CHAPTER VII

FIRST JOURNEY TO THE WEBBE SHABÉLEH RIVER, 1893

Form an ambush over the pool at Kuredelli—A rhinoceros wounded—Unsuccessful hunt after the rhinoceros—Two lions seen—Another rhinoceros wounded at the pool; three lionesses arrive; interesting moonlight scene—A lioness drinks, and is wounded—Death of the lioness—Follow and bag the rhinoceros—Exciting hyæna hunt with pistol and knife—Abbasgúl fight—Unsuccessful rhinoceros hunt—We march into the monsoon—Walleri buck wounded by me and pulled down by a leopard—Death of the leopard—Camp again at Túli—Two rhinoceroses bagged; furious charge—The Sheikh Ash, a friendly tribe—A leopard in camp—Ambush at the Garba-ali pool; leopard and hyæna bagged—Abundance of game—First enter zebra country—Man-eating lions at Durhi—Malingúr at Durhi—Elephant-hunting in Daghatto valley; a bull bagged—Large number of elephants—Interesting scene in Daghatto—Leopards seen—Uninhabited country—Difficulty in finding the Rer Amáden tribe—Halt at Enleh and send out scouts.

I left Jig-Jiga for the Jerer Valley and Ogádén country on 26th March 1893, with the whole of my caravan, consisting of three fast Aden camels, thirty-three baggage camels, and the mule which Rás Makunan had given me; and I had still my following of the twenty-one faithful Somális armed with Snider carbines. I had finished my visit to Harar; and now, armed with Rás Makunan’s passport, I was free to strike across Somáliland to the Webbe Shabéleh river, four hundred miles inland, and to shoot big game unmolested by Abyssinian soldiers, and, what was more important, in hunting-grounds hitherto untouched by Europeans.

We should have started early on the 26th, but had great difficulty in getting guides to the Rer Ali tribe, because the Bertiri at Jig-Jiga were afraid that if they assisted us they would be made to regret it by the Abyssinians. But on my showing Makunan’s passport to the _Shúm_ in charge of the stockade, he promised the timid people that they would receive no harm on my account, and I marched with two Bertiri guides at 9 A.M.

We threaded our way through grass plains and jungle to Kuredelli in the Jerer Valley, which runs south-east towards the Webbe Shabéleh; and on reaching this place in the evening, I was delighted to find a pool of water in the rocky bed of the river, the edges of which were literally covered with tracks of large game. Among other animals a lion and a rhinoceros had come to drink on the preceding night.

The river-bed was very rocky, and sunk some fifteen feet below the level of the surrounding plain, which was covered with dense mimósa jungle. Half a mile up the channel, to the west of the pool, was my camp, pitched under some large shady trees in a glade of good but rather dry grass. There had been a very severe drought during the _Jilál_ season, as is usual, but the drought this year had been particularly severe because the previous _Dair_ or light winter rains had failed, so that Kuredelli was one of the few pools of surface water left in the whole of this elevated country, and there was not a drop to be got for many miles round. The water was covered with duckweed, and was of a bright emerald green colour throughout, and had almost the consistency of pea-soup; but, curiously enough, it was perfectly sweet and good, and we drank it for a week without its doing us any harm.

The pool was not more than fifteen yards long by five wide, its longer axis pointing up and down the river-bed; and on the northern side it was overhung by a steep scarp of rock some five feet high, where the limestone had been undermined by the swirl of the river when in flood. Above the rocky scarp were thick thorn-trees, whose branches overhung the river-bed, and under these branches, on the edge of the scarp and overlooking the pool, I constructed a small bower, bearing a rugged resemblance to a box at an European theatre. Nothing could spring on us from behind because of the interlaced branches of the trees which made our roof, while the floor was a smooth slab of limestone rock, and in front and at the top of the small precipice were piled thorn branches breast-high, so that I could fire over them. The front of the box was otherwise quite open, and the field of view embraced two right angles.

We made this retreat in an hour, and I took up a position, as night fell, in the bower with my two hunters Géli and Hassan. We carried my three rifles and spare ammunition, and four more men brought my bedding, blankets for my hunters, a lamp, matches, and my water-bottle full of coffee. We did not forget a waterproof sheet each, to be used in case of rain.

My four carriers had also brought a donkey with them, which they tied up to a heavy block on a flat slab of limestone which shelved down into the pool on the farther side, for we hoped thereby to attract lions; the carriers then went off to camp, and left us squatting silently in our shelter.

I describe our arrangements thus in detail because I have in this way sat out for game on scores of nights, and one description will serve for all. There is one thing I never omit, when about to spend a night in one of these jungle shelters, or when marching by night, and that is to decorate the centre rib of each of my game rifles with a long strip of snow-white foolscap paper, to assist the aim; for, however good the moonlight may be, it is impossible to see the tiny ivory foresight at night.

I sat over this pool on five successive nights. On the first night three hyænas came, but no lion or rhinoceros. The hyænas invariably came silently down to drink till they saw the living bait, and then at once took fright and galloped away; on the succeeding four nights I therefore dispensed with the bait. For two hours, after the moon rose, several wild ducks kept us interested by playing about in the water and quacking, quite unaware of our presence. I then went to sleep. We saw nothing on the next evening, and I slept all night in the shelter, waking up covered with dew at daylight, and returning, rather stiff with the exposure, to camp.

