The "pike" appears in the form of a plump of spearmen, and
the gate is a pair of lances thrown across the road. Not without trouble,
for they feared to depart from the _mos majorum_, we persuaded them that
the ass carried no merchandise. Then rounding Kondura's northern flank, we
entered the Amir's territory: about thirty miles distant, and separated by
a series of blue valleys, lay a dark speck upon a tawny sheet of stubble--
Harar.
Having paused for a moment to savour success, we began the descent. The
ground was a slippery black soil--mist ever settles upon Kondura--and
frequent springs oozing from the rock formed beds of black mire. A few
huge Birbisa trees, the remnant of a forest still thick around the
mountain's neck, marked out the road: they were branchy from stem to
stern, and many had a girth of from twenty to twenty-five feet. [31]
After an hour's ride amongst thistles, whose flowers of a bright redlike
worsted were not less than a child's head, we watered our mules at a rill
below the slope. Then remounting, we urged over hill and dale, where Galla
peasants were threshing and storing their grain with loud songs of joy;
they were easily distinguished by their African features, mere caricatures
of the Somal, whose type has been Arabized by repeated immigrations from
Yemen and Hadramaut.
