Chapter X: Second Journey to the Webbe Shabéleh River, 1893 (2)

On the evening of the same day I made another short march, and arrived at a place where a leopard had just killed a goat while the flocks were returning from pasture to a karia. We hastily constructed a shelter, and I sat two yards from one of my own goats, which I had tied up as a bait, with the wind blowing in my face, and the two hunters at my side with spare rifles. There was a faint moon, and at about nine o’clock a leopard charged the goat and killed it. I sat quietly till the hubbub had subsided, and then, as the leopard lay on the goat sucking its blood, with its back to me and its tail twitching close to my feet, I fired for the centre of its back, and it rolled over stone dead, with its four paws in the air, beside its victim. We raised a cheer, and all the men coming from camp, we carried it to the door of my tent and skinned it by the light of torches.

Next morning, as I had had good sport with the leopard, before marching I gave the women at the karias a large present of beads. Directly they knew that I had given the beads to Adan Yusuf to be distributed, they all rushed at him like tigresses, and in a fright he dropped the beads and fled. The women fought and wrangled till we had loaded and marched away. Several of the old men came to me and said that now I had given the beads the women would be quarrelling with each other for days, and would neglect the cattle, and require to be well beaten before things settled down again. As we marched off through the bush I shot a prowling hyæna.

On the 28th, while I was marching ahead of the caravan with the two hunters, I saw a herd of seven Waller’s gazelles and began stalking them. While we were still two hundred yards away, three leopards charged into the middle of the herd and killed a young doe before our eyes, scattering the others in every direction. We ran up to where the leopards were squatting over the carcase, in the middle of a broad open glade, but while we were still some distance away they saw us and all three made off at a canter. I think they were ordinary leopards, and not the long-legged, pale-skinned hunting leopard (the _chítah_ of India). I fired at one of them and missed, and then we sat by the side of the dead Walleri till the caravan came up, hoping to see the brutes, but they never returned.

The following day we arrived at a deep well called Garbo. As we approached this well we saw vultures swooping towards two or three dead trees which overtopped the jungle, and searching about we found the bodies of a leopard and seven spotted hyænas, which had been poisoned during the night by a Midgán. He had drawn up water from the deep well and exposed it for the night in a shallow wooden bowl,[49] mixed with poison which he had concocted from various herbs. The success of his manœuvre was evident. The leopard had been half eaten by the hyænas, but I preserved the skull.

The natives whom we found encamped near here were very suspicious and surly, as they had had some disagreement with Prince Ruspoli’s caravan which had passed through before me. As we marched in the afternoon I left Hadji Adan with four men, and three camels loaded with water-casks, to follow us with a good supply of water. We had only gone a mile when we heard several shots fired in quick succession, and all running back to the wells, we found my men in sole possession. The natives had refused to allow them to take any water, and my men, instead of returning and complaining to me as they should have done, thinking to have a bit of fun, had fired a few shots over the heads of the crowd, sending them flying, with a worse impression of European caravans than they had before. I was naturally very angry and disgusted with Hadji Adan, who looked sheepish when I told him, in choice language, what I thought of him. On this march I fired three shots with my Lee-Metford rifle at a beautiful oryx bull which was galloping away. When he was already three hundred yards distant my third shot brought him down, and we camped by the body to take full advantage of the supply of meat.

Next day we made two hard marches to Daba-Jérissa, where I remained on 1st October, shooting a fine lesser koodoo buck. The people at Daba-Jérissa asked me to give judgment, in my capacity of Englishman, as to the amount of blood-money to be paid by another tribe for the murder of one of their number; but I said I would only arbitrate if both parties would appeal to me as a disinterested stranger, and that I could not undertake to act for the British Government, especially so far from Berbera.[50]

On 2nd October we made two long marches to the wells at Sassamani, where guinea-fowl swarmed in tens of thousands, blackening the river-bed as they came to drink in the evenings; and I had good sport here with the gun. On the way I attacked a herd of Sœmmering’s gazelles with the Lee-Metford, and dropped four bucks with six shots, at ranges between two hundred and fifty and three hundred yards. I gave most of the meat to some people whom we found at the wells, instead of a present of cloth which they asked me for.

