Chapter IV: Government Explorations (2)

We made several marches westward, and on 8th June we reached Hargeisa. This town is built some five hundred yards from the right bank of the Aleyadéra nala,[22] and at an elevation of thirty or forty feet above it. Round the place is a patch of _jowári_ cultivation (_Holcus sorghum_), two and a half miles long and a quarter of a mile broad. Quantities of live stock of all kinds graze on the low undulating hills for half a mile from the Aleyadéra nala on either bank. Hargeisa is situated on two important caravan routes, one from Ogádén and the other from Harar. There are good direct camel roads to Berbera and Bulhár. Supplies of rice, tobacco, and dates can sometimes be bought here in the trading season. Some four hundred people are employed looking after the _jowári_ fields, and can be seen sitting on platforms, shouting and throwing stones to scare away the birds from the crops. There is abundance of good water in the bed of the river, and a masonry well has been built, and is kept in order by an Arab from Aden. The town is full of blind and lame people, who are under the protection of Sheikh Mattar and his mullahs. The soil is red alluvial earth with a thin layer of fine sand on the top, and it is not better than that which we had seen in the Tug Dér valley, at Bér, and in the Haud. _Jowári_ crops flourish here as they would in most of the higher tracts of Somáliland, if the people were not in a chronic state of petty warfare, and cared to cultivate.

At the time of our visit great anxiety was felt because the Abyssinians occupying Harar had threatened to attack Hargeisa, and had already exacted tribute of cattle from some clans of the Jibril Abokr, Habr Awal. Sheikh Mattar told us that he thought if the Abyssinians came down they would choose the time of the harvest, six weeks later.

From Hargeisa we continued our journey westwards, camping at Abbárso. Our tents were pitched five yards apart at this camp, and as I was sitting outside in the balmy air, enjoying the quiet moonlight scene, I observed a panther crouching under the outer fly of E⸺’s tent, evidently stalking something in the centre of the camp. Diving quickly into my own tent for a loaded rifle, I came out again, only to find the panther had sprung into the centre of camp and seized a milk goat. There had been a crowd of men sleeping round the goat, and to get at it he had leaped over them, placing his paw upon the face of my brother’s cook, without, however, injuring him. On the sentry running towards him with the butt of his Snider rifle raised to strike, the brute dropped the goat and discreetly sprang over some more men and out of the zeríba, and then sneaked away. The same goat was killed by another panther springing into camp a few nights later.

We separated our caravans on 14th June, meeting again at Ujawáji on the 17th, among the karias of the Rer Yunis Jibril, Jibril Abokr. The great subject of conversation among the natives here was the expected approach of an Abyssinian force, mounted scouts having been thrown out by the tribes, and news coming in daily.

Near Ujawáji the country gradually became more grassy and open, the thorn bushes being only thinly scattered about the plain. We passed a tree called “Mattan,” and two miles beyond this tree, which was a conspicuous landmark, a long hazy yellow line marked the commencement of the _ban_ or open grass plain, which is called the Marar Prairie. It was first crossed by Burton, and is mentioned in _First Footsteps in East Africa_. A conspicuous rock, called “Moga Medir,” or “Jifa Medir” (Moga’s eye-tooth of Burton), lay ten miles to the west of us on the edge of the bush. On the evening of our arrival at Ujawáji we went out to shoot some hartebeests to provide meat for the men. As we left camp the bushes gave place to low scrub, and this presently ended also. Then a curious scene presented itself to us. As far as the eye could reach was an unbroken plain of rolling yellow grass, rising gradually towards the north, and bounded twenty miles off in that direction by a waving blue line of hills running along the horizon, and here and there disappearing below it.

The plains were covered with the camels and ponies of the Rer Dollol and Rer Yunis Jibril sub-tribes, the number of animals giving one the idea of a swarm of young locusts moving over the ground. Everything showed up dark against the background of yellow grass; and single bull hartebeests, knee-deep in grass, were seen wandering about between the droves of camels, looking like black dots in the distance. Beyond the masses of domestic animals we could see, far out on the plains, long dark lines, which, by using the glasses, we made out to be vast herds of hartebeests, oryx, and Sœmmering’s gazelles. The rich soil, of a reddish brown colour, is here and there undermined by burrowing animals and caved in, making galloping dangerous. The white ants had built up the earth into ant-hills, whose spires, from ten to twenty feet high, were dotted over the plain. We shot two hartebeests, both good bulls, and returned to camp with the meat and trophies, being caught by a heavy downpour of rain on the way.

