Page:First Footsteps in East Africa, 1894 - Volume 1.djvu/192

 camels started up and rushed round their thorn ring in alarm. Late in the morning of Saturday, the 9th December, I set out, accompanied by Rirash and the End of Time, to visit some ruins a little way distant from the direct road. After an hour's ride we turned away from the Abbaso Fiumara and entered a basin among the hills distant about sixteen miles from the Holy Tree. This is the site of Darbiyah Kola,--Kola's Fort,--so called from its Galla queen. It is said that this city and its neighbour Aububah fought like certain cats in Kilkenny till both were "eaten up:" the Gudabirsi fix the event at the period when their forefathers still inhabited Bulhar on the coast,--about 300 years ago. If the date be correct, the substantial ruins have fought a stern fight with time. Remnants of houses cumber the soil, and the carefully built wells are filled with rubbish: the palace was pointed out to me with its walls of stone and clay intersected by layers of woodwork. The mosque is a large roofless building containing twelve square pillars of rude masonry, and the Mihrab, or prayer niche, is denoted by a circular arch of tolerable construction. But the voice of the Muezzin is hushed for ever, and creepers now twine around the ruined fane. The scene was still and dreary as the grave; for a mile and a half in length all was ruins--ruins--ruins. Leaving this dead city, we rode towards the south-west between two rugged hills of which the loftiest summit is called Wanauli. As usual they are rich in thorns: the tall "Wadi" affords a gum useful to cloth-dyers, and the leaves of the lofty Wumba are considered, after the Daum-palm, the best material for mats. On the ground appeared the blue flowers of the "Man" or "Himbah," a shrub resembling a potatoe: it bears a gay yellow apple full of brown seeds which is not eaten by the Somal. My companions made me taste some of the Karir berries,