AFRICA
The Danakil Diary: Journeys through Abyssinia, 1930-4 (Wilfred Thesiger, 1996)

Thesiger travelled for three decades from 1930 as an explorer, military career and historian in Arabia and Africa - but it was not until the 1960s that he started to set down his stories in print. Perhaps the best known is his first, Arabian Sands, which dealt with the Bedouin life in what is now Oman's Empty Quarter.

But in 1996, seven years before his death, he published The Danakil Diary, which covered his trip more than six decades earlier to Abyssinia (now Ethiopa), in search of the source of the Hawash River. As was reported in The Times in November, 1934, not only was the expedition successful, but Thesiger collected "much valuable information" about the country - bringing back 880 specimens of birds.

The report of his presentation to The Royal Geographical Society continued: "The exploration of the Dankali country has always been handicapped by. the savage disposition of the inhabitants, and only in Aussa, where the Sultan rules with an iron hand, are peace and security to be found. Mr.Thesiger was well received by this ruler, and in his lecture he dealt with the Sultanate of Aussa in some detail...."

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The beauty of the book is that it can be accompanied by four contemporaneous articles that ran in The Times in the summer of 1934. Thanks to the Times Archive, we are now able to link through to the original dispatches:

July 31, 1934

"Much of the mystery surrounding the "disappearance " of the Hawash River in the Aussa Sultanate of Abyssinia was cleared up on a recent expedition when I followed the river along its entire course through Badhu and Aussa. I was the first white man ever to traverse the Aussa Sultanate...."

August 1, 1934

"At dawn on the fourth day I had an unforgettable view of towering mountains, very distant but just touched by the rising sun, mountains of whose existence I had heard no word..."

August 2, 1934

"On returning to my camp I found a present of four bulls and quantities of milk and ghee. Throughout my stay in Aussa I received a most lavish hospitality and daily oxen and sheep, milk, and dutrrah bread were brought into my camp as presents from the Sultan..."

August 3, 1934

"The Dankalis from Aussa fetch the salt from these plains, which are several miles across, and trade it with the Abyssinians on the plateau, where, in the form of bars, it passes as currency. Only along the south-eastern shore is there no salt, for here hot salt water pours out from tunnels under the sandstone cliff..."

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