Early next morning we had to witness a great equestrian display by the Rer Dollol and Yunis Jibril horsemen, given in our honour. After the _dibáltig_ they told us there had been fighting at some wells near us the day before, the Gadabursi having attacked them from the west, killing one man and wounding another; and also that an elephant had been killed, not far away, by Midgáns, with poisoned arrows.

We had promised the Jibril Abokr that we would wait at Ujawáji to hear further news of the Abyssinians, and to record the complaints of the elders, for submission to Government; meanwhile, having been told by the horsemen in the morning that lions were numerous in the Jifa bush, we resolved to go and look for them there, taking the camp with us. The Jibril Abokr lent us horsemen to help us search for lion tracks, and we started ahead of the caravan, sitting on camels which were led by our gunbearers.

We got away from camp late in the morning, and besides the men we had engaged, we were followed by a crowd of horsemen, who were anxious to witness our shooting, and to come in for a share of any venison we might obtain on the plains between Ujawáji and Jifa. Soon we found ourselves out in the open, masses of game giving way before us as we advanced. The size of the party prevented our coming within close range, but we wounded a bull hartebeest, and E⸺, mounting one of the Somáli ponies, gave chase, with an Indian hog-spear in his hand. The hartebeest is known to be the most enduring of the antelopes, having a long and untiring stride, and though E⸺ circled round the horizon, followed by two horsemen, at a great pace, it gradually increased its distance, and finally disappeared into one of the great wave-like dips of the ground.

Presently a party of horsemen appeared galloping towards us, now and then hidden by the rolling ground, and arriving in front of our party they circled their ponies, and giving the complimentary “_Mót!_” they came up and shook hands. They informed us that they had marked down three lions in the grass, on the open plain, eight miles away in the Jifa direction; and they assured us the lions would be found in the same place, as six horsemen had been placed to form a cordon round them, and they would be afraid to move from the shelter of a patch of rather high grass. The men said that these lions must have been living within the edge of the Jifa bush, prowling out on the great plains at night in order to stalk the herds of antelopes, and that they must have killed something the night before, and being gorged and lazy, the break of day had caught them while still in the open, on their way back to the bush to lie up for the day. These horsemen had been on their way to Ujawáji from Jifa to perform the _dibáltig_ at our camp, but seeing the lions, and knowing that we were keen to get at them, they had circled them in, and compelled them to sit down on the plain and wait for us. Posting six vedettes, they had then come to give us the news.

It was now about one o’clock and very hot, but we pressed on, resisting all temptation to fire at any of the game around us for fear of disturbing the lions; for a shot can be heard at a great distance on these plains. Towards four o’clock we saw one of the vedettes looming out of the haze, and then another. It was, however, a long time before we could make out the lions, which these men were trying to point out to us. They were five hundred yards away, trying to take shelter from the pitiless sun in a patch of grass about two feet high; all we could see being two indistinct dark spots half hidden in grass, and on one of these moving slightly, we recognised it to be the head of a remarkably fine lion. Beyond the lions, more than half a mile away, was another horseman, sitting motionless in the saddle, and looking like a waving palm-tree, the horse’s legs appearing to be elongated in the haze and mirage.

The Somális who had been watching the brutes said they had been in this spot all day, getting up to roar now and then, but, knowing by experience the powers of the Somáli horsemen in the open, they had not attempted to make a bolt of it towards the distant bush, which loomed up in a quivering blue line some ten miles to the north of us. Considering the heat of the sun, and that they had neither food nor water, these horsemen had stuck to the lions with great perseverance, and we felt that we owed it to them to crown their hard work by straight shooting.