On 5th October we arrived at the Gagáb wells at Milmil. Here I arranged a division of the caravan into two parts, sending one portion to Berbera by the shortest route, so that the men might be paid off and the camels sold; and I kept the other portion to accompany me in a leisurely journey to the coast by way of the Eidegalla Haud, where I hoped to get some lions. We left Milmil on the 6th of October and marched to a Rer Ali karia, and on the following day we made two marches to a large water-pan at Awáré. As no rain had fallen for months in this locality till quite recently, the pan was dry, but a deep well sunk through its bed contained plenty of water. The pan at Awáré is an isolated depression far out on the Haud Plateau, which contains rain-water for several weeks at a time. It is three marches to the north of Milmil, the last Ogádén watering-place on the southern edge of the Haud; and when the pan, or the well which the natives sink through its bed, contains water, the flocks and camels of the Rer Ali and Rer Harún are brought to Awáré to take advantage of the rich Haud pastures, which have better fattening qualities than those of Milmil. While passing through the Rer Ali grazing camels, of which there were many hundreds, on our way to the pan, we were all much amused by watching my hunter Geli, who was walking in front with my spare rifle over his shoulder. Before he joined me he had often, with the rest of his tribe, who were the Eidegalla, made looting excursions on horseback to this part of the Haud. As he walked on, looking at the fat humps of the camels to right and left, he wore an angelic smile on his face, and sang softly, “_Hilib badan ai-y-ee ee_” (Lots of meat, plenty of meat!) When he turned round and saw the whole caravan laughing at him he stopped and looked sheepish.

Geli was a capital fellow, and my men used to tell a story about him which he never contradicted. It appears that when only sixteen years old he was out looking after goats with his mother and sisters. A lion bolted off with one of the flock, and Geli, with the women, began idly to track him up, to see if he had gone far; because, if the lion was not far off, it might be worth while to call up the men from the karia to follow him. Geli went on ahead, and found the lion asleep under a bush, having eaten the goat. Geli decided to go and tell the tribe, but as he was turning away he thought he would just throw his spear, it looked so easy! He aimed at the lion’s ribs, hurled his spear, and then ran for his karia as hard as he could go; and coming back to look with twenty men on horseback, he found the lion dead.

The Haud in this locality is one mass of unbroken thorn forest, sometimes light and open, sometimes very dense, with high _durr_ grass. Round the Awáré pan the forest is composed of very fine _gudá_ thorn-trees, which grow for about fifteen feet without branches, and then shoot up and outwards in a fan-shape to a height of from thirty to forty feet The bark is black, and the foliage is made up of small star-shaped leaves, massed together and very green. It is the most picturesque tree in the Haud forest, and nothing can be prettier than the Awáré pan when the margin of open, flat meadow-land is covered with a carpet of fresh turf, and the trees are in foliage. On arriving at Awáré we pitched camp under a large _gudá_ tree at the north-west corner of the pan, and I made my bed on the flat top of another on the eastern side, and tied up a donkey below. Lions roared in the forest a mile or two away, but did not come near the camp.

Next morning, without waiting for coffee, I got down from the tree and made straight for where we had heard the lions. About three miles from our tree we came on the fresh tracks of a large lion and lioness, and followed them. The bush was rather open, and the lioness must have been doing sentry and have seen us,[51] for we could hear her roaring in the jungle some distance ahead of us as she roused her mate; and running on in the direction of the noise, we were just in time to see a very large black-maned lion bound out of a thicket and make off, followed by a lioness. The grass was rather long, only showing their heads, and owing to intervening thorn-trees and the distance, I could not get a chance to shoot. We tracked these lions until a heavy shower of rain came on and lost us the tracks in the afternoon. I was hungry and suffering from a galled foot, and we were twice drenched with rain before we got home.

I lay at night on the top of the _gudá_ tree near camp, but did not get a shot. A lion roared several times, early in the night, in the distance, but a shower of rain coming on before dawn, the people whom I sent out from camp failed to find his tracks.

