Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, Volume 3 (of 5): In the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773Bruce, James
History
Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, Volume 3 (of 5): In the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773
Bruce, James
Egypt -- Description and travel; Ethiopia -- Description and travel; Ethiopia -- History; Natural history -- Ethiopia; Nile River
It was on Nov. 25th, at ten in the morning, we left Dixan, descending
the very steep hill on which the town is situated. It produces nothing
but the Kol-quall tree all around it. We passed a miserable village
called Hadhadid, and, at eleven o’clock, encamped under a daroo tree,
one of the finest I have seen in Abyssinia, being 7½ feet diameter,
with a head spreading in proportion, standing alone by the side of
a river which now ran no more, though there is plenty of fine water
still stagnant in its bed. This tree and river is the boundary of the
territory, which the Naybe farms from Tigré, and stands within the
province of Baharnagash, called Midrè Bahar.
Hagi Abdelcader had attended us thus far before he left us; and the
noted Saloomè came likewise, to see if some occasion would offer of
doing us further mischief; but the king’s servants, now upon their own
ground, began to take upon them a proper consequence. One of them went
to meet Saloomé at the bank of the river, and making a mark on the
ground with his knife, declared that his patience was quite exhausted
by what he had been witness to at Masuah and Dixan; and if now Saloomé,
or any other man belonging to the Naybe, offered to pass that mark,
he would bind him hand and foot, and carry him to a place where he
should be left tied to a tree, a prey to the lion and hyæna. They all
returned, and there our persecution from the Naybe ended. But it was
very evident, from Achmet’s behaviour and discourse, had we gone by
Dobarwa, which was the road proposed by the Naybe, our sufferings would
not have been as yet half finished, unless they had ended with our
lives.
We remained under this tree the night of the 25th; it will be to me a
station ever memorable, as the first where I recovered a portion of
that tranquillity of mind to which I had been a stranger ever since
my arrival at Masuah. We had been joined by about twenty loaded asses
driven by Moors, and two loaded bulls; for there is a small sort of
this kind called Ber, which they make use of as beasts of burden. I
called all these together to recommend good order to them, desiring
every one to leave me that was not resolved to obey implicitly the
orders I should give them, as to the hours and places of encamping,
keeping watch at night, and setting out in the morning. I appointed
Yasine the judge of all disputes between them; and, if the difference
should be between Yasine and any one of them, or, if they should not
be content with his decision, then my determination was to be final.
They all consented with great marks of approbation. We then repeated
the fedtah, and swore to stand by each other till the last, without
considering who the enemy might be, or what his religion was, if he
attacked us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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