<h3><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></SPAN>CHAPTER XXX</h3>
<h4>ERIOSH AND KADHOUP</h4>
<p>After four days waiting for camels, and the usual wrangling
over the price and casting lots for us, which here they do
with stones instead of wood as in Arabia, we started late on
Christmas Day, going of course only a short way. As all
were mounted on the baggage we could trot all the way;
the camels were not tied in strings. The first night we
stopped at Isèleh, an interesting place at the entrance of
Wadi Gàhai below Mount Lèhe Diftom, about two hours
from Kalenzia, whence at night we could see the numerous
fires of troglodytes high up on the sides of the mountains;
and were able next day to ride nearly all the way, except
over a pass to Lim Ditarr, a depression in the hills sometimes
filled with water, though there was none for us. A little was
fetched, but we had to keep the water from our evening
wash to serve next morning. This depression had in former
times been used as a reservoir, for we could detect the remains
of a stone embankment, a good deal despoiled for Moslem
tombs.</p>
<p>Our onward journey took us past a lovely creek, called
Khor Haghia, running two miles inland, with silted mouth
and overhanging yellow and white rocks. The bright blue
water and green mangroves made a brilliant picture.</p>
<p>About a quarter of a mile inland there is a deep pot
of salt water, evidently left behind by the ocean when it<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_354" id="Page_354"></SPAN>[<SPAN href="./images/354.png">354</SPAN>]</span>
receded from the shores of Sokotra; it is about 200 feet
across, and has its little beach and seaweeds all complete,
with its trees and bushes in its cliffs.</p>
<p>We lunched at the brackish well of Dia, and at sunset
reached the hideous plain of Eriosh, or Eriush, which has a
flat surface of rock, about a quarter of a mile in extent and
partly covered with dried mud, and of such soft stone that
we could easily cut into it with pebbles. It is covered with
purely Ethiopic graffiti, almost exactly similar to those we
saw on the steps of the church and on the hillsides around
Aksum in Abyssinia—long serpent-like trails of Ethiopic
words, with rude drawings interspersed of camels, snakes,
and so forth. Riebeck, who went inland from Itur, says
these are Greek. Conspicuous amongst them are the
numerous representations of two feet side by side, frequently
with a cross inserted in one of them; there are many
separate crosses, too, on this flat surface—crosses in circles,
exactly like what one gets on Ethiopic coins. We met with
another inscribed stone to the east of the island, bearing
similar lettering.</p>
<p>Hard by this flat, inscribed surface are many tombs of an
ancient date. These tombs, which are found dotted over the
island, bear a remarkable resemblance to the tombs of the
Bedja race, once dwelling on the shores of the Red Sea to
the north of Sawakin, and subject to the Ethiopian emperor;
they consist of enormous blocks of unhewn stone, inserted
in the ground to encircle and cover the tombs, and this
forms another link connecting the remains on the island
with Abyssinia.</p>
<p class="figcenter"><SPAN href="./images/ill-16.jpg"><ANTIMG src="./images/ill-16_th.jpg" alt="THE PLAIN OF ERIOSH, SOKOTRA." title="THE PLAIN OF ERIOSH, SOKOTRA." /></SPAN></p>
<p class="figcenter"><span class="smcap">The Plain of Eriosh, Sokotra</span></p>
<p>When the Abyssinian Christian monarchs conquered
Arabia in the early centuries of our era, and Christianised a
large portion of that country, they probably did the same by
Sokotra, and, inasmuch as this island was far removed from
any political centre, Christianity probably existed here to a<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_355" id="Page_355"></SPAN>[<SPAN href="./images/355.png">355</SPAN>]</span>
much later period than it did in Arabia. Marco Polo touched
here, and alludes to the Christians of the island.</p>
<p>In speaking of two isles near Greater India, inhabited
respectively by men and women, he adds: 'They are
Christians, and have their bishop, subject to the Bishop of
Socotora. Socotora hath an archbishop not subject to the
Pope, but to one Zatuli, who resides at Baldach, who
chooseth him.'</p>
<p>F. Xavier said among other things 'that each village
had a priest called <i>kashi</i>. No man could read. The <i>kashis</i>
repeated prayers in a forgotten tongue, frequently scattering
incense. A word like Alleluia often occurred. For bells
they used wooden rattles. They assembled in their churches
four times a day, and held St. Thomas in great veneration.