On the third night I was roused by Géli, whose eyes I could see full of excitement in the semi-darkness, and still crouching below my screen of branches, I could hear the wallowing of some heavy animal in the soft mud at the water’s edge. We were all on the alert as I gently felt for the four-bore which Hassan shoved into my hands. On cautiously poking my head above the screen, I saw the great form of a rhinoceros standing motionless as a carved sphinx in the moonlight, casting a deep black shadow upon the white rock. I stood erect, and raising my arms placed the butt of the four-bore to my shoulder. The action was seen, for the beast trotted forward a few steps, and then galloped across the slabs of rock for a path which ascended the bank on my side of the river, and led behind my shelter. I fired at his shoulder hurriedly, and, sad to say, heard no answering “tell,” showing that the bullet had not struck; and before I could look under the smoke I heard the rhinoceros, with a succession of snorts, gallop up the bank and trot behind my shelter; then all sound ceased but the animal’s breathing, which we could hear distinctly, close to and above us, only separated from us by the stout interlaced branches of the back of our “box.” We stood with rifles at the “charge,” ready to fire and throw ourselves down into the river-bed should his ugly head and horns protrude into our bower. He did not keep us in suspense long, but after listening for more than a minute, he trotted off, the sound of his footsteps getting fainter on the still night air, and eventually dying away.

On the 29th I returned to camp at sunrise, and swallowing a cup of hot coffee, which my cook, having heard the shot and divined its purport, had prepared for me, I took up the tracks with two camelmen, letting Géli and Hassan sleep in camp. We followed them till noon, the sun being fearfully hot; and either through the unskilfulness of my trackers, or through the absence of blood on the track causing me to lose heart in the fearful _Jilál_ heat, we had to leave the trail at a stony ravine; and in the afternoon we returned to camp, tired out.

Swallowing some food, I took a short sleep; and towards sunset I went out again with Géli and Hassan into the bush to the west. Suddenly Géli pointed, and saying “_Libah!_” (Lions!) started to run across an open plain of bare red earth; and there, three hundred yards away, were a lioness and young lion reclining by the stem of a tall, shady thorn-tree, looking at us. I had been searching for rhinoceros, and was burdened with my double four-bore rifle, weighing twenty-two pounds, so when Géli started running he at once got ahead of me, and Hassan, carried away by the excitement, followed suit. The brutes, seeing three men running across the plain towards them, stood up, stretched themselves, and giving a toss of the tail and a savage growl, they cantered easily away across the sun-baked earth in full view, and plunged into the low mimósa jungle beyond. I ran up to Géli very much put out, and snatching my ·577 Express from his hand, and giving him the heavy rifle to retard his pace, I plunged into the bush and grass after the lions, but the grass was so thick and dry that I soon overran the almost invisible tracks, and though we made several tries back on to the red soil, we eventually lost them, and I returned to camp disgusted with the afternoon’s entertainment, and lectured my men in rather a wrathful way on the folly of out-running me.

On the next night we all awoke at the same time, while the moon was still low, having been roused by the disturbance of the pool; and we made so much noise in throwing off our blankets and getting ready that a rhinoceros, which had come down to the pool, heard us and made off. I fired the four-bore, and my bullet caught it in the shoulder, sending it galloping up the bank, snorting as before. On this night the beast waited, listening close behind my hiding-place for nearly ten minutes; then all sounds ceased, and I thought it must be dead. It had, however, slipped quietly away; so there was nothing to be done, and we went to sleep. When we woke again the moon was well up, it being about two o’clock in the morning. Géli had awakened me, having seen something pass among the bushes on our bank of the river, between my hiding-place and the camp.

The moon was throwing a fine light on the flat limestone slabs which composed the floor of the river-bed, and as we gazed in the direction in which Géli pointed, rubbing our eyes, we saw against the white background three large animals walk out from the bushes into the open near the pool; one glance told us that they were three full-grown lionesses.

They walked quietly across till they reached the place where the rhinoceros had been standing when first hit; and then they stood together snuffing at the blood, which we found next day in quantities on the rocks. I could count their twelve short and stout legs showing in silhouette against the white floor of the river-bed, as they stood motionless, heads bent over the fresh blood, appearing to consult together. I reserved my fire, as I knew they had come to drink, and would give me a better chance, nearer to my shelter, later on. The lionesses then walked slowly across the river-bed in single file, and up a path which ascended the opposite bank, and then they disappeared. But they had not really gone, for from time to time during the next half-hour I could see their round heads raised in silhouette against the sky-line, above the black outline of the bank; they too were watching the pool for game!

I must have dozed off to sleep again, for the moon had swung over a good deal towards the western horizon, when I noticed Géli squatting in a listening attitude, and I heard the steady lapping as of an animal drinking. Géli whispered, “Now, be ready, Sahib!” and slowly raising my head above my screen, pushing the muzzle of my Express forward at the same time, I saw over the barrels the body of a lioness extended, hind quarters flattened against the rock, shoulders high and head down towards me, lapping the water on the farther side of the pool. I did not wait long, but glancing between her upraised shoulders and lowering the muzzle till the white paper on the rib between the barrels had disappeared, I pulled the trigger. My bower was full of smoke, and I ducked under the screen as the report of the rifle was instantly followed by a roar and a splash, and jumping to our feet we just saw the lioness, after having sprung into the centre of the pool to get at us, in the act of raising her dripping body out of the water. No doubt the cold douche had damped her enthusiasm, and she had turned back. Before I could take a sight down the barrels she rushed off across the river-bed, pulling up in the sombre belt of bush on the farther side to roll about and growl. There was nothing more to be done, and though my Somális hinted that she might be hunted by moonlight, I, mindful of our Gebili leopard, preferred to wait till morning before following a wounded lioness into those dark-looking evergreen bushes which cast such uncertain shadows.

