LITMIR.BIZ

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in the marshes; and afterwards we travelled together in Jordan and Kenya. John wanted to come with me to Nuristan, but he couldn’t get a permit. Later on, while he was down at Ngorongoro, we did a fairly long journey together with mules, in the Serengeti, across the Masai steppe. Gavin Maxwell and Gavin Young both wrote books about their journeys with me in the Iraqi marshes. Gavin Maxwell wasn’t a bit like David [Haig-Thomas] and yet he was…He knew a lot about birds, and he could be fascinating to listen to; but, in the marshes, I found him exasperating…Gavin Young, on the other hand, was easy-going and very popular. Amara and my other canoemen, and their families, were always delighted to see him.¹⁶

      Thesiger’s caravan set off from the Awash station on 1 December, and arrived in his old hunting grounds at Bilen on the fifth. He wrote from there telling his mother: ‘Everything is going splendidly and my camp is happy and contented. I left the Hawash as soon as the soldiers’ camels arrived and did a night march almost to Sade Malka. We then came on slowly from there, and I have now given the men and camels 3 days rest. I am anxious not to hurry as I don’t want to tire my camels.’ Of the habits of buffalo at Bilen, he wrote: ‘They are astonishingly wary as they are never persecuted. They never come out till after dark and are back again in the reedbed before dawn. I very nearly got two today, but they got my wind at the last moment, and plunged off making a great noise as they galloped [away].’ In a paper read to the RGS on 12 November 1934, Thesiger commented: ‘I marched down the river…stopping for several days at Bilen in order to try and obtain a specimen of the buffalo which inhabit the reedbed there…I failed to get a buffalo…They were astonishingly wary…I have never heard of one being shot, which makes their extreme shyness difficult to explain. From the tracks which I saw I think the herd consists of only ten individuals.’¹⁷

      In his introduction to ‘Birds from Danakil, Abyssinia’, published in The Ibis in October 1935, Thesiger outlined his journey to the end of the Awash, whose object he described as following its course’in order to solve the problem of the river’s disappearance’:¹⁸ ‘The Awash rises in the mountains near Addis Ababa and enters Danakil in its south-western corner. Mr David Haig-Thomas[’s]…return to England…handicapped me severely, since I was now single-handed, and I had not myself studied the birds of this region before leaving England.’ Having described the purpose of the expedition and offered an apology for ‘a number of gaps in the collection’ of birds, he went on: ‘I left Awash Station on 1 December, 1933, but on reaching Bahdu was compelled to return to Afdam owing to trouble between the Abyssinian Government and the Danakil tribes. I arrived at Afdam on 22 December. Many weeks were wasted before I could obtain permission to start again on my journey. I left Afdam on 8 February, and this time I was successful in tracing the river to its end in Lake Abhebad. I then crossed the lava deserts of French Somaliland to Tajura, where I arrived on 20 May.’¹⁹

      Writing to his mother, he described his camp at night, surrounded by hyenas – ‘No one can pretend they are musical but I am glad to hear them again’ – and the marvellous light at daybreak and dusk. A lyrical mood evoked memories of his father’s descriptions of misty ‘light and colour’²⁰ on the Somali coast: ‘I cannot tell you how lovely the dawns are here [at Bilen]. They are indescribably beautiful, and as I always try to get off early we see it every morning. It is more lovely than the sunset, though for some reason I prefer the evening stroll round to the morning one. I suppose this is because the day’s work is then over, and you come in to a hot bath and a large supper. In the evening the Mohamedans nearly always chant round their fire, and this sounds most attractive.’ He returned to more practical themes: ‘I try to practise my Arabic on them but most of them speak it worse than I do, using an indiscriminate mixture of Arabic, Somali, Amharic and Galla. Despite this I can usually make myself understood.’ More troublesome than the hyenas that ‘swarm everywhere’ were ‘swarms of Dankali [sic] round the camp, begging for flour’. He added as an afterthought: ‘I am afraid I shall not be able to get another letter back to you. We are on the edge of a tribal boundary [between the Adoimara and Asaimara Danakil], and the people here and in Asaimara are hereditary foes. They would certainly kill an Asaimara if I tried to send him back with a letter.’ A postscript – ‘Could you keep the Times, Foreign News Editor, informed of my movements’ – presaged articles he later wrote for that newspaper.²¹

      The Adoimara at Bilen had assured Thesiger that his party ‘would certainly be massacred if [they] attempted to enter Badhu’. Having come safely through the ‘ill-famed’ pass of Mataka, they emerged onto a fertile plain, a mile wide, between the hills and the river, where cattle, sheep, goats, ponies and donkeys grazed on rich grass, and giant fig trees grew in clusters along the riverbank. At Beriforo, the caravan was confronted by ‘a large gathering of armed warriors [about two hundred of them]…and their reception…was far from friendly. They were inclined to force a quarrel, declaring that my Somalis were Essa, with whom they were then, as always, at war. But references to a non-existent machine-gun [contained in one of Thesiger’s rifle cases] helped us to reach an understanding.’²² In The Life of My Choice he wrote: ‘The tension, however, eased after Omar managed to get hold of some elders. Over many cups of tea, he succeeded in convincing some of them that I was an English traveller on my way to visit the Amoita in Aussa. He persuaded them that I was not employed by the Government, explaining that I was under the Emperor’s personal protection, which accounted for my escort of soldiers. Even so, I felt by no means certain that the elders would be able to prevent their refractory warriors from attacking us after dark. We spent an apprehensive night. At intervals I wandered round the camp, flashing my powerful torch into the darkness. I doubt if anyone slept.’²³

      At a nearby village where they camped among the huts ‘in the centre of a most malarious bog’, a letter addressed to the headman of the armed escort arrived from the government. The letter had been passed along from village headman to village headman, and its contents by then were common knowledge. It ordered Thesiger to turn back, since the country ahead was too dangerous. Should he refuse, the soldiers were to return without him and inform the Danakil that the government was no longer responsible for Thesiger’s safety.

      Thesiger wrote: ‘I very reluctantly decided that to continue after losing half my rifles, and when the Dankali knew that the Government had refused to be responsible for our lives, was to invite certain massacre for myself and for my men.’²⁴ He later recalled: ‘Our greatest risk was when we were in Bahdu that first night. That was when things hung in the balance…At Bahdu I wasn’t afraid. [What I felt] was excitement.’²⁵ By the time the government’s letter had arrived, Thesiger told his mother, ‘We were through the place where any trouble might have been expected, and I have not the least doubt that I should have reached the end of the river from where I was without difficulty.’²⁶

      Thesiger ‘wasted’ six weeks at Addis Ababa until the Abyssinian government allowed him to continue his expedition from the Afdam station, where he had left Umr in charge of the caravan. Soon after he got to Addis Ababa he wrote to Kathleen, on 23 December, telling her: ‘Everything has crashed at the moment, but I hope to be able to pull things round…However nothing can be done for a day or two and I shall go out to the Sandfords for Christmas. I had hoped to spend it at the end of the river…Darling mother, I suppose it is good for the soul but it is bitterly disappointing to be baulked like this. It makes it more bitter when it is not your fault that you have failed, and you believe that except for this you could have done it. I have staked such a lot on this venture, not only money, though there is £1500 of that, but everything. However I shall fight desperately to get back there.’²⁷ At Addis Ababa Thesiger stayed with Frank de Halpert. He wrote

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