On the 9th we moved the camp to a karia a few miles to the north-west, where lions were reported to be common. I sat all night in the top of a tree over a heifer tethered below, to no purpose. Next morning we came upon tracks of two lionesses and three cubs; but we only found them at 8 A.M., and the enormous flocks and herds of the Rer Ali had wandered about the jungle in every direction, and almost entirely obliterated the signs, so we gave it up; and we moved camp back to the former site at the Awáré pan. In the evening news of lions came from two opposite directions, south-west and north-east. I sent several horsemen out to verify the first, and I sent Hassan five miles to the south-east to the carcase of a camel which had been struck down by the lions, and ordered him to sit in a tree all night, and keep hyænas from the carcase by throwing stones at it. He had seen a lioness bound away as he came up to the spot at sunset, and sitting in a _galól_ tree waiting for the brute’s return, he spent a most miserable night, for it rained heavily, and became so dark that a mob of hyænas dragged away the meat in spite of his stoning. In the morning, because of this rain, Hassan failed to find any tracks; so he returned to my camp, aching all over, for a rotten and twisted _galól_ tree covered with large black ants is not a comfortable perch on a cold night. The horsemen whom I sent to the south-west reported the lion news to be a hoax of the karia people there, concocted in the hope of obtaining _bakshísh_.[52] During the day I received a visit from some Rer Ali headmen and minstrels, who serenaded me on foot while I was trying to get a little sleep at noon.

On the 12th I sent out horsemen to collect news of lions from the karias, and to make wide circles in the jungle in quest of tracks; they found those of a family of lionesses and part-grown lions, there being seven in all; so at night we tied up a donkey three miles from camp. I was prevented from sitting up over the bait by very heavy rain coming on towards evening, so I remained in camp. Next morning we found the donkey killed by lions and eaten. Coming up in the half light of early dawn, and stooping under the bushes, I saw several hyænas, and among them a lioness, stealing away. The range was nearly two hundred yards, but I fired and missed. I followed at best pace, and after twenty minutes’ tracking I saw her head for a moment looking over a tuft of grass, as she crouched thirty yards away, but she bounded off before I had time to look over the sight. I fired a shot after her into the grass, which must have missed. We again tied up a donkey in the same place, and sat up over it. But at about ten o’clock the dry _galól_, upon the flat top of which we had placed my bed, gave way, breaking off at the fork of the stem, and dropping us, with guns, water-bottles, and lantern, a distance of twelve feet, to the ground! It was very dark and a heavy thunder-storm was coming up, so we lit the lantern and trudged home through the bush. We left the donkey tied up, and coming next morning to take him away, we found he had been untouched by lions, and several cowardly hyænas had prowled round him all night afraid to tackle him; so that, except in his feelings, he was unhurt.

On the morning of the 14th, having heard a lion roar not far from camp at midnight, I sent out horsemen, and at 9 A.M. they reported tracks of two lionesses. Almost simultaneously came news that a goat had been killed by a lion at a karia about five miles away. The men said it must have been a large lion by the tracks and by the sound of his roar as he had bounded away, quite unlike the voice of a lioness. So I walked there with my two hunters, arriving soon after ten o’clock, and taking the owner of the goat as my guide, I made straight for the karia where the kill had occurred. The two horsemen who had brought the news followed me, leading their horses, in red and blue _khaili_ tobes; but I dropped these men at the karia as being too conspicuous and likely to attract the lion’s attention.