I woke up again at sunrise, and without going to camp or tasting food, I at once took up the tracks of the lioness. Her line of retreat was sprinkled with blood. We drew the bushes under the opposite bank very carefully, and then began to ascend the bank by the path, the wind being with us, blowing towards the south. Before we had reached the top we heard several loud roars a few hundred yards beyond, and as we appeared on the higher level the roars were redoubled, issuing from very low, gray, leafless mimósa bush. We followed, keeping to the tracks, and at last saw, eighty yards away, the head of the lioness, held vertically, regarding us intently from the partial concealment of a tuft of grass on the farther side of a glade. She seemed to be on the eve of charging, the black point of her tail twitching nervously behind her head, which bore a very nasty expression. I fired, but missed the small mark. There were now eight of us, some of my men who had come to take away the blankets and other things from the bower having joined us. We stood in an irregular line, fully expecting a charge, and I fired another standing shot at the small, wicked-looking head, my bullet going harmlessly through the grass. Looking under the smoke quickly, I saw her still in the same place, but she was in a greater rage than ever, and kept up a steady low growling. This was my first experience of one of these animals after having been so badly mauled by one, and the situation was becoming therefore highly exciting. I now sat down, and resting both my elbows on my knees, took a very careful shot at her. Her head dropped, showing I had killed her, and we walked up to where she lay.

My first bullet, fired at her while drinking at the water, had struck her in the left forearm and shattered it, accounting for her not having charged; and my last bullet had touched her left cheek; and then, entering perpendicularly, it had expanded and carried away half the brain pan. She was a very fine lioness, the skin being in splendid condition. I told Géli and Hassan to stay and skin her, as I had now to follow up the rhinoceros wounded in the early part of the night. But they begged to be allowed to go with me, so I left two camelmen to do the skinning of the lioness.

Going to camp and hastily swallowing some coffee, we returned to the scene of last night’s adventure, and found the tracks of the rhinoceros plentifully sprinkled with blood. One of the legs appeared to be injured at the shoulder, as the trail where the foot had been dragged along the ground was plainly visible.

At nine o’clock we entered very dense mimósa bushes, of a peculiarly thorny kind, called _billeil_, and under one of these we saw the rhinoceros, a large cow. She saw us first, however, and charged, getting a pair of four-bore bullets in the chest at rather long range as she came on. Hassan handed me my eight-bore, and I carefully aimed at her shoulder as she picked herself up and came on again; but there was nothing in the rifle, and I had to bolt off to the right, leaving her to select a victim from among my men, who, more active than I, were dancing about the bush yelling out directions to me to fire! When I had got in a couple of cartridges I fired at her right and left; and the second shot, striking obliquely through her shoulders from the front, brought her to the ground, and she died, still retaining the kneeling position after life had left her. Going up to her, I found that last night’s ball from the four-bore had injured her shoulder. She had gone several miles, had taken three four-bore and two eight-bore bullets, and had died game, having chosen the worst kind of bush she could pick out for the final scene. I photographed her as she lay kneeling, leafless thorny mimósas spreading their branches all round her, in this strong, defensive position which she had chosen as her last retreat, the sun casting a shadow in every wrinkle of her thick hide.

Returning to camp, I laid the rhino and lioness heads side by side and photographed them, making a curious and unique picture to remind me of a good morning’s sport before breakfast.

While arranging the bower at midday for our last and fifth vigil, a large spotted hyæna came to drink; and not wishing to disturb lions by firing a rifle, I ran after him, followed by my Somális. We had no weapons but unloaded Sniders, and my knife and double pistol. Running hard to cut him off, I was ahead of the men as he gained the slope of the river bank, and fired both barrels of my pistol, missing him with one barrel and knocking him over with the second. He picked himself up and disappeared over the top of the bank, taking the same path which the wounded lioness had followed in the morning; we, however, gained on him, as he was now crippled by my bullet, and he hid under a low mimósa. The men came up in front, and one of them shoved the butt of a Snider into his face, under the low-spreading branches. He seized hold of this and chewed at it vigorously, while I was able to get round unobserved in his rear, and creeping behind the stems of the bush, to drive my knife mercifully into his ribs. Every hyæna destroyed means a large number of sheep and goats to the good.

At about three o’clock on the afternoon of this day, 20th March, my camp being still at Kuredelli, a large force, consisting of two or three hundred men, mostly naked, and all armed with shield and spear, or bow and quiver, issued from the bush north of camp and came running past, going due south. As they passed the camp they scarcely answered our hurried questions, but my men gathered that they were Abbasgúl Somális belonging to some karias a few miles to the south of us, and that their cattle had just been raided by the Habr-Awal and driven north through the bush of the Haud. My men laughed at them for going naked, but they said they had no time to bother about their tobes; they had come light for running, and only wanted their cattle back. Party after party passed us, and men singly and in couples, all in the same state of nakedness and breathless excitement.

I sat up, as on the four previous nights, in my favourite bower, and at about 1 A.M. these people returned with a large mob of cattle which they had recovered and were bringing home. They were talking excitedly as they approached the pool. We heard one man ask, “Where were you wounded?” and another answer, “Oh, in the leg, but it isn’t bad.”

There were recriminations going on between two parties. The party which first came up was met by another party coming from the north-west, which appeared to have lost the enemy, for the first arrivals called out, “Why were you not at the fight; why did you run away?” and were answered, “Oh, we lost the way.” I wanted to challenge, but Géli and Hassan advised silence. This I would not agree to, for I thought that the men, nervous and excited as they were, if they did discover our presence accidentally by a rustle or otherwise, might suspect a hidden enemy and send a flight of arrows into my hiding-place to make sure. So I called out “_Kumá?_” (Who are you?), and as they halted Géli said it was a “_Sirkal_” (_i.e._ Government man or Englishman) with his two hunters, sitting up for game; and that they must look sharp and drink, and begone.