We guessed that the brutes must be in an uncommonly bad temper after having been kept out in the full glare of the sun for ten hours; for lions like to sleep under the shade of dense bush during the heat of the day. The grass in this part of the plain was fresh and green, and looked almost like an English lawn, there having been rain about three weeks before. We dismounted, and my brother and I, each accompanied by one Somáli, walked towards the lions.

The account of what followed is taken partly from what I saw, and partly from E⸺’s verbal description; for, being unconscious part of the time, I was not in a condition to know all that passed.

As we approached within two hundred and fifty yards there was a commotion in the grass—a fine black-maned lion sprang out, and was immediately followed by another, nearly as large, but with a yellow mane. They both stood up and looked back at us for a moment and then trotted away. We walked after them, hoping they would lie down again; but as we passed to the right of the patch of grass where they had been lying, and at about a hundred yards’ distance from it, I saw a lioness stretched out flat, with her head between her paws. She was facing us, and as we passed her she rose for a moment, and then glanced towards the retreating lions, but she crouched down again, her head just visible above the grass, and never ceased growling savagely. We went straight on at the same pace, till we were between her and the line of retreat. She was growling louder and louder, and I walked across her front to get a chance at her left shoulder, while E⸺ stood ready, when she rose, to fire at her chest. We stood seventy yards apart, the lioness being seventy yards from each of us, our three positions thus forming an equilateral triangle. The lioness moved, and E⸺, calling out that he could see her chest, immediately fired.

The bullet hit her too high, and, as we afterwards found out, in the withers clear of the spine, the wound causing her to spin round like a top several times in a cloud of red dust, as if hunting her own tail, so that I could see nothing to fire at. From the disturbance in the grass and the savage growls, we decided she must be mortally hit, and were preparing to walk up to her, when suddenly from the obscuring dust she came out, charging for me at full speed. She ran extended along the ground, like a greyhound, and came so fast that I had only time to raise my rifle, and when the bead of the foresight was somewhere under her chin, I fired. Quickly shifting my finger to the left trigger when she was only five yards away, I pulled again, and then jumped to one side, the rifle still at my shoulder. I remember nothing more, except that her head came through the smoke and I was half conscious of being lifted off my feet and sent flying through the air, with the lioness hanging on to my shoulder, growling horribly!

On coming to, I found that I was standing up streaming with blood, and E⸺ and the two hunters were helping me off with my shirt, the lioness lying dead on the grass at my feet. There were eight deep fang wounds in my right arm and shoulder.[23] My brother probed them with a bit of stick wrapped in a shred of tobe; and then we looked around for the lions, and saw that they were no longer visible; but E⸺ said that all the horsemen had followed them, intending to ride them to a standstill and force them to come to bay.

My wounds, owing probably to the severe shock and weakness from loss of blood, gave me no pain, and when a Somáli came galloping back and offered my brother a pony, saying that the lions had come to a standstill, I begged him not to bother, but to try and bag the big black one. I remember hearing E⸺ gallop away, and then I must have fainted.

When I came to again, I saw my hunter, Jáma, sitting near me on the body of the lioness, unconcernedly scrubbing his teeth with a bit of _athei_ stick, which he must have brought from Ujawáji. He said he had been waiting for me to wake, and to tell him what was to be done next. The other “Sahib” had gone away, but Jáma had heard a very distant shot, and concluded he must have come up with the lions again. But he advised me to wait for the caravan, which he could see coming over the plain from the east, and mount a camel before trying to go any farther.

When it came up, all the men crowded round, with horror on their faces, and asked which of the Sahibs had been killed, but I got up and said, “Neither,” and mounting a camel, directed the camelman to follow the hoof-marks of the ponies in the turf. How I managed to sit on the camel in my weak and dazed condition, I do not know. I must have dozed, for the next thing I saw was a group of dismounted horsemen in front of my camel, and my brother standing over the most splendid black-maned lion I have ever seen.

Henweina Valley, Gán-Libah Mountain in the distance. (_From Photograph by the Author._)]

I attribute my not having stopped the lioness to the fact that I had been shooting with a very good .577 double rifle, but in the course of our journeys the triggers had become rather stiff, making me jerk them off; and both my bullets, going low, had passed through the brute’s right foot, making small clean wounds, without expanding. E⸺, who had his gun open and was pushing in a fresh cartridge, had been horrified to see both my shots strike up the ground beyond the lioness.