We then followed the pugs of the lion from the zeríba, the parallel lines in the red soil showing where he had dragged his victim along. The trail was difficult to follow, as the ground had been overrun by sheep during the morning. At last we came to a very small boy in charge of a flock of sheep, and he told us there were no more domestic animals farther on, and that the lion had gone into a dark jungle of _khansa_ and _durr_ grass. We entered the jungle, and as we rounded a _khansa_ thicket my hunter Liban said, “There he is!” and I saw his great shock head and shoulders come from out of a black overhanging _khansa_ bush twenty-five yards away, which had been his lair, and in which we subsequently found the body of the goat. I had only time to see his huge head and mane come indistinctly through the foliage, when he bounded away to my left, across a space of two yards of open, into a patch of _durr_ grass six feet high. I followed him with the sight of the rifle on his shoulder as he disappeared, and the trigger being rather heavy I did not actually get it off till he was well inside the grass. The rifle went off, and a loud roar followed as he galloped on, showing that he had been hit. The roar died away at once into a suppressed growl, then all was silence.

Now came the work of following him up. Making a circuit to the right we examined the expanse of grass and jungle into which he had sprung; it was very thick and extensive, stretching to the right and left for several hundred yards, so there was nothing for it but to follow him through it. We first fired a Snider at the place where we had last heard him, at the same time throwing sticks and shouting; and then, foot by foot, we took up his path, which was bathed in blood, straight through the high grass. From the very hurried nature of my shot I did not hope to have disabled him, although the rifle I had been shooting with was a heavy eight-bore Paradox. After going another half dozen yards, as we came to a mimósa, Liban said, “He is lying dead beyond that _khansa_ bush.” Peeping through and seeing a mass of yellow, I saw that Liban was right. Skirting round, we found a noble, yellow-maned lion, the finest I had seen, in perfect condition and in the prime of life. My natives called my attention to the peculiar position in which he was lying, under the farther side of the mimósa. He had bounded away from his lair, getting my eight-bore bullet obliquely in behind the left lung, and out at the point of the right shoulder. He had roared and bounded on with this wound, and after going fifteen yards had taken the mimósa in one spring, falling dead in his tracks. We measured the bush over which he had sprung, and found it was eighteen feet broad and eight feet high, and absence of marks on the surrounding sand showed that he could not possibly have gone round. My theory is that the wound took full effect just as he made this supreme effort, landing him practically lifeless. The skin, when taken off, measured 10 feet 11 inches from nose to tip of tail when spread without stretching or pegging out. As I knelt looking at his head, surrounded by the men, women, and children who had flocked from the karias, I only wished for an European companion to help me admire him!

In the evening I made another platform in a _gudá_ tree three miles to the south of camp. From my tent to about a mile south of it there was gravel. I found that lions, in passing camp to go to prospect some karias to the south-west of us, avoided the gravel, no doubt because it was uncomfortable for their feet, and invariably walked over the fine red clay a little farther to the south. Hence the choice of my new hiding-place. I spread my bed on the flat top of the tree, fourteen feet from the ground. It was like a spring mattress, gently waving before a cool breeze; and we slept beautifully most of the night, hung up in the air, with a brilliant canopy of stars above us and the mysterious sea of bush around us, with lions roaring frequently during the night. Next morning I was taken off on a “wild-goose chase” to a karia six miles distant to the north, where a lioness had taken a small goat in sight of the karia people; but the sheep and camels had since been driven over the tracks and we lost her, having to abandon, besides, the search for the tracks of the lion which had roared near my machán the night before.

I remained in camp on the 15th to let the skin of the large lion dry, and again slept in the machán three miles to the south of camp. The lions roared again; for there were a pair of them, the voice of the lioness being easily distinguishable from that of her mate. They never came to the donkey, and a heavy thunder-storm drenching us and our bedding, we lit a lantern and threaded our way to camp, leading the donkey, through the darkness. Sending out horsemen next morning, the tracks of the pair could not be found anywhere, so it was decided that their roars must either have been uttered from an immense distance, or that they must have been devils! But I think that, owing to the wet weather, their voices appeared to be very much nearer than they really were.

“As he bounded away to my left.”]

My leave now being at an end, we marched for Adadleh, over a waterless tract of Haud ninety miles in extent. We covered this distance in nine marches, or four and a half days, the whole of the country passed over having been one continuous sea of dense bush, dotted over with red ant-hills, some of the spires being twenty-five feet high. We arrived at Berbera on the 31st of October 1893, and I crossed to Aden next day on the way to England.