The men came down to drink, saying they would bring the cattle to water in the morning, and they further asked to be allowed to bivouac near my camp for additional security in case they should be followed. They said, “It is all right; we know you are an Englishman, and that you are here for no harm. The country is yours, we are your subjects; we beg to be excused for having killed some of the Habr Awal, for we know the Government dislikes bloodshed. But without our cattle we should have died.” Kuredelli is two hundred miles from the coast, and this is only one instance in many showing that British influence is recognised not only on the Somáli coast itself, but also in the distant interior. And no Englishman had been in this neighbourhood till my brother and I explored it a few months before.

These two or three hundred men had followed the tracks of their cattle, and between three o’clock on the previous afternoon and ten o’clock in the morning they had reached the open plains to the north; the distance covered in the ten hours could not have been less than thirty-five miles, with many delays inseparable from fighting and driving cattle over rough ground at night. They had found the Habr Awal, about half their strength, in the _ban_ or open grass plains, and had at once attacked them by the light of the moon, killing two of the enemy and losing a man themselves, killed by a poisoned arrow. The enemy then fled.

The cattle were driven past with clouds of dust and a clamour of excited voices, and then they all disappeared in the distance, and I heard my sentry challenge them as they drew up at my camp half a mile away, and after another half-hour of chatter they gradually settled down to rest. I had never met this clan of the Abbasgúl before. The men flocked to camp next day from their karias in great numbers, and seeing the trophies of the lioness and rhinoceros lying on the grass outside my tent door, they said, “The Abyssinians can’t do that; their guns are small, and are only good for killing women and children and old men with: you English are our friends, and all the Ogádén tribes look to you, our masters, for protection against Abyssinia.”

On 31st March we made two marches to Girbi, seventeen miles eastward along the Jerer Valley, and the next day we made a short march in a heavy storm of rain, the burst of the south-west monsoon; and the red clay became so sticky that we were obliged to halt in the thick bush. When things were a little dry again, I went out towards sunset into the level thorn forest to look for oryx. We had gone about a mile from camp when we saw a large rhinoceros bull trotting along under the trees a quarter of a mile away, having evidently winded us. We ran at an angle to cut him off, but he changed his pace to a heavy gallop, crashing through the thick parts of the jungle as if they had been clumps of grass. We followed in his wake, but failed to get within shot, for a rhinoceros should not be fired at from a greater distance than about eighty yards; and so we settled steadily down to his tracks, hoping to catch him up before nightfall. He retreated into very thick bush, and as he was going with the wind he twice winded us, and made off when we were close up, but the jungle being thick we could not see him. At last, night coming on, we left him and returned to camp after dark, very tired and disappointed.

Next day, the 2nd April, we marched on. As we advanced down the Jerer Valley by rapid stages we passed suddenly from country dried up by continued drought into a world of green grass and jungle, with an overcast sky, the effect of the bursting of the south-west monsoon over the lower Jerer Valley some ten days before. Nothing can be more pleasant in Somáliland than this sudden change: the camels march better owing to fresh fodder; the air is rendered cool, allowing one to travel during any hour of the day; and the thorn-trees give out a strong perfume.

At 5.30 P.M. on 3rd April we camped in the bush, without water, at Manjo-adéyu. Before camping I fired at a buck Waller’s gazelle, wounding it badly, but it did not drop at once, and we had to follow it up. I was rather fagged, having done a long march on foot owing to my camel being lame; and sending on ahead my Midgán hunter, Hassan, I followed the tracks with Géli at a leisurely pace. We at last came to the buck, lying dead, and Hassan standing over it. He reported that he had just seen the buck pulled down before his eyes by a large panther, which had caught sight of him after springing upon it, and had cantered away through the forest.

Sending the three camels and mule out of sight into some thick bush to the south, and ordering a camelman to overtake the caravan and have the camp pitched, I sat with Géli and Hassan by the stem of a tree on a bare patch of ground some fifteen yards from the body of the buck, the sun shining horizontally from behind our backs.

We waited for half an hour, then Géli pointed to the north-east, and the panther came gliding silently through the underbrush, coming straight for the body of the buck. While he was yet one hundred and fifty yards off I saw his beautifully spotted skin and bullet head, and marking his course I chose a bush eighty yards away, aligning the sight so as to be ready to fire when he should come out into the open beyond it on our side. I held the ivory foresight over this spot, and as he passed the bush and his head and shoulders appeared, I pulled, a satisfactory thud answering the ring of the rifle; and in the stillness following the shot I saw a tail violently agitated above the grass. Slipping in a fresh cartridge to replace the empty case, I walked up and found the panther dead, shot through the neck.

I laid his body by the side of that of the Walleri, and photographed the pair, cutting down some thorn-trees, whose branches threw long shadows over the picture; then calling for the camels and loading up the bodies, we followed the tracks of the caravan, and found camp pitched two miles from the scene of this incident.

We made two marches to Haljíd, where, hearing by night the croaking of thousands of bull-frogs, we discovered a considerable body of water, in the form of a pool half a mile long, occupying the river channel in the centre of the Jerer Valley. There were plenty of rhino, oryx, and lesser koodoo tracks here. I remained halted all day on 5th April, shooting three oryx out of a herd, a welcome supply of meat; and on the evening of the 6th we marched to Túli. We lost our way while hunting at some distance from the caravan, and only found the new camp at midnight after a lot of signal shots had been fired. I remained in this neighbourhood for four days to hunt, as rhinoceroses were very numerous here, coming to drink at night at the pools in the centre of the valley, and going away great distances in every direction to hide in the thickest mimósa forests by day. The best way to find them is to visit the pools in the early morning, and follow any fresh tracks of the night before. In this way, after four or five hours’ tracking, one is likely to come upon them feeding about, or, if after eleven o’clock, lying under a shady bush asleep.