Our two hunters, unlike most Somális, who are not generally a bit afraid of lions, had retired to a little distance. E⸺ said that after firing the second shot I had jumped to the right in a perfectly collected manner, but the lioness had slewed round her tail like the rudder of a boat, and slightly changing her course, she had hit me like a battering ram and sent me head over heels. The stock of the rifle was afterwards found to be badly smashed, either against my shoulder or by falling on the ground, and a patch of skin off her nose showed where the muzzle had apparently caught her as I held the gun at the “present” after firing. There was also an extensive bruise, about the size of the recoil-pad, on my right shoulder. The lioness lay on me, shaking me savagely and grabbing at my arm, and E⸺, finding he could not fire without the chance of hitting me too, decreased his distance at a run from seventy yards to only five; and she then came for him with a grunt, and he stretched her dead at his feet with a bullet in the chest.

When my brother, having left me in the care of my hunter Jáma, galloped after the other horsemen, he found them halted round a tuft of high grass, having run the lion to a standstill. The horse was the same which he had ridden when chasing the hartebeest, and it had become very lazy from the heat of the sun. The saddle was an uncomfortable doubled-peaked Somáli one, and the stirrups being only intended for the big toe, were of course useless to him. Thus sorrily equipped, E⸺ walked the horse forward cautiously towards the tuft of grass, and while he was still sixty yards from it, the lion poked up his great head to have a look at him. E⸺ pulled in, and, dropping the reins, took a shot into the grass where he judged the lion’s chest to be. The brute promptly came on, and E⸺ had only time to pick up the reins in a bunch and turn the pony round, and try to get him to move by belabouring him over the quarters with the barrels of his rifle, when the lion arrived! My brother escaped unharmed, however, for before he could get into position to fire, the lion pulled up, and fell over on his side gasping; and the next moment he was dead.

When we cut him open we found that the shot fired at him when in the tuft of grass had entered his chest, and when we held the heart up to the light a jagged hole showed where a piece of lead had passed through it. Yet he had galloped fifty yards, and nearly made good his charge before giving in.

We sent a camel for the lioness, and laying the two carcases side by side, we pitched camp close by. Some starving people, who had wandered from Harar, were glad to make a meal off the carrion. The third lion escaped, as the Jibril Abokr horsemen, feeling that while we were in this country they were responsible for our safety, and shocked at the state I was in, refused to take my brother after him. On the day after the accident we were delayed in the morning by the bandaging and doctoring which I had to go through. The only thing we had with us was cocoa-nut oil, which we had brought for the lamps of the theodolite, and I don’t think its application did the wounds much good. In the plain round the tents, a quarter of a mile away, were brown and gray masses entirely composed of hartebeests and oryx, and nearer were a few solitary bulls, which loomed up on the swelling ground and disappeared in the hollows, like ships on the horizon, and their shoulders being much higher than the quarters, and the legs hidden in the grass, they appeared to be sitting up. We counted seventeen ostriches as they suddenly appeared out of the haze, and passed in single file, at a great pace, half a mile off.

In the evening, the sky being overcast and the air cooler, we marched five miles towards Bottor wells, on the direct road to Gebili. Next day we got off the open _ban_ into the thorn jungle, and descended into a grassy hollow at the head of the Bottor Valley. Here there were numbers of high birch-trees covered with kites’ nests—a noticeable feature of this valley and easily seen from a distance, the upper branches being bare and the nests looking like globe signals.

The Ujawáji people, on hearing of my accident, sent several messengers to inquire how I was getting on, and horsemen came from most of the Jibril Abokr clans which were pasturing in the neighbourhood, to _dibáltig_ to us before our start for the coast. We held a council of the elders, when the complaints against Abyssinia were taken down by us for transmission to Government.

