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I then called a halt: we unloaded on the banks of the Darkaynlay fiumara, so called from a tree which contains a fiery milk, fenced ourselves in, taking care to avoid being trampled upon by startled camels during our sleep, by securing them in a separate but neighbouring inclosure, spread our couches, ate our frugal suppers, and lost no time in falling asleep.
Pursuing the Fiumara course, we passed a number of kraals, whose inhabitants were equally vociferous: out of one came a Zayla man, who informed us that the Gudabirsi Abbans, to whom we bore Sharmarkay's letter of introduction, were encamped within three days' march.
For two hours we urged our mules in a south-east direction down the broad and winding Fiumara, taking care to inspect every well, but finding them all full of dry sand. Then turning eastwards, we crossed a plain called by the Donkey "Battaladayti Taranay" the Flats of Taranay an exact representation of the maritime regions about Zayla.
The ground was unpleasantly pitted and holed; the camels were weak with semi-starvation and the depressing south-wester; Lieutenant Amir put his dromedary to speed, resulting in a nose-flattening fall; and the Sayyid nearly followed suit. This is our second day of Khamsin; yet on the northern slope of the great Fiumara we meet the cool land-wind.
Passing along Fourah Bay, we remarked in the high background a fine brook, cold, clear, and pure, affording a delicious bath; it is almost dry in the Dries, and swells to a fiumara during the Rains. Its extent was then a diminutive rivulet tumbling some hundreds of feet down a shelving bed into Granville Bay, the break beyond Fourah. They row simplices munditiis.
At half past 3 P.M. our camels were lazily loaded, and we followed the course of the Fiumara, which runs to the W. and S. W. After half an hour's progress, we arrived at the gully in which are the wells, and the guides halted because they descried half-a- dozen youths and boys bathing and washing their Tobes.
Journeying onwards, we reached the Barragid fiumara, and presently exchanged the plain for rolling ground covered with the remains of an extinct race, and probably alluded to by El Makrizi when he records that the Moslems of Adel had erected, throughout the country, a vast number of mosques and oratories for Friday and festival prayers.
The wine-quay, by the Porto Canale, Fiumara, is shaded pleasantly with trees, and always busy with its own particular trade, supplemented by stalls at which various goods are offered for sale. Close by is a street, which in the spring is bright with Judas-trees in flower. The ravine down which the stream flows has always been the boundary of the Croatian kingdom.
The guides named these wells Agjogsi, probably a generic term signifying that water is standing close by. Crossing the Fiumara we ascended a hill, and found upon the summit a large kraal alive with heads of kine. The inhabitants flocked out to stare at us and the women uttered cries of wonder. I advanced towards the prettiest, and fired my rifle by way of salute over her head.
After an hour's march we reached the base of Koralay, upon whose lower slopes appeared a pair of the antelopes called Alakud : they are tame, easily shot, and eagerly eaten by the Bedouins. Another hour of slow travelling brought us to a broad Fiumara with high banks of stiff clay thickly wooded and showing a water-mark eighteen feet above the sand.