On 7th April my men found a dozen young ostriches in the thick jungle near Túli Hill. They were pretty little birds with soft yellow and black down for plumage, and beady black eyes, and stood a foot high, on sturdy yellow legs. I did all I could to get the parent cock bird: first, by following behind a camel, and then by sitting till midday in ambush near the nest; but all my attempts were unavailing. We had these young birds for ten days or more in our camp, carrying them, when marching, in hutches made of empty beer boxes, on camel-back; and they became very tame, but eventually, one by one, they all died.

On the 8th April I rose before dawn with Géli, Hassan, my camelman Abokr, my syce Daura, and a guide. We took one camel with us, and holding due west we entered the thick mimósa forest which is called Gol Wiyileh,[38] or the “Valley of Rhinoceroses”; and after going four miles, when we had gained the centre of the valley, in dense bush, we came to fresh tracks of three of these animals, which had passed late in the night, making for the south-west from the pools of the Jerer Valley. They led us through many miles of thick bush, but the tracking was easy owing to there being three of them together; and at one o’clock in the afternoon, after having left camp for seven hours, we came on them standing together in the dense shade of a very thick clump of umbrella mimósas. There was a full-grown bull, accompanied by a large cow and a bull calf, the big bull having a very fine front horn.

I at once sank to a sitting position, holding my eight-bore, while Hassan laid down the heavy four-bore on the grass beside me to be used in case of a charge. The big bull was eighty yards away, and I fired for his ear, and he dropped dead, remaining in a sitting posture and looking as if carved in stone. I fired the other barrel at one of the others, which turned out to be the large calf, and the game made off. We decided not to follow them up at once, but to give them time to get over their fright, as they had never actually seen us. So I took a careful photograph of the big bull, and after taking off the head and some shields, I sent Daura back to Túli on Rás Makunan’s mule, telling him to bring the camp to a deserted zeríba which we had noticed while tracking, not far from where the bull lay.

Leaving Abokr, the guide, and a camel by the body, I took my two hunters, Géli and Hassan, and followed the track of the remaining rhinoceroses, which was plentifully sprinkled with blood. I came upon them in very thick cover, standing forty yards away, heads towards us; and at once sitting down with the rifle I was carrying, which happened to be the heavy four-bore, I fired at the nearest head through a maze of interlaced branches.

The four-bore pushed me over on my back, and the rhinos charged us at once with a volley of puffing sounds, crashing through the jungle at full gallop. As I rose to my feet the first, the young bull, passed me, and took after the two men; the big cow followed, passing me at a distance of only ten yards, and I threw the rifle to my shoulder and knocked her over, making her turn a somersault with her four legs fighting the air! Giving a hurried look at her, and seeing her lying still, I rushed on after the other; but although he had been twice hit I lost him, after another half mile, in some high _durr_ grass. Returning to the big cow, I found her still unconscious, but gently breathing, lying on her side, and I finished her with a shot through the head. The young bull, I think, must have eventually recovered, as the two wounds in the head, having missed the brain, would not have injured him mortally. Leaving the men to prepare the heads and shields for conveyance to camp, I walked to the deserted zeríba and found the camp pitched inside, and dinner ready; and two hours later, at sunset, the trophies came in, Daura chanting a hunting song.

We spent the morning of the 9th preparing the trophies, and in the evening marched back to Túli. I shot an oryx with good horns, and a Walleri buck, and next day we made another march of ten miles.

We reached the grazing grounds of the Sheikh Ash Ogádén, a very friendly set of people, whom I had met before. The men, who were with the camels grazing in the outer pastures, ran away on first seeing us, mistaking my men, who carried Snider rifles, for Abyssinian raiders. But soon they all rushed back, shouting and crowding round my riding camel, and raising scores of hands for me to shake.

Getting into the thick of the tribe later on, we camped among their karias, beside a tall red ant-hill; and while camp was being pitched, wishing to draw off the crowds of people from worrying my men at their work, I withdrew to a distance of a couple of hundred yards and, under the shade of an _Adad_ thorn-tree, exhibited coloured prints from the _Graphic_ Christmas numbers, and a book representing the different varieties of British soldier. The men, women, and children pressed round me in a dense mass, remarking, “You are not like the Amhára;[39] we are not afraid of you; you don’t mean any harm.” They were particularly delighted with some old Zoological Society’s _Proceedings_ which contained coloured illustrations of a Waller’s gazelle and of a Somáli wild ass; and they said, “Now we have seen that the English can do everything!”

I had a serious difficulty here. One of the Bulhár men, having quarrelled with Adan Yusuf, my caravan leader, decided to leave me; and as is the custom, seven more coast men, drawn from the same tribe, although bearing no malice, joined their fellow-tribesman as a matter of principle. I called for volunteers from the Sheikh Ash tribe; and about twenty at once offering themselves, my own followers, seeing I was independent, returned to obedience. I dismissed the two ringleaders with ten days’ rations and their back pay, and wished them a safe return to Berbera. It is a good thing when making up a caravan not to draw too many men from one tribe.

I gave several Korans and prayer-chaplets to the mullahs here, and they were received with real pleasure. The mullahs are the traveller’s best friends in Ogádén; they are intelligent, have great social influence, and are particularly useful in giving introductions, passing a traveller on from tribe to tribe. The more intelligent among them can write in Arabic. From these mullahs I heard that at Durhi, in the Malingúr tribe, on one of the roads to Imé on the Webbe, I was certain to come upon Grevy’s zebra, which had not yet, I believe, been shot by Europeans; so I determined to go there.