All these elders professed great personal friendship for ourselves. They said they had been asked for tribute by the Abyssinian leader Banagúsé and had refused it, and were now expecting that a force would be sent against them. The tribe had therefore retreated across the Marar Plain from their pastures, near the curious conical Subbul hills, which could be seen twenty miles away rising out of the plain; and they had been obliged to graze their animals on the poorer pasture at Ujawáji. The elders said that the Abyssinians had pushed out and built a fort at Jig-Jiga, about forty miles south of us, within the farther edge of the Marar Prairie.

On 21st June we passed through Gebili, and reached a spot in thick jungle with aloe undergrowth, called Armadader. On pitching camp here in the evening we found fresh elephant tracks, and E⸺ followed them, returning after dark, having killed a bull with one shot from my four-bore.

We continued our survey through the very mountainous Jibril Abokr country towards the coast, running the gauntlet of the Rer Haréd clan, which was at that time very turbulent and defiant towards the British. We had several night alarms, being surrounded by Rer Haréd spies during our march, but we were not attacked.

By the end of June my wounds were beginning to become very troublesome, my right arm swelling to the size of a small sand-bag, from the shoulder to the wrist, and giving me great pain. Travelling became almost unendurable, the sterile, broken hills being fearfully hot, the temperature rising to over 110° in the shade at certain places. We had now descended to the low coast country, where the south-west wind of the _Haga_ season was at its height, blowing day and night with great fury. It was impossible to put up a tent at night, and the sand got into eyes and ears, and stung our faces and necks in a most disagreeable manner as we marched along. The only way to obtain any sleep was to pile the baggage into a heap and lie under the lee of it.

Since leaving Ujawáji E⸺ had sole charge of the survey, as I was unable to take observations. When we were still ninety miles from Bulhár, fearing that any longer delay in getting medical help might bring on blood-poisoning, I left E⸺ in charge of the expedition, and mounting a camel, accompanied by a few of my servants, I made for Bulhár by forced marches, reaching the village on 1st July, twelve days after the accident. Here I was glad to find an hospital assistant, a native of India, who looked after the wounds and put me in a fair way to recovery, so that the necessity of going to Aden was obviated. I was never under the care of a qualified doctor, and was able to go on with the mapping at Berbera, and to start on an expedition to the Gadabursi country on 10th September, the wounds having just healed. This record of our Jibril Abokr trip shows what an advantage it is to have another European with one in the interior, for I feel sure the lioness would have finished me if my brother had not come promptly to the rescue, and but for his unremitting care after the accident I think I should never have reached the coast.

On our next expedition for the survey of the Gadabursi country, our route, skirting to the north of Hargeisa, passed through Gebili. We crossed the path taken by a powerful force of the Rer Haréd, Jibril Abokr, who were out raiding the Bahgoba sub-tribe, and I came upon some of the robbers in rather a curious manner.

Our caravan was marching from Gebili to a small hill called Bohol-Káwulu, while with four hunters I took a short cut across a deep valley, the direct distance being four and a half miles. We had passed the Gebili sand-river and were working our way up some low foothills, intersected by deep narrow ravines having perpendicular sides, and choked with thorn jungle, when I observed about fifty vultures circling over a tributary gully. Thinking a lion might have killed a koodoo, we made our way towards the place, and found ourselves at the foot of a platform of ground having nearly perpendicular sides, about forty feet high. It was above this little plateau that the vultures were circling, and climbing noiselessly up I peeped over, expecting to see some dead game.

Instead of this, about thirty yards away were about fifteen men sitting in a circle round a fire eating camel meat, which they had been roasting, the carcase of a camel lying close by. One of the men saw my head above the edge of the platform, and all of them, giving a look of horror, snatched up their spears and shields and bolted, only a few having the presence of mind to take away pieces of meat! I jumped up and shouted to them to stop, but they disappeared; and soon afterwards we obtained a glimpse of their white tobes as they topped a crag a mile away, still running hard; and after that we never saw them again.

We saw vultures several times during the next two marches, and once again I came to a smouldering fire and roasting meat, which had been thrown down in a hurry. The vultures had been circling and screaming above the place, but as we approached they all slanted down one after another, wings extended and motionless, and legs hanging perpendicularly, showing, in the language of the jungle, that human beings, or perhaps a lion, had been keeping them from the meat.

