The "End Of Time" Has Squandered Considerable Sums In Travelling Far And Wide From Harar To Cutch, He Has Managed Everywhere To Perpetrate Some Peculiar Villany.

He is a pleasant companion, and piques himself upon that power of quotation which in the East makes a polite man.

If we be disposed to hurry, he insinuates that "Patience is of Heaven, Haste of Hell." When roughly addressed, he remarks,--

"There are cures for the hurts of lead and steel, But the wounds of the tongue--they never heal!"

If a grain of rice adhere to our beards, he says, smilingly, "the gazelle is in the garden;" to which we reply "we will hunt her with the five." [14] Despite these merits, I hesitated to engage him, till assured by the governor of Zayla that he was to be looked upon as a son, and, moreover, that he would bear with him one of those state secrets to an influential chief which in this country are never committed to paper. I found him an admirable buffoon, skilful in filling pipes and smoking them; _au reste_, an individual of "many words and little work," infinite intrigue, cowardice, cupidity, and endowed with a truly evil tongue.

The morning sun rose hot upon us, showing Mayyum and Zubah, the giant staples of the "Gate under the Pleiades." [15] Shortly afterwards, we came in sight of the Barr el Ajam (barbarian land), as the Somal call their country [16], a low glaring flat of yellow sand, desert and heat-reeking, tenanted by the Eesa, and a meet habitat for savages. Such to us, at least, appeared the land of Adel. [17] At midday we descried the Ras el Bir,--Headland of the Well,--the promontory which terminates the bold Tajurrah range, under which lie the sleeping waters of the Maiden's Sea. [18] During the day we rigged out an awning, and sat in the shade smoking and chatting merrily, for the weather was not much hotter than on English summer seas. Some of the crew tried praying; but prostrations are not easily made on board ship, and El Islam, as Umar shrewdly suspected, was not made for a seafaring race. At length the big red sun sank slowly behind the curtain of sky-blue rock, where lies the not yet "combusted" village of Tajurrah. [19] We lay down to rest with the light of day, and had the satisfaction of closing our eyes upon a fair though captious breeze.

On the morning of the 31st October, we entered the Zayla Creek, which gives so much trouble to native craft. We passed, on the right, the low island of Masha, belonging to the "City of the Slave Merchant,"-- Tajurrah,--and on the left two similar patches of seagirt sand, called Aybat and Saad el Din. These places supply Zayla, in the Kharif or hot season [20], with thousands of gulls' eggs,--a great luxury. At noon we sighted our destination. Zayla is the normal African port,--a strip of sulphur-yellow sand, with a deep blue dome above, and a foreground of the darkest indigo.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 16 of 249
Words from 7826 to 8343 of 128411