FIRST FOOTSTEPS
IN
EAST AFRICA.
CHAPTER I.
DEPARTURE FROM ADEN.
I doubt not there are many who ignore the fact that in Eastern Africa, scarcely three hundred miles distant from Aden, there is a counterpart of ill-famed Timbuctoo in the Far West. The more adventurous Abyssinian travellers, Salt and Stuart, Krapf and Isenberg, Barker and Rochet—not to mention divers Roman Catholic Missioners—attempted Harar, but attempted it in vain. The bigoted ruler and barbarous people threatened death to the Infidel who ventured within their walls; some negro Merlin having, it is said, read Decline and Fall in the first footsteps of the Frank.[1] Of all foreigners the
- ↑ "A tradition exists," says Lieut. Cruttenden, "amongst the people of Harar, that the prosperity of their city depends upon the exclusion of all travellers not of the Moslem faith, and all Christians are specially interdicted." These freaks of interdiction are common to African rulers, who on occasions of war, famine or pestilence, struck with some superstitious fear, close their gates to strangers.
