Thus the very circumstance which the old historian regarded as throwing doubt on the discovery, is now one of the strongest corroborations of its truth.2 There appear to have been several attempts to sail along the west coast, by ancient expeditions; but to the Portuguese is due the modern honour of having first sailed round the Cape. From 1412, the Portuguese, under a race of adventurous princes, had extended their discoveries; but it occupied them sixty years to reach the Line, and nearly thirty years more to reach the Cape, which they first called Cabo Tormentoso, (Stormy Cape.) But the king gave it the more lucky, though the less poetical, title which it now bears.
The triumph of Columbus, in his discovery of the New World in 1493, raised the emulation of the Portuguese, then regarded as the first navigators in the world; yet it was not until four years after, that their expedition was sent, to equalize the stupendous accession to the Spanish domains, by the possession of the East. In July 1497, Gama sailed, reached Calicut May 2, 1498, and returned to Portugal, covered with well-earned renown, after a voyage of upwards of two years.
Having given this brief outline of the divisions and character of the mighty continent, which seemed important to the better understanding of the immediate subject, we revert to the intelligent and animated volumes of Captain (now Major) Harris.
A letter from the Bombay government, 29th April 1841, gave him this distinguished credential:—
"SIR—I am directed to inform you that the Honourable the Governor in Council, having formed a very high estimate of your talents and acquirements, and of the spirit of enterprise and decision, united with prudence and discretion, exhibited in your recently published travels through the territories of the Maselakatze to the Tropic of Capricorn, has been pleased to select you to conduct the mission which the British Government has resolved to send to Sahela Selasse, the king of Shoa, in Southern Abyssinia, whose capital, Ankober, is supposed to be about four hundred miles inland from the port of Tajura, on the African coast."
[Then followed the mention of the vessels appointed to carry the mission.]
(Signed) "J.P. WILLOUGHBY,"
"Secretary to Government."
The persons comprising the mission were Major W.C. Harris, Bombay Engineers, Captain Douglas Graham, Bombay army, principal assistant, with others, naturalists, draftsmen, &c., and an escort of two sergeants and fifteen rank and file, volunteers from H.M. 6th foot and the Bombay Artillery.
On the afternoon of a sultry day in April, Major Harris, with his gallant and scientific associates, embarked on board the East India Company's steam ship Auckland, in the harbour of Bombay, on their voyage to the kingdom of Shoa in Southern Abyssinia, in the year 1841. The steam frigate pursued her way prosperously through the waters, and on the ninth day was within sight of Cape Aden, after a voyage of 1680 miles. The Cape, named by the natives, Jebel Shemshan, rises nearly 1800 feet above the ocean, is frequently capped with clouds, a wild and fissured mass of rock, and evidently intended by nature for one of those great beacons which announce the approach to an inland sea. On rounding the Cape, the British eye was delighted with the sight of the Red Sea squadron, riding at anchor within the noble bay. The arrival of the frigate also caused a sensation on the shore; and Major Harris happily describes the feelings with which a new arrival is hailed by the British garrison on that dreary spot, their only excitement being the periodical visits of the packets between Suez and Bombay. In the dead of the night a blue light shoots up in the offing. It is answered by the illumination of the block ship, then the thunder of her guns is heard, then, as she nears the shore, the flapping of her paddles is heard through the silence, then the spectral lantern appears at the mast-head, and then she rushes to her anchorage, leaving in her wake a long phosphoric train.
Wherever England drops an anchor a new scene of existence has begun. At Aden, the supply of coals for the steam-ships has introduced a new trade; gangs of brawny Seedies, negroes from the Zanzibar coast, but fortunately enfranchised, make a livelihood by transferring the coal from the depots on shore to the steamers. Though the most unmusical race in the world, they can do nothing without music, but it is music of their own—a tambourine beaten with the thigh-bone of a calf; but their giant frames go through prodigious labour, carry immense sacks, and drink prodigious draughts to wash the coal-dust down. Such is the furious excitement with which they rush into this repulsive operation, that Major Harris thinks that for every hundred tons of coal thus embarked, at least one life is sacrificed; those strong savages, at once inflamed by drink, and overcome with toil, throwing themselves down on the dust or the sand, to rise no more. This shows the advantage of English philosophy: our coal-heavers in the Thames toil as much, are nearly as naked, nearly as black, and probably drink more; but we never hear of their dying in a fit of rapture in the embrace of a coal-sack. When the day is done, drunk or sober, washed or unwashed, they go home to their wives, sleep untroubled by the cares of kings, and return to fresh dust, drink, and dirt, next morning.
The coast of Arabia has no claims to the picturesque: all its charms, like those of the oyster, lie within the roughest of possible shells. Its first aspect resembles heaps of the cinders of a glass-house—a building whose heat seems to be fully realized by the temperature of this fearful place. England has a resident there, Captain Haynes,named as political agent. That any human being, who could exist in any other place, would remain in Aden, is one of the wonders of human nature. An officer, of course, must go wherever he is sent; but such is the innate love for a post, that if this gallant and intelligent person were roasted to death, as might happen in one of the coolest days of the Ethiopian summer, there would be a thousand applications before a month was over, to the Foreign Office, for the honour of being carbonaded on the rocks of Aden.
The promontory has all the marks of volcanic eruption, and is actually recorded, by an Arab historian of the tenth century, to have been thrown up about that period. "Its sound, like the rumbling of thunder, might then be heard many miles, and from its entrails vomited forth redhot stones, with a flood of liquid fire." The crater of the extinguished volcano is still visible, though shattered and powdered down by the tread under which Alps and Appennines themselves crumble away—that of Time. The only point on which we are sceptical is the late origin of the promontory. Nothing beyond a sandhill or a heap of ashes has been produced on the face of nature since the memory of man. That a rock, or rather a mountain chain, with a peak 1800 feet high, should have been produced at any time time within the last four thousand years, altogether tasks our credulity. The powers of nature are now otherwise employed than in rough-hewing the surface of the globe. She has been long since, like the sculptor, employed in polishing and finishing—the features were hewn out long ago. Her master-hand has ever since been employed in smoothing them.
Aden's reputation for barrenness is an old one—"Aden," says Ben Batuta of Tangiers, "is situate upon the sea-shore; a large city without either seed, water, or tree." This was written five hundred years ago; yet the ruins of fortifications and watch-towers along the rocks, show that even this human oven was the object of cupidity in earlier times; and the British guns, bristling among the precipices, show that the desire is undecayed even in our philosophic age.
Yet the Arab imagination has created its wonders even in this repulsive scene; and the generation of monkeys which tenant the higher portion of the rocks, are declared by Arab tradition to be the remnant of the once powerful tribe of Ad, changed into apes by the displeasure of Heaven, when "the King of the World," Sheddad, renowned in eastern story, presumptuously dared to form a garden which should rival Paradise. The prophet Hud remonstrated; but his remonstrances went for nothing, and the indignant monarch and his courtiers suddenly found their visages simious, their tongues chattering, and their lower portions furnished with tails—a species of transformation, which, so far as regards visage and tongue, is supposed to be not unfrequent among courtiers to this day. But this showy tradition goes further still. The Bostan al Irem (Garden of Paradise) is believed still to exist in the deserts of Aden; though geographers differ on its position. It still retains its domes and bowers—both of indescribable beauty; its crystal fountains, and its walks strewed with pearls for sand. It is true, that no living man can absolutely aver that he has seen this place of wonders; but that is a mere result of our very wicked age. This has not been always the case; for Abdallah Ibn Aboo Kelaba passed a night in its palace in the reign of Moowiych, the