She
anything more at the moment, for we were instantly surrounded by
crowds of Amahagger, similar in every particular to those with
whom we were already familiar, who, though they spoke little,
pressed round us so closely as to obscure the view to a person
lying in a hammock. Then all of a sudden a number of armed men
arranged in companies, and marshalled by officers who held ivory
wands in their hands, came running swiftly towards us, having, so
far as I could make out, emerged from the face of the precipice
like ants from their burrows. These men as well as their officers
were all robed in addition to the usual leopard skin, and, as I
gathered, formed the bodyguard of _She_ herself.
Their leader advanced to Billali, saluted him by placing his
ivory wand transversely across his forehead, and then asked some
question which I could not catch, and Billali having answered him
the whole regiment turned and marched along the side of the
cliff, our cavalcade of litters following in their track. After
going thus for about half a mile we halted once more in front of
the mouth of a tremendous cave, measuring about sixty feet in
height by eighty wide, and here Billali descended finally, and
requested Job and myself to do the same. Leo, of course, was far
too ill to do anything of the sort. I did so, and we entered the
great cave, into which the light of the setting sun penetrated
for some distance, while beyond the reach of the daylight it was
faintly illuminated with lamps which seemed to me to stretch away
for an almost immeasurable distance, like the gas lights of an
empty London street. The first thing I noticed was that the walls
were covered with sculptures in bas-relief, of a sort,
pictorially speaking, similar to those that I have described upon
the vases;—love-scenes principally, then hunting pictures,
pictures of executions, and the torture of criminals by the
placing of a, presumably, red-hot pot upon the head, showing
whence our hosts had derived this pleasant practice. There were
very few battle-pieces, though many of duels, and men running and
wrestling, and from this fact I am led to believe that this
people were not much subject to attack by exterior foes, either
on account of the isolation of their position or because of their
great strength. Between the pictures were columns of stone
characters of a formation absolutely new to me; at any rate, they
were neither Greek nor Egyptian, nor Hebrew, nor Assyrian—that I
am sure of. They looked more like Chinese writings than any other
that I am acquainted with. Near to the entrance of the cave both
pictures and writings were worn away, but further in they were in
many cases absolutely fresh and perfect as the day on which the
sculptor had ceased work on them.
The regiment of guards did not come further than the entrance to
the cave, where they formed up to let us pass through. On
entering the place itself we were, however, met by a man robed in
white, who bowed humbly, but said nothing, which, as it
afterwards appeared that he was a deaf mute, was not very
wonderful.
Running at right angles to the great cave, at a distance of some
twenty feet from the entrance, was a smaller cave or wide
gallery, that was pierced into the rock both to the right and to
the left of the main cavern. In front of the gallery to our left
stood two guards, from which circumstance I argued that it was
the entrance to the apartments of _She_ herself. The mouth of the
right-hand gallery was unguarded, and along it the mute indicated
that we were to go. Walking a few yards down this passage, which
was lighted with lamps, we came to the entrance of a chamber
having a curtain made of some grass material, not unlike a
Zanzibar mat in appearance, hung over the doorway. This the mute
drew back with another profound obeisance, and led the way into a
good-sized apartment, hewn, of course, out of the solid rock, but
to my great relief lighted by means of a shaft pierced in the
face of the precipice. In this room was a stone bedstead, pots
full of water for washing, and beautifully tanned leopard skins
to serve as blankets.
Here we left Leo, who was still sleeping heavily, and with him
stopped Ustane. I noticed that the mute gave her a very sharp
look, as much as to say, “Who are you, and by whose order do you
come here?” Then he conducted us to another similar room which
Job took, and then to two more that were respectively occupied by
Billali and myself.
XII.
“SHE”
The first care of Job and myself, after seeing to Leo, was to
wash ourselves and put on clean clothing, for what we were
wearing had not been changed since the loss of the dhow.
Fortunately, as I think that I have said, by far the greater part
of our personal baggage had been packed into the whaleboat, and
was therefore saved—and brought hither by the bearers—although
all the stores laid in by us for barter and presents to the
natives were lost. Nearly all our clothing was made of a
well-shrunk and very strong grey flannel, and excellent I found
it for travelling in these places, because though a Norfolk
jacket, shirt, and pair of trousers of it only weighed about four
pounds, a great consideration in a tropical country, where every
extra ounce tells on the wearer, it was warm, and offered a good
resistance to the rays of the sun, and best of all to chills,
which are so apt to result from sudden changes of temperature.
