“Hale!” “Halele!”
At the north-eastern tip of Ngazidja, near the village of Ivoini, a strange ridge of black rock juts out into the ocean. It is jagged like a saw, bristling with spikes, and the waves break on it in sprays of foam. It is called the Dragon's Back.
A very long time ago, so the story goes, a gigantic creature lived offshore. It rose from the depths on stormy nights, overturned canoes with a flick of its tail and swallowed the fishermen. The coastal villages no longer dared put to sea, and hunger set in.
Then a holy man came and sat down on the shore. He prayed all night facing the ocean, without stopping, while the beast roared and the waves rose up to his feet. At dawn, as he spoke the last words, the creature, which was hurling itself towards the coast, suddenly froze. Its skin turned to stone, its scales to blades of basalt, and there it stayed, its spine stretched out towards the land.
Since then, the fishermen have passed without fear, and children climb on the ridges, giving themselves a fright. But on days of heavy swell, when the sea crashes against the rock, some elders say that the beast, beneath the stone, has not finished growling.
What we know about it
The Dragon's Back is a very real volcanic formation: a long ridge of black lava, ragged with erosion, that juts out into the sea at Ivoini, in north-east Grande Comore. It was probably born of an ancient eruption of which no memory remains, and no one knows how long it has borne this name. Today it is a much-photographed place for a walk.
The legend of the petrified beast was reported to us as a tradition of Ivoini. We have not found it in any published collection: it remains to be confirmed with the village elders. It does, however, match a very Comorian way of reading landscapes, in which every crater, every lake and every rock has its story: see The Trou du Prophète or The ring of the Queen of Sheba.
Further reading
- Outside view Atlas Obscura, Dos du Dragon – Ivoini, Comoros.