Part 13: South Wello - Woro Eilu
and
Part 14: Shoa - The Whistling Cave

Part 13 of 16: South Wello - Woro Eilu

We took a bridle path down the gorge on the top of which Adis Amba is built, and the change in climate is most marked. At the bottom of the gorge near a small waterfall is a garden and summer-house belonging to the Dedjatch. These clefts in nature's face are one of the most curious features of the country.

We had come down rather in altitude since leaving Adis Amba, and our next day's journey was again slightly rising over undulating down land to Woro Eilou town. This country carries a large population, and hundreds of hamlets are passed en-route.


THE CUSTOMS GATE
The appraoch to the town is very curious, and is over a grass covered ridge about three quarters of a mile long, until two enormous canyons with inaccessible sides are reached. The one to the east drains to the Wancheet, and that to the west to the Blue Nile.

The ridge is defended by a high wooden palisade, with a ditch in front, and a stone rampart behind, and the flanks of the work are strongly defended so it is impossible to get around them. There are nothing but easily defended sheep paths for many miles to the east and west, and this is the only practical military road on the eastern side of Abyssinia from north to south unless a detour through the Danakil country is made. It is therefore the key to this part of the country and to Shoa to the south.

There is one strongly fortified gate that opens into a customs house, and dues are levied here on all things going north and south, at the rate of ten per cent. Great piles of bars of salt are stacked here, belonging to the Government, waiting for distribution.

The customs officials here are always being changed, and it is said that they become very rich in a very short time, bribery and corruption being rampant. The only way they are found out is by sending test caravans, and seeing whether the duty is levied on them correctly. As a test caravan very often becomes known, the duty on them is found to be levied exactly, and other means have to be employed to find out where the leakage is taking place.

The head man of the place, who is acting in the absence of Betweded Atnafea, is a very charming well-informed person. He was very badly wounded at the battle of Adowa, and had still three bullets in him. Two I could feel very well, and the third was too far in the shoulder to be certain of its exact position. I strongly advised him to go to the Russian Red Cross Society at Adese-Ababa and have them out as soon as the Betweded came back.


MORE PRISONERS
I managed to have a talk to several of the Italian prisoners and to two officers, Lieutenants Scala and Gambi. I found that they were hard up, no money, and their food rations were poor, and I do not think there was any one of them that did not envy the lot of the men with Dedjatch Imma. I managed to get a large bundle of letters from them, and afterwards heard that they had reached their destination, so I was instrumental in getting the first news of their being alive and in safety to their families.

I paid a visit to the market on my way out of Woro Eilu. It was by far the best attended market I had ever seen, and the Adese Ababa weekly market cannot compare in numbers to it. What struck me most were the large piles of black wool rugs and tent materials besides the black wool overcoats and capes that are manufactured in the neighborhood; this place may be called the Bradford of Abyssinia.

The cattle market was also largely stocked, and sheep were very cheap. Cows and oxen were dearer, as many buyers had come from long distances to purchase animals for ploughing work.

We only made a short march to Crourea Ber as we left so late in the day. This country is nothing but barley, barley, barley, and short, sweet down grass, and is terribly uninteresting and treeless.


A STUPENDOUS RIFT
Our next day's march was also a short one, through the same scenery, but here we change from a black soil to a red one, and the district is called Kei Afer. The country after Kei Afer looks to the south one rolling prairie with a background of high mountains, and it was a great surprise to me seeing how soon the scenery alters, and perhaps one of the most stupendous rifts that is to be found in all Abyssinia is come to.

One of the waves of rolling land is reached, and without any warning a precipice is reached and a new country altogether comes in sight. This is the superb valley of the Wancheet, the river running at a depth of certainly over 3,000 feet. Here for the first time the columnar basalt is one of the marked features of the landscape, not to be lost again until the descent into Adese Ababa is reached.


Part 14 of 16: Shoa - The Whistling Cave

The route the next day was round the head of the valley to the high road, just before it rises in zig-zags up the mighty wall of rock that forms the northern borders of Shoa.


