Note 4 — CHAP. III. TRANSIT OF THE VALLEY OF THE KINGANI AND THE MGETA RIVERS.
Reading edition
Capt. R. L. Playfair, Madras Artillery and First Assistant Pol. Resident, Aden, in a selection from the records of the Bombay Government, (No. 49, new series, Bombay, printed for Government, at the Education Society Press, Byculla, 1859,) curiously misnamed “A History of Arabia Felix or Yemen,” transports himself, in a “supplementary chapter,” to East Africa, and thus records his impressions of what happened in the “Somali Country:”—
1855.—“During the afternoon of the same day (the 18th of April), three men visited the camp, palpably as spies, and as such, the officers of the Expedition were warned against them by their native attendants. Heedless of this warning, they retired to rest at night in the fullest confidence of security, and without having taken any extra, or even ordinary means, to guard against surprise.”
The italics are my own: they designate mistatements unpardonable in an individual whose official position enabled him to ascertain and to record the truth. The three men were represented to me as spies, who came to ascertain whether I was preparing to take the country for the Chief Shermarkay, then hostile to their tribe, not as spies to spy out the weakness of my party. I received no warning of personal danger. The “ordinary measures,” that is to say, the posting of two sentinels in front and rear of the camp during the night were taken, and I cannot blame myself because they ran away.
I will not stop to inquire what must be the value of Capt. Playfair’s 193 pages touching the history of Yemen, when in five lines there are three distinct and wilful deviations from fact.
I am well aware that after my departure from Aden, in 1855, an inquiry was instituted during my absence, and without my knowledge, into the facts of the disaster which occurred at Berberah. The “privileged communication” was, I believe, in due course, privily forwarded to the Bombay Government, and the only rebuke which this shuffling proceeding received was from a gentleman holding a high and honourable position, who could not reconcile himself to seeing a man’s character stabbed in the back.