Two of our men, who had lagged behind the caravan, saw another party of twenty men running along with camel meat slung over their shoulders. All these parties were Rer Haréd robbers who had been engaged in the late raid, and were retiring in groups with the stolen Bahgoba camels. The raiding tribe always attacks unexpectedly in a concentrated force, but on the return journey through the enemy’s country it splits up into small parties, taking to the most hilly ground, and hiding in the deepest gullies to avoid observation. Our men were always very nervous while in the neighbourhood of these robbers; and at our night camp at Bohol-Káwulu our Jibril Abokr guide, rattling his spears together, shouted out a long speech into the darkness, telling any lurking robbers that we had guns and, being very powerful, were not fair game. The performance was gone through quite gravely, all the other men maintaining silence; the flames of our camp fires glinting on the rifle-barrels and spears of our followers, and throwing fitful lights and shadows on the surrounding jungle, and the guide’s speech to the night, had a very weird effect.

When we entered the Gadabursi country we were visited in camp at Egu by a party of Gadabursi elephant hunters, who rode up and said they had taken us for looters and had come up to reconnoitre us. We reached the Harasáwa Valley, which was very beautifully wooded, the undergrowth of red and yellow flowering aloes harmonising with the light green masses of the _ergín_ plant, the dull yellow-ochre of the dry grass, and the darker blue-green of the thorn and _hassádan_[24] trees. On the evening of 25th September we passed, near Sattáwa, the karias of Ugaz Núr, till lately the paramount chief of the Gadabursi tribe. This was the most suitable place we had yet seen for experimental cultivation, the Sattáwa Valley having a fertile appearance, with deep alluvial earth and very rank vegetation.

As we halted at Sattáwa, at sunset, to form camp, there appeared on the scene Ugaz Núr, his son, and forty spearmen. He stayed in camp all night, and told us not to go to Biyo-Kabóba in the Esa country, which lay ahead of us, as he said the place was full of Abyssinian soldiers, who were building a fort there, and would be likely to attack us. Núr was believed to be an arch scoundrel, and intriguing with the Abyssinians, and we were inclined to think he gave us this advice to prevent our inspecting the fort. He was then in great disgrace with the British authorities because he had captured an Italian traveller and held him to ransom. He had just been displaced from the Ugazship, and his brother Elmy had been made paramount chief of the Gadabursi in his stead. While we were in his camp we heard that his brother Elmy was marching against him with a force from Zeila; and soon afterwards I received an Arabic letter from Elmy himself asking me to help him attack Núr, or, at any rate, lend some rifles. One of the Ugaz’s sons a youth with a large shield, a mop of hair, and two shovel-headed spears, gained some importance in camp by strutting about taking frequent oaths that he would kill Mr. Sala, an Italian traveller, when he met him.

We left the Gadabursi and entered the Esa country, cautiously skirting Biyo-Kabóba without going to the wells. We found the Esa tribes in a great state of ferment because of the fort which the Abyssinians were building.

At 3 P.M. on 30th September, at Arroweina, there arrived a grizzly-bearded old patriarch called Múdun Golab, an Akil of the Odahghub, Rer Gédi, Esa Ad.[25] He made an impressive speech, saying, “It is a lie that any of the Esa countenance the Abyssinian occupation of Biyo-Kabóba. We all hate them and do not want them. The English and the Esa are brothers, and we are the subjects of your Government. So we ask you now to rid us of these intruders. They wish to treat us as they treated the Géri, to seize our flocks, kill our people, and burn our karias. They wish to settle in our country and oust us. We will not have it.” He said that the Esa were encamped round the Biyo-Kabóba fort, and that they were holding a council, one party, consisting chiefly of young men, wishing to attack at once. He asked us to wait and hear the result of the council, and convey news to the British authorities.

On 2nd October, the council not yet having come to a decision, we continued our journey through the sterile trap country to the north, and then turning to the east, we skirted the Bur Ád Range as far as Ali Maan before again turning north for the march to Zeila.