The <i>kashis</i> married, but were very abstemious. They had
two Lents, and fasted from meat, milk, and fish.'</p>
<p>When Padre Vincenzo the Carmelite visited the island
in the seventeenth century he found the last traces of
Christianity. 'The people still retained a perfect jumble of
rites and ceremonies, sacrificing to the moon, circumcising,
and abominating wine and pork. They had churches called
<i>moquame</i>, dark and dirty, and they daily anointed with butter
an altar. They had a cross, which they carried in procession,
and a candle. They assembled three times a day
and three times a night; the priests were called <i>odambo</i>.
Each family had a cave where they deposited their dead. If
rain failed they selected a victim by lot and prayed round
him to the moon, and if this failed they cut off his hands.
All the women were called Maria.' Of this there is now no
trace. Both Sacraments had died out.</p>
<p>This debased form of Christianity existed as late as
the seventeenth century. The island was one of the places
visited by Sir Thomas Roe in 1615.</p>
<p>It is needless to say that all ostensible traces of our cult<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_356" id="Page_356"></SPAN>[<SPAN href="./images/356.png">356</SPAN>]</span>
have long ago been obliterated, and the only Sokoteri religious
term which differs in any way from the usual Mohammedan
nomenclature is the name for the Devil; but we found, as
I have already said, the carved crosses on the flat surface
at Eriosh, and we found a rock at the top of a hill to the
east of the island which had been covered with rude representations
of the Ethiopic cross. Scattered all over the
island are deserted ruined villages, differing but little from
those of to-day, except that the inhabitants call them all
Frankish work, and admit that once Franks dwelt in them
of the cursed sect of the Nazarenes. We felt little hesitation
in saying that a branch of the Abyssinian Church once
existed in Sokotra, and that its destruction is of comparatively
recent date.</p>
<p>If we consider that the ordinary village churches in
Abyssinia are of the flimsiest character—a thatched roof
resting on a low round wall—we can easily understand how
the churches of Sokotra have disappeared. In most of these
ruined villages round enclosures are to be found, some with
apsidal constructions, which are very probably all that is left
of the churches.</p>
<p>Near Ras Momi, to the east of the island, we discovered
a curious form of ancient sepulture. Caves in the limestone
rocks have been filled with human bones from which the
flesh had previously decayed. These caves were then walled
up and left as charnel-houses, after the fashion still observed
in the Eastern Christian Church. Amongst the bones we
found carved wooden objects which looked as if they had
originally served as crosses to mark the tombs, in which the
corpses had been permitted to decay prior to their removal
to the charnel-house, or <ins title="Greek: koimêthêria">κοιμητἡρια</ins>, as the modern Greeks
call them.</p>
<p>We stayed two days at Eriosh to study the <i>graffiti</i> and
tombs.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_357" id="Page_357"></SPAN>[<SPAN href="./images/357.png">357</SPAN>]</span></p>
<p>Water had to be fetched from Diahàmm, which we afterwards
passed. It was brackish. I have heard <i>riho</i> said for
water, but <i>diho</i> was mostly used, and certainly the names of
many water-places began with Di. I remember my husband
answering the question where we should camp by calling out
in Arabic 'Near the water.' This was echoed in Sokoteri,
'<i>Lal diho</i>.'</p>
<p>We took five days in getting from Kalenzia to Tamarida,
and found the water question on this route rather a serious
one until we reached Mori and Kadhoup, where the streams
from the high mountains began. Mori is a charming little
spot by the sea, with a fine stream and a lagoon, and palms
and bright yellow houses as a foreground to the dark-blue
mountains.</p>
<p>Kadhoup is another fishing village built by the edge of
the sea, with a marshy waste of sand separating it from the
hills; it possesses a considerable number of surf-boats and
canoes, and catamarans, on which the fishermen ply their
trade. Just outside the town women were busy baking
large pots for the export of butter, placing large fires around
them for this purpose. The Sokotrans are very crude in
their ceramic productions, and seem to have not the faintest
inclination to decorate their jars in any way. There were
quantities of flamingoes on the beach.</p>
<p>We encamped at the foot of the hills, with a watery and
sandy waste between us and the village.</p>
<p>There are the foundations of some curious unfinished
houses near Kadhoup, also assigned to the Portuguese;
but there appears to me to be no reason whatsoever for
ascribing these miserable remains to the builders of the fine
forts at Maskat, the founders of Ormuz and Goa, and the
lords of the East up to the seventeenth century.</p>
<p>The mountains here jut right out into the sea, forming
a bold and rugged coast line, and the path which connects<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_358" id="Page_358"></SPAN>[<SPAN href="./images/358.png">358</SPAN>]</span>
the two places is as fine a one to look upon as I have ever
seen.</p>
<p>We had read a very awe-inspiring account of this path
by Lieutenant Wellsted, and so were quite disposed to
believe all our camel-drivers told us of the awful dangers
to be encountered. They had formed a plan whereby their
Kadhoup friends might come in for some of our rupees. We
were not only to pay for camels, but also for a boat. Some,
at least, of the camels were sure, they said, to fall into the
sea from the cliffs, and our possessions, if not our lives
themselves, might be lost. They said that we ought to send
our baggage by boat, even if we risked the mountain path
ourselves.</p>
<p>We assured them that we had landed in Sokotra (which
they pronounce Sakoutra) to see the island, and not to
circumnavigate it. Others could pass, so we could.</p>
<p>Their last hope was in my hoped-for faintheartedness.