On the 13th I broke up my camp at Yoghon among the Sheikh Ash karias, and marched along the bed of a torrent, deep cut in the red earth, to a pool called Garba-aleh.

Before striking camp at earliest dawn, just as Suleiman the cook, whom I always told the sentry to awaken before the bulk of my followers, was beginning to prepare my coffee, a leopard jumped into the middle of the camp to seize my best milch goat, which was reclining under the lee of a pile of camel-mats; but Makunan’s mule, by braying at the brute, aroused the whole camp. The Somális rushed unarmed at the leopard, while I dived quietly under my bed and drew out my coat, which had cartridges in the pockets, and a rifle; but of course by the time all this was ready the leopard had gone!

Approaching the water at Garba-aleh I saw three hyænas making off through the thorn forest; and I sent a Martini-Henry picket through one of them, by which I hoped to secure his eventual death, and so save some Malingúr sheep.

I met an old man called Mader Ádan, the first Malingúr I had seen, and he greeted me cheerily, and told me to expect lions and rhinoceroses in plenty at Eil-ki-Gabro, a march or two ahead. He said his own karia had been driven from the district by the former. This was joyful news.

The Garba-aleh pool, about twenty yards in diameter, in the bed of a deeply-cut sand-river, looked promising for lying in ambush, so I constructed a shelter on the principle of that which had been so successful at Kuredelli, the back of the bower being an overhanging wall of earth fifteen feet high. As it had been a hot day even for the _Kalíl_ season, and likely to bring game early to water, I occupied my ambush at about five o’clock, and we sat quiet.

While it was yet light a large spotted hyæna came warily up to the water, looking round to right and left, and starting nervously at every sound, and I shot him through the brain as he drank, his body dropping into the water. At dusk a beautiful male leopard walked down to the pool, and I fired, hitting him through the lungs; he stumbled away and fell in a ravine a few yards on the farther side of the pool. Fearing hyænas would come and spoil the skin, we got a lantern and went to look for him, and walking up cautiously to the ravine we found him lying dead. With my whistle I called up three men, and bearing the leopard to camp, we skinned him by the camp fire. I then returned to the pool and missed a hyæna, and finding it was too dark to shoot, and that mosquitoes, which breed in these stagnant pools, were rather bad round our bower, making it impossible to keep still, I went to camp and turned in for the night.

On 14th April we marched to Eil-ki-Gabro, and found lion and rhino tracks at the water. Making another shelter I sat up on the chance of a shot, but saw nothing.

Disappointed here, the next day we went to Náno, a small valley in the mountains, where we found plenty of game, the kinds seen being koodoo, lesser koodoo, oryx, Sœmmering’s and Waller’s gazelles, and a rhinoceros. I had a long hunt after the last, as the men were pitching camp, but going hard for two or three miles over very broken thorny country he fairly beat us, and we gave him up and returned to camp, knocked up by the hot sun.

We made an evening march to a river-bed, choked with dense, evergreen jungle and some high trees hung with rope-like creepers, and our guide, going into the thickest of this to look for water, started a cow rhinoceros and calf. He came running back to us shouting, “_Wiyil, wiyil_” (Rhinoceros), while the mother and her young one galloped out on the farther side of the jungle with a crash, and took away over the low stony hills. By the time I could get possession of my big rifle and run after them, they were seen quite a thousand yards away disappearing round the shoulder of a rocky, thorn-covered hill, and running up to this spot a few minutes later I was unable to sight them again, and the ground being unsuitable for tracking we lost them.

We made three more marches to Durhi; and I came upon the tracks of a herd of zebras an hour before pitching camp there on the 17th. Here we found several karias of the Malingúr Ogádén. The first people we saw were a group standing round an open grave; and on inquiring we found they were burying the body of a young woman who had been torn out of a hut from among several of her sleeping friends on the night before by a man-eating lion.

These people had never seen one of my countrymen before, but on hearing I was _Ingrés_ (English) they ran at me, calling out that I must shoot the lion and drive away the Amhára. I was led some miles into the bush to the west, where I found a party of the Malingúr following the lion, armed with their spears; but the tracks led on to very stony and thorny hills, and my guides being either unable or unwilling to keep them, we gave it up and I returned to camp, which had been pitched between two large karias. We had a severe thunder-storm at night; a lion walked round my tent during the storm, as we saw next morning by his tracks in the mud only five yards away from the head of my bed!

On the following day I went out and shot two Grevy’s zebras, the meat of which my men finished. We also saw tracks of another lion.

Next day I shot another zebra, the flesh of which I gave to the Malingúr. I tied up a camel at night, intending to sit out for a lion, but owing to the rain I had to abandon the idea; and when we went to the camel at midnight, we found it had been killed by hyænas, an enormous number of which haunted the outskirts of the karias.

While I was encamped at Durhi the Malingúr told me that their chief, Umr Ugaz, had gone to Harar to make a compact with Rás Makunan, agreeing to pay regular tribute and to acknowledge his sovereignty. The Malingúr, although demonstrative in their first welcome to me, afterwards became very reserved, because they feared that civility to Europeans might get them into trouble with the Abyssinians. They are in the line of Abyssinian invasion eastward along the Fáfan Valley, and have been utterly cowed. Having been deprived of most of their horses their fighting power is much reduced.

On the 20th we travelled two marches to Las Damel, and thence to Garabad. On reaching this place at noon, I found a very large herd of oryx feeding on either side of the caravan route, and shot three. On the first shot the herd, instead of running away, charged up round the wounded one as they do when hunted with dogs; and reloading, by a quick right and left, I was able to bag a second and third animal. A great deal of the meat was eaten by the men, and the rest was sun-dried for future consumption.