Never shall I forget the comfort of the “wash and brush-up,” and
of those clean flannels. The only thing that was wanting to
complete my joy was a cake of soap, of which we had none.
Afterwards I discovered that the Amahagger, who do not reckon
dirt among their many disagreeable qualities, use a kind of burnt
earth for washing purposes, which, though unpleasant to the touch
till one gets accustomed to it, forms a very fair substitute for
soap.
By the time that I was dressed, and had combed and trimmed my
black beard, the previous condition of which was certainly
sufficiently unkempt to give weight to Billali’s appellation for
me of “Baboon,” I began to feel most uncommonly hungry. Therefore
I was by no means sorry when, without the slightest preparatory
sound or warning, the curtain over the entrance to my cave was
flung aside, and another mute, a young girl this time, announced
to me by signs that I could not misunderstand—that is, by opening
her mouth and pointing down it—that there was something ready to
eat. Accordingly I followed her into the next chamber, which we
had not yet entered, where I found Job, who had also, to his
great embarrassment, been conducted thither by a fair mute. Job
never got over the advances the former lady had made towards him,
and suspected every girl who came near to him of similar designs.
“These young parties have a way of looking at one, sir,” he would
say apologetically, “which I don’t call respectable.”
This chamber was twice the size of the sleeping caves, and I saw
at once that it had originally served as a refectory, and also
probably as an embalming room for the Priests of the Dead; for I
may as well say at once that these hollowed-out caves were
nothing more nor less than vast catacombs, in which for tens of
ages the mortal remains of the great extinct race whose monuments
surrounded us had been first preserved, with an art and a
completeness that has never since been equalled, and then hidden
away for all time. On each side of this particular rock-chamber
was a long and solid stone table, about three feet wide by three
feet six in height, hewn out of the living rock, of which it had
formed part, and was still attached to at the base. These tables
were slightly hollowed out or curved inward, to give room for the
knees of any one sitting on the stone ledge that had been cut for
a bench along the side of the cave at a distance of about two
feet from them. Each of them, also, was so arranged that it ended
right under a shaft pierced in the rock for the admission of
light and air. On examining them carefully, however, I saw that
there was a difference between them that had at first escaped my
attention, viz. that one of the tables, that to the left as we
entered the cave, had evidently been used, not to eat upon, but
for the purposes of embalming. That this was beyond all question
the case was clear from five shallow depressions in the stone of
the table, all shaped like a human form, with a separate place
for the head to lie in, and a little bridge to support the neck,
each depression being of a different size, so as to fit bodies
varying in stature from a full-grown man’s to a small child’s,
and with little holes bored at intervals to carry off fluid. And,
indeed, if any further confirmation was required, we had but to
look at the wall of the cave above to find it. For there,
sculptured all round the apartment, and looking nearly as fresh
as the day it was done, was the pictorial representation of the
death, embalming, and burial of an old man with a long beard,
probably an ancient king or grandee of this country.
The first picture represented his death. He was lying upon a
couch which had four short curved posts at the corners coming to
a knob at the end, in appearance something like written notes of
music, and was evidently in the very act of expiring. Gathered
round the couch were women and children weeping, the former with
their hair hanging down their backs. The next scene represented
the embalmment of the body, which lay stark upon a table with
depressions in it, similar to the one before us; probably,
indeed, it was a picture of the same table. Three men were
employed at the work—one superintending, one holding a funnel
shaped exactly like a port wine strainer, of which the narrow end
was fixed in an incision in the breast, no doubt in the great
pectoral artery; while the third, who was depicted as standing
straddle-legged over the corpse, held a kind of large jug high in
his hand, and poured from it some steaming fluid which fell
accurately into the funnel. The most curious part of this
sculpture is that both the man with the funnel and the man who
pours the fluid are drawn holding their noses, either I suppose
because of the stench arising from the body, or more probably to
keep out the aromatic fumes of the hot fluid which was being
forced into the dead man’s veins. Another curious thing which I
am unable to explain is that all three men were represented as
having a band of linen tied round the face with holes in it for
the eyes.
The third sculpture was a picture of the burial of the deceased.
There he was, stiff and cold, clothed in a linen robe, and laid
out on a stone slab such as I had slept upon at our first
sojourning-place. At his head and feet burnt lamps, and by his