With A Little
Cutting Away Of Projecting Rocks, Which Are Of Soft Stone, The Road Might
Be Made Tolerably Easy.
Scattered and stunted Acacias, fringed with fresh
green foliage, relieved the eye; all else was barren rock.
After marching
about two miles the traveller was obliged to halt by the Sultan; a
messenger arrived with the order. The halting-place is called Damalay. It
is in the bed of the watercourse, stagnating rain, foul-looking but sweet,
lying close by. As in all other parts of this Fiumara, the bed was dotted
with a bright green tree, sometimes four feet high, resembling a willow.
Lieutenant Speke spread his mat in the shade, and spent the rest of the
day at his diary and in conversation with the natives.
The next day was also spent at Damalay. The interpreter, Mohammed Ahmed, a
Somali of the Warsingali tribe, and all the people, refused positively to
advance. Lieutenant Speke started on foot to Las Kuray in search of the
Abban: he was followed at some distance by the Somal, and the whole party
returned on hearing a report that the chief and the Abban were on the way.
The traveller seems on this occasion to have formed a very low estimate of
the people. He stopped their food until they promised to start the next
day.
_21st November_.--The caravan marched at gun-fire, and, after a mile, left
the watercourse, and ascended by a rough camel-path a buttress of hill
leading to the ridge of the mountains.
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