Narrative of the sufferings and adventures of Henderick Portenger, a private soldier of the late Swiss regiment de Mueron, who was wrecked on the shores of Abyssinia, in the Red Sea / by R. De May.

  • Portenger, Hendrick.
Date:
1819
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Narrative of the sufferings and adventures of Henderick Portenger, a private soldier of the late Swiss regiment de Mueron, who was wrecked on the shores of Abyssinia, in the Red Sea / by R. De May. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of prickles. We spent nearly an hour in crossing* this wood, and when we got out of it, we found ourselves in the skirts of a large village. We entered the first hut we met, and asked an old man we found in it to give us some water to drink; he answered us the same way, by signs, that he had none; so we left him, and went forward into the village. We soon met a number of chil¬ dren, who at the sight of us cried out lustily, and ran away in the greatest fright. Soon after we saw a number of people sitting on the ground, and each holding in his hand a string of pearls, like chaplets, as if they were praying and telling their beads ; so we fell on our knees near them, to pretend joining in their prayers ; they made us signs to sit down near them, which we did; soon after which some of them, who had gone away pro¬ bably for that purpose, brought us a large piece of a substance they called tammer, which seemed to be, by the taste and look, a sort of coarse bread, made of some kind of grain unknown to us, and a wooden vessel full of water. We received the whole with great thankfulness, and made an excellent meal. After we had finished it, they made us a sign to leave their village. We obeyed this order with alacrity, not to displease them; happy that we had at last met some human beings from whom we had apparently nothing to apprehend, and who seemed likely to treat us with some degree of humanity: we chose for our abode a large tree, at a small distance from the village. The chief of this village had also given us a leathern bag, with signs to employ it to fetch water, which he made us un¬ derstand was not found in the village, but at a fountain situ¬ ated at a considerable distance on the other side of the river we had just crossed, and that they were obliged to go there every day to fetch it, which was hard work. We made ouselves a sort of hut against the trunk of this tree, with branches, which we wove together as wrell as we could with our hands, and covereddt with small leafy branches. We then went to the river-side, where we found a good num¬ ber of crabs, which we brought back to our newly-made hut, lighted a fire, and, roasting them, made another comfortable meal, happy to be at last relieved from the necessity of sub¬ sisting almost entirely on our unsubstantial sallad, which had for so long a period been our daily and almost only food, which, together with the incredible hardships we had under¬ gone, had reduced us to mere skeletons of skin and bone. However, our present situation promised, by degrees, to re¬ store our loststrength and flesh, and we were firmly resolved to stay here as long as circumstances would allow.