They watched till I was alone in the tent, and, having
recounted all the perils over again, said:</p>
<p>'Let the men go over the mountain, but you, O Bibi!
will go in a boat, safely. You cannot climb, you cannot ride
the camel, no one can hold you; the path is too narrow, and
you will be afraid.'</p>
<p>That being no good, old Sheikh Ali came. He was
anxious, poor old man, to be spared the exertion, and
eventually rode all the way, except when there was no room.
He said I should go in a boat with him; he would take care
of me and give me musk (which he called misk) when we
reached Hadibo. He often promised misk, but I never got
any; and here I may remark that I have frequently heard
Maskàt pronounced Mìskit in Arabia amongst the Bedouin
of the East.</p>
<p>We really did feel very adventurous indeed when we
started. I rode my camel a quarter of a mile to the foot of<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_359" id="Page_359"></SPAN>[<SPAN href="./images/359.png">359</SPAN>]</span>
the ascent. No one else thought it worth while to mount,
but I was comfortably carried over a muddy creek.</p>
<p>The Kadhoupers did get some rupees, for we were
attended by twelve men carrying bamboo poles 10 or 12
feet long.</p>
<p>It really was a stiff climb, but we had a good deal of shade,
and when we reached our highest point there was a pretty
flat bit with scattered trees and grass, about half a mile, I
think. The twelve men had to carry the baggage slung on
the poles for a quarter of a mile or so, where the overhanging
rocks made the path too narrow for loaded camels.
It was quite high enough for their heads, and we had plenty
of room. It was marvellous to see the camels struggling along
this road, and awful to hear their groans and the shouts of
the camel-men as they struggled up and down and in and out
of the rocks; and the hubbub and yelling over a fallen one
was simply diabolical.</p>
<p>We had the most tremendous clambering down soon
after that, the baggage being again slung on the poles, and
the camels came clattering down, with many stones, and
looking as if they would rush over straight into the sea.</p>
<p>When we got near the sea, say about 50 feet above it,
we, on foot, diverged from the camel-track, which goes
more inland, and followed a very, very narrow, washed-away
path. This I think must have been the one described by
Wellsted, for we were never, till we reached this part, near
the sea, though possibly had we fallen we might have rolled
over down a slope.</p>
<p>The views inland up the rugged yellow crags, covered
with verdure and studded with the quaint gouty trees,
are weird and extraordinary, and below at our feet the
waves dashed up in clouds of white spray. Though we
had heard much of the difficulties of this road and the
dangers for foot passengers, and we were told of the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_360" id="Page_360"></SPAN>[<SPAN href="./images/360.png">360</SPAN>]</span>
bleaching bones of the camels which had fallen into
the abyss below, we experienced none of these hardships.
We certainly saw the bones of one camel below us, but none
of ours followed its example; and we revelled in the beauty
of our surroundings, which made us think nothing of the
toilsome scramble up and down the rocks.</p>
<p>As we left the mountain side and approached the plain of
Tamarida, we passed close by what would seem to have been
an ancient ruined fort on the cliff above the sea, evidently
intended to guard this path.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_361" id="Page_361"></SPAN>[<SPAN href="./images/361.png">361</SPAN>]</span></p>
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