In Darkest Africa.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18085, 19 February 1927, Page 17

In Darkest Africa.

Progress Has Passed The Ethiopian Army By.

By

Jack. Baum,

(Special Correspondent of the “ Star ” and N.A.N..V.)

■\TSrE wore busy unpacking * * our outfit. Ammunition, guns, cameras, tripods, pack saddles, riding saddles, small m c t a 1 trunks for carrying museum specimens, our small radio, tubes, dry batteries and the hundred and one odds and ends that must be taken on safari were scattered about the floor of our quarters in Addis Ababa’s best hotel. Each member of the expedition was busy as a.beaver, checking, sorting out and listing equipment to be taken on our first trip to the Arrusi country two or three hundred miles to the southward. There is much work to be done and we want to have it out of the way by the time our thirty or forty pack mules have been delivered. We were making good progress, considering the unavoidable confusion, when a great uproar arose in the courtyard of the hotel. Deep voices cried out in Amharic, the language of this part of Abyssinia. Shrill cries, some in Arabic, others in Galla, swelled the uproar. The trampling of mules and horses on the gravel of the yard, the rattle of ancient muskets as the butts struck the ground, added to the din. Swords clashed in scabbards. It was such a conglomeration of sounds as must have struck upon the ears of English barons of the Middle Ages when their retainers and rude soldiery returned from a foray on the borders of Scotland. We rushed to the windows. Fully a hundred and fifty armed men, bearded, clad in white cotton shammas with the picturesque black woollen cape with its peaked hood standing straight up front the left shoulder, white cotton trousers tightfitting at the calf of the leg, some with raw-hide sandals and some barefooted, were massed round an old man on a gaily caparisoned mule a mule that looked for all the world like a mediaeval sumpter mule. For that animal was rigged, dressed up and bedizened as few mules have, been fortunate enough to be in this drab world. Tie sported a martingale of stamped leather dyed in various colours. Ilis bridle looked almost sugar-coated, so heavy was it with silver ornaments. The saddle, what could be seen of it, was of the usual Abyssinian high-can-tled pattern but made of the finest red leather. A red cloth, thick, soft and really beautiful, covered all but the

cantle. A well-made embossed breast strap added colour to the harness. The old inan on the mule was being helped to the ground, and as he set foot on the gravel of the yard the acclamations of his .retainers 'broke out anew, as if that were a signal for particular rejoicing. The uproar swelled and rolled over the housetops. The old man was picked up in a chair and carried to the front door of the hostelry. There he took off his wide, double-terai hat. and we saw that his hair was as white as snow. He was a tine looking old fellow, dignified and calm amid all that racket. 1 Our Somali “boy," Ali, rushed into the room. “Oh!" he exclaimed, agog with excitement. "Oh, you come see the sahibs will please come look! A dejasmatch, a chief, he is here!" “All right." someone answered, “we’re alreadv looking. Rut what is all the fuss about? Cannot an old man ride upon a mule without all this palaver?" “Oh. but the sahibs, they don’t un’erstand. The Dejasmatch he is one great man. Very big man in this country." And Ali s eyes stuck out so that vou could have hung a hat on either one. “lie rule his province like Ras Tafari rule Addis Abada. All those men his .bodyguard. He great fighter. He got ten, fifteen thousand men camped outside the town. They camp there now. They wait for him to get well from rheumatism. Then they go back

I with him to his province. lie verv mighty man I” “Well, they may have a long wait from what I know about rheumatism,” Suyden Cutting, our photographer, remarked. But. time seems to go for nothing in Abyssinia. The Dejasmatch was carried to a room in the hotel. Six picked men at once took their stations outside his closed door and for the past two days, day and night, there lias been a guard of six, changed at intervals, of course, in the place. A dozen others j squat or recline on the grass beside the main door of the hotel but the rest | of the 150 men. who arrived with him , have gone to the large encampment of i. the 1500 outside the city. | As we pass in and out of the hotel, i busy-with our .outfitting, we see the * guards patient, unsmiling, grim, rifles lying beside them or slung from the I shoulder by straps. It is their business ; to await, the pleasure of their chief j for the Abyssinians arc clansmen and, according to their code, fidelity to their | local chieftain is about the only thing ; ,n h'fe. They arc ready to do his bidding !no matter what it. may be. Such soldiery do no work. Some even have their own servants, who perform the j menial tasks. There has been no war for some time and those gentlemen ; have become highly proficient in the j killing time. They can -sit and discuss the points of a mule, the spiritual qualities of a passing dog or the price of prunes at greater length and with enough apparent energy, if converted into foot pounds of useful work, to run the Franeo-Rthiopian railway train from here to Djibouti. Individually they are said to be splendid fighters and they look it. In a hand-to-hand tussle thev may be pretty tough customers, but the march of progress has passed'them by. Their military methods are the same as they have been for a thousand years, with the exception of the use of’ rifles. But even rifles have not. added much to their war:ike abilities. A little savmuff, stumpy man, who looked exactly like a story-book pirate, came to us for a job as head man. He had on a double cartridge belt filled with big cartridges. It. must have weighed twenty pounds. There were cartridges lof three different calibres in that belt not one of which fitted his gun! Copyright by the “Star” and the North American Newspaper Alliance. (All rights reserved).