The valley of Daghatto, on the Gálla border, said to be swarming with elephants, was now only ten miles on the west of us. So halting at Garabad, I sent Géli and two Malingúr guides, who had joined us, into the Daghatto Valley to see what they could find; and they returned at night showing pieces of freshly-chewed aloe, and reporting that they had seen an elephant.

We marched into the Daghatto Valley next morning, passing between low, flat-topped hills, and camped in thick umbrella mimósas, forming a strong zeríba with felled trees, as our guides reported the country dangerous. The jungle descended gradually to the Daghatto stream, which was a mile to the west of us, its course being north and south. It has its source in the Harar Highlands, and flows towards the Webbe. Where we struck the stream it had cut its way through very wild and hilly country, said to harbour Gálla marauders.

Directly the camp had been pitched I organised a small hunting caravan, consisting of the three fast camels, the mule, and six men, with food for two days. We set off at once, and soon reached the Daghatto stream. We found it to be an exquisitely beautiful little river, overshadowed by very large and wild forest, with hanging masses of creeper, there being a carpet of rich grass. Footprints of elephants of different dates were everywhere visible in the earth, and stems of trees were broken, or the trees uprooted and overturned by the herds, as they had fed along parallel to the course of the stream. Some of the tracks in the soft mud close to the stream were holes two feet deep. There was a deep and rapid current, which prevented our crossing with the camels, but we held along the eastern bank, going up stream, towards the north.

We found evidences of a large bull elephant having bathed and fed about on the night before, and taking up his tracks for two or three miles, the footprints which we had been following were joined by those of several others, and soon the whole country seemed to be covered with traces of elephants, trees being denuded of the branches or overturned at various dates, and it became evident that a large herd was in the valley with us, and had been there for some days.

I sent Hassan Midgán and a Malingúr guide along the river bank to reconnoitre, and ordered them to work round and join us, when the height of the sun should indicate noon, at a little hill visible above the sea of forest two or three miles on ahead. Mounting the mule I made straight for this landmark with Géli and Daura, directing Abokr and a camelman to bring on the three camels slowly behind us.

Reaching the hillock I cautiously climbed to the top, and began examining the expanse of flat, green tree-tops, to try and discover the game.

Daura began dancing about and snapping his fingers with pleasure, and pointed to some reddish brown spots among the topmost branches of a thorn-tree half a mile away; and looking long and carefully, I saw one of the red patches move just once, backward and forward. We knew then that what we saw were elephants’ ears. While we were still looking we heard the scream of an elephant, and the patches of red were raised above the foliage as the owners moved together through the jungle, pressing on one another, their course marked by the great swinging ears.

Soon they stopped, and stood bunched together to listen, and we knew that they had seen or winded the two men whom I had sent round to the left an hour ago.

This was awkward, but I ran hard for the line I thought they would take when they should resume their retreat; and getting into a thick patch of jungle, with Géli in attendance, I waited, hiding my body behind the stem of a tree, the wind blowing in our faces from where the elephants had last been seen. On they came, passing us at a great pace, and letting them go by, I fired at the ear of the largest, thirty yards away, a loud crack answering the report of the four-bore. They only screamed and redoubled their pace, and I ran on in their wake, half smothered in the cloud of dust they had raised.

The jungle was one of the _billeil_, the worst kind of thorn bush, and they soon left me far behind. I ran back to the hill to get a bird’s eye view of their line of retreat, as shown by the clouds of dust rising above the jungle, and I hoped they would stop; but they made off up the Daghatto Valley in a straight line, evidently bent on leaving the country.

While I was watching their course, a Malingúr came to me, and said that Abokr had climbed a tree which he pointed out to us half a mile to the east, and that he had seen elephants. I shouldered the four-bore, and followed by Géli and Daura leading the mule, I went to the tree, and found Abokr among its branches. He extended his arm and pointed out the elephants, which were a fresh lot altogether. We could only see brown patches among the tops of some thorn-trees five hundred yards away, and although they did not move, from former experience we knew what they were.

All the elephants in Daghatto seemed to have been rolling in reddish brown clay, which, contrasted with the vivid green background of the trees under strong sunlight, made them look of a brick-red colour. The jungle in which they had taken refuge was a small grove of large trees growing together, and for about two hundred yards in front was very thorny _khansa_ bush, the flat umbrella tops nearly meeting at a height of about four feet from the ground. There was no cover higher than this except the clump of trees where the elephants were, and a few small, flimsy _adad_ bushes rising above the _khansa_ undergrowth. The elephants themselves, half hidden in the foliage of the large trees on which they had been feeding, had a good view all around from the citadel which they had chosen, making it difficult to approach unobserved. The passages underneath the _khansa_ bushes were too tortuous and thorny to be of any use. A belt of high jungle on our left grew to within a hundred yards of the herd, and at the same distance beyond them was an extensive forest, the wind blowing over the elephants’ heads in our faces.

By taking advantage of the belt of forest on our side, I managed to get within a hundred yards; and then crawling out into the _khansa_ undergrowth for twenty yards, I sat on a low ant-hill which rose above it and rested my elbows on my knees, and remained motionless for some time with the rifle up, waiting for a chance. The eyes and temple of the largest elephant could be seen in a gap of the foliage, and taking a careful aim at the centre of the temple I fired, and bolted back through the _khansa_ to the edge of the high trees, to receive them there if they should charge. They made off, however, up wind, all except one, a large bull with moderate tusks, which we found kneeling, stone dead, under the trees, a crimson stream flowing from a hole through the temple just where I had aimed. This was a good test of the powers of the eight-bore Paradox gun, the distance being eighty yards.

