Its Course Is Marked By A Long Line Of
Graceful Tamarisks, Whose Vivid Green Looked Doubly Bright Set Off By
Tawny Stubble And Amethyst-Blue Sky.
These freshets are the Edens of Adel.
The banks are charmingly wooded with acacias of many varieties, some
thorned like the fabled Zakkum, others parachute-shaped, and planted in
impenetrable thickets:
Huge white creepers, snake-shaped, enclasp giant
trees, or connect with their cordage the higher boughs, or depend like
cables from the lower branches to the ground. Luxuriant parasites abound:
here they form domes of flashing green, there they surround with verdure
decayed trunks, and not unfrequently cluster into sylvan bowers, under
which--grateful sight!--appears succulent grass. From the thinner thorns
the bell-shaped nests of the Loxia depend, waving in the breeze, and the
wood resounds with the cries of bright-winged choristers. The torrent-beds
are of the clearest and finest white sand, glittering with gold-coloured
mica, and varied with nodules of clear and milky quartz, red porphyry, and
granites of many hues. Sometimes the centre is occupied by an islet of
torn trees and stones rolled in heaps, supporting a clump of thick jujube
or tall acacia, whilst the lower parts of the beds are overgrown with long
lines of lively green colocynth. [29] Here are usually the wells,
surrounded by heaps of thorns, from which the leaves have been browsed
off, and dwarf sticks that support the water-hide. When the flocks and
herds are absent, troops of gazelles may be seen daintily pacing the
yielding surface; snake trails streak the sand, and at night the fiercer
kind of animals, lions, leopards, and elephants, take their turn. In
Somali-land the well is no place of social meeting; no man lingers to chat
near it, no woman visits it, and the traveller fears to pitch hut where
torrents descend, and where enemies, human and bestial, meet.
We sat under a tree watching the tribe defile across the water-course:
then remounting, after a ride of two miles, we reached a ground called
Kuranyali [30], upon which the wigwams of the Nomads were already rising.
The parched and treeless stubble lies about eight miles from and 145° S.E.
of Gudingaras; both places are supplied by Angagarri, a well near the sea,
which is so distant that cattle, to return before nightfall, must start
early in the morning.
My attendants had pitched the Gurgi or hut: the Hammal and Long Guled
were, however, sulky on account of my absence, and the Kalendar appeared
disposed to be mutinous. The End of Time, who never lost an opportunity to
make mischief, whispered in my ear, "Despise thy wife, thy son, and thy
servant, or they despise thee!" The old saw was not wanted, however, to
procure for them a sound scolding. Nothing is worse for the Eastern
traveller than the habit of "sending to Coventry:"--it does away with all
manner of discipline.
We halted that day at Kuranyali, preparing water and milk for two long
marches over the desert to the hills.
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