Hell-Hole

Text extracted from opening pages of book: L. M. NESBI TT HELL - HOLE OF CREATION The Exploration of Abyssinian Danakil NEW YORK-ALFRED-A-KNOPF 1935 Copyright 1954 by L. M. Nesbitt All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the pub lisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. Manufactured in the United States of America FIRST AMERICAN EDITION To the Memory of the Men who sacrificed their lives in the endeavour to explore the Danakil country HELL-HOLE OF CREATION PREFACE IN the course of a few years it will have become impossible, if indeed it is not already impossible, for a would-be explorer to find a virgin field for his enterprise on the earth. Per chance, our grandchildren will discover means of journeying to the stars, and then no doubt they will smile at the strivings and the petty sublunary achievements of ourselves, who crept painfully and without mechanical aids over the unknown places of the earth. For my part, I feel happy that I was born in time, if only just in time, to employ the ancient slow methods of exploration, by which the very taste and smell of remote and primitive territories is forced, even though it be painfully, on the observation of the traveller. It is impossible for the man who travels by motor car to observe closely: he is too self-contained, too independent of the inhabitants o the country through which he moves, too unleisurely, by rea son of the nature of his transport. The observation of the flier must be even more superficial. In 1927, I had been summoned from the Llanos of the Orinoco to report on platiniferous territoriesin Western Abyssinia, Having accomplished this mission, I proceeded to Addis Ababa and so found myself confronted by a long sought goal, the opportunity to explore the Danakil country. The territory inhabited by the Danakils is divided into two parts by the frontier separating Abyssinia from Eritrea. VI PREFACE The Eritrean Danakil is a strip of country, some forty miles wide, which lies along the shore of the Red Sea from Massowa to Assab. It is a barren tract which has been ruled and policed by Italy during the last half-century. The real untouched Danakil lies westward of this, within the borders of Abyssinia. It forms an irregular rectangle, some 400 miles long from north to south, by 150 miles wide, and is an old upraised sea bed, like the valley of the Jordan and Wadi Musa, of which indeed it is probably a continuation. In some parts it is still between 300 feet and 400 feet below the level of the Red Sea, and my companions and I frequently experienced in our tent a shade temperature ranging between 140 F. and 156 F. Before our journey, three expeditions had been launched for the exploration of this territory or parts of it: namely, that of Munzinger in 1875, that of Giulietti in 1881, and that of Bianchi in 1884. All these expeditions met with disaster, and no European member of any one of them ever returned. The aim of these explorers had been to cross the country from the Abyssinian Plateau to the sea-coast, or vice versa; that is, to traverse it by the shortest route. My companions and I, although well aware of the great risk of the enterprise, de cided to traverse the Danakil country from south to north, and so to place ourselves in a position to make a thorough explorationof it, from end to end. During our journey of three and a half months we marched some 800 miles, through country almost all of which was entirely unexplored, I myself made compass traverses covering some 20,000 square miles. My European companions, Signor T. Pastori and Signer G. Rosina, were Italians, while I am British. We had with us fifteen natives of Abyssinia and Eritrea, and a caravan of twenty-five camels and four mules. Our armament consisted of twelve obsolete rifles, one sporting-gun, and a total of xoo rounds of ammunition. We lost three loyal and exce