The Highlands of EthiopiaHarris, William Cornwallis, Sir
History
The Highlands of Ethiopia
Harris, William Cornwallis, Sir
Ethiopia -- Description and travel
The road continued to skirt the low Eesah range for several miles [see
Note 1] to the termination of the plain, which becomes gradually shut in
by rounded hills enclosing a dell choked with low thorns, and tenanted
by the _galla-fiela_ [i.e. camel-goat], a strange species of antelope,
having a long raking neck, which imparted the appearance of a lama in
miniature. As the day broke, flocks and herds were observed advancing
from every quarter towards a common focus, and on gaining the brow of
the last hill overhanging the halting ground, a confused lowing of
beeves and bleating of sheep arose from the deep ravine below, whilst
the mountain sides were streaked with numberless white lines of cattle
and goats descending towards the water.
Arriving at the Wady Killulloo, a most busy scene presented itself.
Owing to the general want of water elsewhere throughout the country,
vast numbers of flocks and herds had assembled from far and wide, and
they were tended by picturesque members of all the principal tribes of
Danakil composing the Debenik-Woema, as well as from the Eesah, the
Mudaito, and their subordinate subdivisions. Dogs lay basking on the
grassy bank beside their lounging masters; women, screaming to the
utmost of their shrill voices, filled up their water-skins with an
ink-black fluid stirred to the consistency of mire, and redolent of
pollution; thousands of sheep, oxen, and goats, assembled in dense
masses in and around the dark, deep, pools, were undergoing separation
by their respective owners, before being driven to pasture; and, with
the long files that ascended and descended the mountain side in every
direction, imparted the bustling appearance of a great cattle fair.
The temporary mat huts of all these nomade visitors who boasted of
habitations were erected at a distance on the table-land to the
south-westward of this important wady, which occupies a rugged rocky
chasm opening upon the Kellali plain, and, receiving the drainage of all
the southern portion of the Oobnoo range, disembogues during the rainy
season into the lake at Aussa. Even during this, the hottest portion of
the year, when the entire country elsewhere is dry, its rocky pools
embedded in soft limestone, tainted with sulphuretted hydrogen, and
abounding in rushes and crocodiles, afford an inexhaustible supply,
without which the flocks and herds of the entire arid districts by which
it is surrounded, could not exist.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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