Masha, belonging to the "City of the Slave Merchant,"—Tajurrah—and on the left two similar patches of seagirt sand, called Aybat and Sa'ad al-Din. These places supply Zayla, in the Kharif or hot season,[1] with thousands of gulls' eggs—a great luxury. At noon we sighted our destination. Zayla is the normal African port—a strip of sulphur-yellow sand, with a deep blue dome above, and a foreground of the darkest indigo. The buildings, raised by refraction, rose high, and apparently from the bosom of the deep. After hearing the worst accounts of it, I was pleasantly disappointed by the spectacle of white-washed houses and minarets, peering above a long low line of brown wall, flanked with round towers.
As we slowly threaded the intricate coral reefs of the port, a bark came scudding up to us; it tacked, and the crew proceeded to give news in roaring tones. Friendship between the Amir of Harar and the governor of Zayla had been broken; the road through the Ísa Somal had been closed by the murder of Mas'ud, a favourite slave and adopted son of Sharmarkay; all strangers had been expelled the city for some misconduct by the Harar chief; moreover, small-pox was raging there with such violence that the Galla peasantry would allow neither ingress nor egress.[2] I had the pleasure of
- ↑ The Kharif in most parts of the Oriental world corresponds with our autumn. In Eastern Africa it invariably signifies the hot season preceding the monsoon rains.
- ↑ The circumstances of Mas'ud's murder were truly African. The slave caravans from Abyssinia to Tajurrah were usually escorted by the Rer Guleni, a clan of the great Ísa tribe, and they monopolized the profits of the road. Summoned to share their gains with their kinsmen generally, they refused, upon which the other clans rose about August, 1854, and cut off the road. A large caravan was travelling down in two bodies, each of nearly 300 slaves; the Ísa attacked the first division, carried off the wives and female slaves,
