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Updated: May 8, 2025
The shopkeeper provides food for his Abban, and presents him at the close of the season with a Tobe, a pair of sandals, and half-a-dozen dollars. Wealthy Banyans and Mehmans give food and raiment, and before departure from 50 to 200 dollars.
The Abban, as I had heard before, was detained there by a creditor to whom he had contracted debts in Aden, and now, in part liquidation of them, he had given away all my salt, the twenty rupees he took for hiring donkeys, several pieces of cloth, and he had changed my good rice for bad; and, knowing Farhan to be cognisant of all his villanies, had tried by bribes to induce him to desert.
The ulcer is a disease endemic in Southern Arabia; it is frequently fatal, especially to the poorer classes of operatives, when worn out by privation, hardship, and fatigue. The Abban is now the pest of Berberah. Before vessels have cast anchor, or indeed have rounded the Spit, a crowd of Somal, eager as hotel- touters, may be seen running along the strand.
The sultan and Abban now overtook us to say that the rear things were in safe custody in the fort; and, leaving instructions with the young Prince Abdullah about the road we should follow on the morrow, returned nolens volens back to Bunder Gori, saying, as they went away, we might expect them at the next camping-ground as soon even as we could get there with the camels.
Hitherto our partial intervention between the Habr Awal of Berberah and the Habr Gerhajis of Zayla has been fraught with evils to them, and consequently to us. But it is a rapidly prevailing custom for merchants and travellers to engage an Abban or Protector, not on the African coast, as was formerly case, but at Aden.
On the other hand, oral tradition is more trustworthy; witness the annals and genealogies preserved in verse by the Bhats of Cutch, the Arab Nassab, and the Bards of Belochistan. 30th November. The Sultan took leave of Lieutenant Speke, and the latter prepared to march in company with the Abban, the interpreter, the Sultan's two sons, and a large party.
After five miles' progress over rough ground, Lieutenant Speke unloaded under a tree early in the afternoon near some pools of sweet rain water collected in natural basins of limestone dotting the watercourse. The place is called Iskodubuk; the name of the watercourse is Duktura. The Sultan and the Abban were both left behind to escort the baggage from Las Kuray to Kurayat.
The Abban slipped away on the 19th, when I was out specimen-hunting, and would not come again till to-day, and then even returned to give his wife a last salute, permitting me to advance to a watercourse called Hanfallal, whilst he would join me on the following day. This day we accomplished ten miles, and made a kraal about four miles north of our old line of march. 22d.
He seemed to observe the same punctiliousness towards me, so I split the difference by sending an embassy by my Abban, assisted by other powerful Akils, early the following morning, when they held durbar, and my intentions of travelling were fully discussed in open court.
My men were all highly anxious I should shoot them, but I would not, to try what effect it would have on the Abban, saying, sport was of secondary importance to me, and I now only wished to finish the journey quickly.
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