THE ITALIAN ROAD
Here I came across the gang of Italian prisoners that were constructing the new road; a fairly wide and level one with the boulders and rocks blasted away, and the debris built up as a low wall in the precipice side. Culverts were being roughly made, and if the road is kept in repair it will answer every purpose.

The Italian soldiers were not looking so bad as I expected, but some of them were in rags, while others had been able to procure some clothes from Adese Ababa, where an enterprising Greek had brought from the coast as many garments as he could secure and given them to the prisoners simply taking their receipt and trusting the Italian Government to repay him. In this instance he made a good speculation.

I had a long talk to a good many of the prisoners, and they were as well treated as they could expect to be, and the small wage they earned for making the road allowed them to add to the rations that were served out to them by orders of the king. Several of them however, had been beaten by the man in charge, and a couple of days before I arrived they had retaliated, and were now being left alone to go on their work without interference.


MOUNTAIN PANORAMA
This road and pass is called the Gobella Daget, and after another mile, the top of the Shoan plateau is come to, where I sat down and looked at the splendid view stretched out before me.

To the north the whole mountains of Wollo country with their enormous wind-swept heights, must have been several thousand feet higher than the point I was resting at, which seemed the highest in the neighbourhood.

The Woro Eilou district was plainly visible, and the upper banks of the giant Wancheet rift, and the old church of Nevat was a mere speck, then the outline of Menelek's state prison above Devvo. On the east another huge canyon brought the river Mofa Woha from the north-east.

A break in the eastern backbone ridge of the mountains gave a far off glimpse of the sweltering Danakil country, and then the mountains rose again and continued in a broken and irregular line of heights to Ankobar, the old capital of Shoa.

The whole panorama of water, mountain rock, and fell with broad tracts of cultivation, made a splendid picture, its beauty heightened by the lights and shades from a partly overcast sky with fleecy white clouds standing out against the deep blue vault of the heavens above.

The whole scene was immense in its grandeur and beautiful in the extreme, and embraced every sort of climate and vegetation.

Facing around to the southwest, the view was entirely different; rolling downs with hardly a tree to be seen except round some isolated church or hamlet, and barley fields following barley fields till all traces of their dividing walls were lost in the distance.


YET ANOTHER GROUP OF PRISONERS
Here an Italian officer, Lieutenant Fuso, came up with several other Italian soldiers. I had a long chat with the officer who was treated quite as well as could be expected. I was informed that the peasantry went out of their way to do them little kindnesses; it was only the minor officials that occasionally struck them.


THE ONES WHO WISHED TO STAY
That some of the poorer Italian soldiers took unto themselves Abyssinian women, and wanted to stay in the country against the wish of their officers was a fact, but this I do not consider any great crime, and what poor men of any European country might have done, as they were living in a fertile country with a splendid climate, and perhaps with much better prospects of getting on than in some squalid, priest-ridden town in Italy.

They professed themselves as being perfectly happy and had no wish to go back to their own country. Those that I saw were certainly doing good work in teaching; living in better built homes, and had already started neat flower and vegetable gardens, and were getting together a little live stock...


THE WIND
We encamped about three miles away from the top of Gobella Daget pass, at the village of Costa Amba. It was bitter cold, and the wind blew and whistled through the basalt pillars of a neighbouring cliff, making weird and uncanny noises, which joined with the cries of the hyenas.

Schimper and Hadgi Ali are both highly superstitious, and the one took to his Bible and the other to the Koran, and they sat up long after I went to sleep, reading their respective books by the light of the candles. I chafed them the next morning and thanked them for keeping the devils away.

The whole way from Costa Amba to above Chela lake, two marches off from Adese Ababa is highly monotonous over black soil, grass, marsh, bog and barley land, with hardly a tree except in some low hollow where the ground has been too damp to allow the fires that sweep over these downs to destroy them. All of the villages are protected by a zone of uncultivated ground which is kept free from grass, so the fire wave may die out.


Next:
Part 15: Shoa - The Old Man and the Gelada
 "The rear of the troop was brought up by a very large male, lame on one hind leg, and the choum said he could remember it for many years, ever since it was a small one, and it was lame then. He thereupon commenced calling 'Baba, Baba,' and the old male stopped and gave the word of command to the others, and they all halted... "