing the Amir's command,
that we should call upon his Wazir, the Gerad Mohammed. Resuming our
peregrinations, we entered an abode distinguished by its external streak
of chunam, and in a small room on the ground floor, cleanly white-washed
and adorned, like an old English kitchen, with varnished wooden porringers
of various sizes, we found a venerable old man whose benevolent
countenance belied the reports current about him in Somali-land. [4] Half
rising, although his wrinkled brow showed suffering, he seated me by his
side upon the carpeted masonry-bench, where lay the implements of his
craft, reeds, inkstands and whitewashed boards for paper, politely
welcomed me, and gravely stroking his cotton-coloured beard, desired my
object in good Arabic.
I replied almost in the words used to the Amir, adding however some
details how in the old day one Madar Farih had been charged by the late
Sultan Abubakr with a present to the governor of Aden, and that it was the
wish of our people to reestablish friendly relations and commercial
intercourse with Harar.
"Khayr inshallah!--it is well if Allah please!" ejaculated the Gerad: I
then bent over his hand, and took leave.
Returning we inquired anxiously of the treasurer about my servants' arms
which had not been returned, and were assured that they had been placed in
the safest of store-houses, the palace. I then sent a common six-barrelled
revolver as a present to the Amir, explaining its use to the bearer, and
we prepared to make ourselves as comfortable as possible. The interior of
our new house was a clean room, with plain walls, and a floor of tamped
earth; opposite the entrance were two broad steps of masonry, raised about
two feet, and a yard above the ground, and covered with, hard matting. I
contrived to make upon the higher ledge a bed with the cushions which my
companions used as shabracques, and, after seeing the mules fed and
tethered, lay down to rest worn out by fatigue and profoundly impressed
with the _poesie_ of our position. I was under the roof of a bigoted
prince whose least word was death; amongst a people who detest foreigners;
the only European that had ever passed over their inhospitable threshold,
and the fated instrument of their future downfall.
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