On 5th October, as we were arriving, late on a dark night, at Hemál under the Bur Ád Range, we got into very dense and high _gudá_ forest, bordering the edge of the Hemál sand-river. Our camels were pushing their way through the centre of this when we heard the scream of an elephant about a hundred yards to our left, followed by that of another a little in front. The caravan bunched up in the narrow path, and we all held our breath to listen. Our elephant rifle was carefully packed up in one of the camel-loads; the jungle was stirring all round us as the herd moved off. They seemed to have gone away, and the camels had begun to resume their march, when we were thrown into confusion by hearing a crash, as some old cow, for it is generally these that are the most vicious, charged up towards us with a scream, and then stood a short distance away behind a tree. Some of the men whispered that they could see her, but though my brother and I strained our eyes to the utmost, we could see nothing. At last we moved away from the uncanny spot, and as no further incident happened, we concluded the elephant which last trumpeted must have been covering the retreat of the herd, and have stolen away silently after the others.

Next day my brother went after these elephants, and stalked in amongst them by creeping through a high grass glade, but finding they were all cows and young ones he did not molest them. Meanwhile half a dozen sword-hunters, of mixed tribes, came to our camp. One of these was a Gadabursi, another a Habr Awal, and the rest Ogádén. Their ponies were excellent, and better than any we had yet seen among the Gadabursi.

They were after the elephants which my brother had been stalking; and while in our camp they described to us their method of working.

Like the Hamran Arabs described by Sir Samuel Baker in his _Nile Tributaries_, they ride after the elephant and hamstring him with a sword, one man keeping in front on a white horse to attract the elephant’s attention. I believe the Somális use the sword while at full gallop, without springing to the ground, but of this I am not certain. The sabres we saw seemed to be light single-handed ones, an old Egyptian blade being strapped to a bone handle by means of raw hide. These men said they had killed twelve elephants during the last two months,—eleven bulls and one cow,—and that since their party began hunting the year before two men had been killed by the elephants.

We continued our journey from Hemál to Ali Maan, where I shot a fine koodoo bull. At Ali Maan we separated into two parties. I marched to Bulhár by Kabri Bahr, while my brother marched to Zeila, reaching that port on 19th October. At Buk Gégo he bagged, with one shot, a bull elephant, a very fine tusker.

The record of these Government explorations undertaken between 1885 and 1891 shows how steadily British influence has been advancing. At the time of my first visits to the coast none of the routes in Guban were safe to travel on without a powerful escort, except the track along the sea-shore from Bulhár to Berbera. All this is changed now, for such is the confidence which Somális have in our countrymen, that Englishmen exploring in the interior make small payments for sheep, milk, or other supplies, by writing on scraps of paper, to be afterwards presented at the coast; and these “chits” have all the value of money, although they may have been given by an Englishman who is a perfect stranger, at a distance of two hundred miles inland. The possession of a bit of paper written on in English is believed to guarantee the safety of the bearer’s life, and we have often been begged for scraps of paper by men who wished to go alone by a short cut over disturbed territory.

The Somális have no quarrel with the English; even should a serious cause of dispute ever arise, there is far too much hereditary jealousy between tribe and tribe for them to combine. It is true the Esa caused trouble a few years ago by their raid on Bulhár, but this raid was directed against the Habr Awal, and not against the British. The punishment which they received from us, by their own showing, turns out to have been greater than was at first supposed, and they now declare themselves to be our firm friends.

In the surveying trips the opposition to our progress by the tribes was practically _nil_, unless the extreme avarice and rapacity for presents on the part of a few Dolbahanta chiefs may be called opposition. In fact, the only occasion on which I have been treated with the slightest want of cordiality by Somális was on my second surveying trip in 1886.

I think there are three reasons why the British Government is so much respected in the interior of Somáliland. The first is undoubtedly the possession of Aden, about half the population of which is composed of Somális, who return to their own country after a time and spread the fame of the Government far and wide. Also, a few Somális go to London as firemen in English steamers. Another reason for the rapid extension of British influence is the wise and impartial way in which our coast ports have been administered by experienced political officers from India. The third reason is constant contact with English sportsmen, who visit the Somáli tribes in their own homes.

_From a Photograph by the Author._]