Going after the others, I found they were three cows and a calf, so I gave up the chase and returned to the hillock to look round. A curious sight there met our eyes. The Daghatto Valley lay before us, one unbroken expanse of tree jungle, and we could see five or six groups of elephants making away up the valley, going north. There were probably not less than one hundred and twenty in all, looking very red under the low evening sun; sometimes their backs could be seen in a shining line above the jungle, sometimes they disappeared in the thicker parts.

It was now getting late, and after a short search for the elephant which I had hit in the head at the beginning of the hunt, I gave up the chase and, collecting my people, made for camp, many miles distant.

Had I chosen I could easily have shot more elephants upon this occasion. Elephant-hunting is, to my mind, one of the most exciting forms of sport, but when one has had a certain amount of success, there can be no excuse for continuing it merely for the pleasure of killing. Upon this journey, however, my comfort depended greatly upon the good opinion my Somális had of me, and I could not afford to have my motives for not firing at elephants misinterpreted.

While we were returning to camp at sundown a leopard sprang out of some undergrowth a few yards ahead of us, and he had bounded away before I had time to fire. As we reached camp, with Daura, as usual after a successful hunt, taking the lead and singing, all the camp men fell into line to mark their appreciation, and crowded round me to salaam and shake hands.

On the 23rd, starting early and carrying axes and knives, we went to remove the head-skin and cut out the tusks of the bull elephant. As we walked up to the grove of trees and came in sight of the body, a fine panther, which had been quietly sleeping against it on the lee side, gave us one look and bounded away. I could not fire, as Géli’s head was just in the way when I first saw the spotted skin. The brute had come, no doubt, during the night to lick the blood, and had been caught taking a nap rather later than usual. I followed through thorny jungle to try and get another glimpse, but the panther had disappeared.

We had rain all day, and returned to camp very damp, with the tusks, in the evening. The whole valley was practically a swamp, and we several times had to wade up to our knees, and once up to our waists, in mud and water. Only by first trying the depth of the slush with our own bodies did we succeed in getting the camels on to camp.

We marched back on the morning of the 24th to Garabad, and in the evening to Denleh, where we fell in with a trading caravan of the Malingúr. On the 25th we made two marches to Segag, by a picturesque river-bed called Sullul, with running water, and a number of wells overshadowed by large camel-thorn trees (_gudá_). The banks were of red earth, which had been much undermined by the river, leaving a perpendicular scarp of about fifty feet.

Until Captain Baudi, with Signor Candeo, came this way on their journey to Imé, three years before my visit, no European had reached either Durhi, Segag, or Imé.[40] My men said that Baudi was attacked by Rer Amáden robbers at these wells, and I saw the site of his camp, but had no means of verifying the report.

The Rer Amáden are the Ogádén tribe next to the south of the Malingúr, and they have pastures nearly as far as the Webbe Shabéleh river; and on the farther side of the Webbe the Gálla country begins in the west, and that of the Aulihán Somális in the east. My coast Somális had already begun intriguing to try and get me back to Berbera, as they fear the Gálla border; and my expedition nearly came to a premature conclusion through want of information and guides.

The country for many days was quite uninhabited. I wanted to send a message to the Rer Amáden, whom I had never seen, to let them know, as I have always done, if possible, when entering a new tribe after a stretch of uninhabited country, that my intentions were peaceful, but the whole of the waterless bush ahead being reported empty for forty miles, my messengers were afraid to go forward, and we had no information where the Amáden were, or whether they might attack us or not. There was also a chance of the messengers being killed by marauding Gállas.

My leave was drawing to a close, and my idea, long formed, of going to Imé and the Webbe Shabéleh seemed fated to disappointment. The Rer Amáden were reported by the Malingúr to be a very warlike and powerful tribe, and they had never yet seen an Englishman; so with my small party of twenty camelmen, further weakened by our having to detach scouts and messengers, it seemed rather risky to make a plunge into the country ahead without information.

After several ineffectual attempts to find out the Rer Amáden, or tracks of their grazing camels, I pushed on through uninhabited country along a good path leading southwards, and on 27th April we halted at Enleh. Here I determined to make one final attempt to communicate with the Amáden, and if unsuccessful, to return by the north-eastern route to the coast, now distant three hundred miles, going through the Malingúr, Sheikh Ash, Rer Ali, Rer Harún, Habr Gerhajis, and Habr Awal tribes.

We halted at Enleh from 27th April to 2nd May, waiting for the scouts to return to camp. I had chosen the two Ogádén guides, one of whom was a _widad_ named Yunis, and had given them large water-bottles and dates to carry in their hands, and had told them to look out for rain-water, and not to return for four days, unless they found the Amáden karias.

The whole of the country which we had passed over, after leaving the open Marar Prairie at Jig-Jiga, had been low and hilly, covered with thorn forest of no great height, and since leaving the Jerer Valley it had been much cut up by ravines and watercourses. The most important of these were the Tug Fáfan, which we crossed near Náno, and the Sullul and Daghatto streams.

At the seasons when it is occupied by the tribes, all this country gives excellent pasture, and supports horses, camels, cattle, donkeys, sheep, and goats; but there were no permanent settlements on this route between Hargeisa and the Webbe, a distance of about three hundred miles.

In parts of the Jerer Valley, notably at Dagahbúr, Haljíd, Harakleh, and Jig-Jiga, cultivation could be extensively carried on; in fact Dagahbúr was, not long ago, a thriving settlement, but it had to be abandoned for the usual reason, tribal feuds and the absence of any strong government. The Rer Amáden do not generally send caravans to trade at Berbera, but deal indirectly through the Sheikh Ash and Rer Ali.