Page:First Footsteps in East Africa, 1894 - Volume 1.djvu/54

10 Masha, belonging to the "City of the Slave Merchant,"—Tajurrah—and on the left two similar patches of seagirt sand, called Aybat and Sa'ad al-Din. These places supply Zayla, in the Kharif or hot season, with thousands of gulls' eggs—a great luxury. At noon we sighted our destination. Zayla is the normal African port—a strip of sulphur-yellow sand, with a deep blue dome above, and a foreground of the darkest indigo. The buildings, raised by refraction, rose high, and apparently from the bosom of the deep. After hearing the worst accounts of it, I was pleasantly disappointed by the spectacle of white-washed houses and minarets, peering above a long low line of brown wall, flanked with round towers.

As we slowly threaded the intricate coral reefs of the port, a bark came scudding up to us; it tacked, and the crew proceeded to give news in roaring tones. Friendship between the Amir of Harar and the governor of Zayla had been broken; the road through the Ísa Somal had been closed by the murder of Mas'ud, a favourite slave and adopted son of Sharmarkay; all strangers had been expelled the city for some misconduct by the Harar chief; moreover, small-pox was raging there with such violence that the Galla peasantry would allow neither ingress nor egress. I had the pleasure of