CHAPTER VIII

FIRST JOURNEY TO THE WEBBE SHABÉLEH RIVER (_continued_)

Our camp at Enleh—Success of the Lee-Metford rifle—An oryx hunt—Abundance of game—A night alarm—Attempt to catch a zebra foal—Strange voices in the bush—News of the Rer Amáden—Jáma Deria—Advance into the Amáden country—Meeting with Sheikh Abdul Káder at Dambaswerer—Friendly reception by the Rer Amáden—Decide to make a dash for Imé—Fine view of the Webbe Valley—Difficulty and expense of a Somáli outfit—Close to Imé; doubtful as to our welcome—Cordiality of the Adone or Webbe negroes—Council of the elders; desire for an English treaty—Kind hospitality of Gabba Oboho, chief of Imé—A word for British management at the coast—Invited to return to the Webbe—Shoot two waterbuck—Return to Dambaswerer—Jáma Deria at home—Gálla raids—Extraordinary vitality of a Somáli—Jáma Deria’s avarice—Reputation of Rás Makunan—Oryx shot—A lion roars at night—Lion surprised stealing the carcase—Exciting hunt, and death of the lion—Sit up for lion at Durhi—Melancholy episode; Daura Warsama killed by a man-eater—Unsuccessful hunt—Clarke’s gazelle bagged—Oryx bull bagged—Artificial tanks—Form a camp for koodoo-hunting at Mandeira.

At Enleh our camp was pitched on some rising ground, devoid of bushes, but well covered with young grass, last year’s old grass having been burnt off. All around, except close to camp, was thorn forest from twenty to forty feet in height. Extensive jungle fires had occurred here during the dry season, and patches of young grass were springing up for two or three miles on every side. This is always the best condition of any locality for attracting game, particularly when the country is uninhabited.

I went out on the day of our arrival at Enleh and shot a zebra with my Lee-Metford rifle, the ammunition for the larger rifles having dwindled to only a few cartridges. At dusk I went after a very large herd of oryx, but, losing them by the faint moonlight a little later, I opened fire on several Sœmmering’s gazelles, and bagged two with as many shots from the Lee-Metford. This I found an excellent rifle, using a pin’s head for a foresight, the pin being wedged into the slit which was in the old pattern military weapon. We cut up the zebra and gazelles for the twenty-five men whom I had in camp, and the meat was soon disposed of.

On the 28th of April I got a Waller’s gazelle with the Lee-Metford, and in the evening I crossed a wide valley to the south of camp and fell in with oryx. We found them, a bull and a cow, in good stalking cover on the farther side of the valley, near some deserted zeríbas, with open thorn jungle and tempting young grass. On first sighting them, two hundred and fifty yards away to the east of us, grazing southwards, the wind blowing from south to north, I lay down with Géli and Hassan behind a thicket of high _durr_ grass and waited. The bull walked towards me, and then grazed for about ten minutes behind some bushes, the cow standing looking suspiciously in my direction. We continued lying down, and only looked up at long intervals, each with a bunch of grass held before the face. At last the bull appeared from behind the bushes; and sitting up, resting my elbows on my knees, I hit him with the Lee-Metford, and he made off at a gallop and hid in a deserted zeríba. Following on his tracks, I was within a yard of the zeríba before I saw the tips of his horns appearing over the brushwood, only six feet away from me. From the position of the horns I knew he was listening, and placing the muzzle of the rifle into the brushwood where his chest should be, I fired and sprang to one side, and he rushed away in the other direction at a gallop. I ran round the zeríba just in time to see him disappear in thick cover. Following, I took a quick shot at him as he crossed a glade one hundred and fifty yards away, and missed; and after another chase I ran on to him in thick cover, standing broadside on at fifteen yards, when I gave him a shot with a Winchester .500 Express. He walked off ten yards and stood again broadside on, looking at us; and then he dropped suddenly, stone dead.

A day or two later I went out shooting, and got a buck Waller’s gazelle, and in the chase lost Abokr and my camel; and after firing twelve signal shots unsuccessfully, I returned to camp. He afterwards turned up all right. In the evening I went out again, and got a pair of oryx out of a large galloping herd, emptying the Lee-Metford magazine at individual animals at ranges of from one hundred to three hundred yards. When after the oryx we found tracks of natives in the soil, and while walking home to camp after nightfall we heard distant singing, far out in the bush to the east. I told off a special guard, the men sleeping with their cartridge belts on, and doubled the sentries, keeping the first watch myself; the night, however, passed without incident.

The next morning I made for the remains of the two oryx, part of the meat of which we had not been able to take away, to see whether natives had been there. The spot in the bush was well marked by the vultures, which, having discovered the remains for the first time at break of day, were stooping in a slanting direction towards the place from all parts of the sky, wings extended and nearly motionless, legs stretched perpendicularly downwards. Except the vultures, and a large spotted hyæna which cantered lazily away from under a bush, nearly bursting with the banquet it had just had off the oryx, nothing had disturbed the neighbourhood. My men said the voices of the night before must have been those of “devils,” for we had gone far beyond the place whence the sound had appeared to come, and there was no track in the earth, and there had been no rain during the night to obliterate footmarks.

In the evening, the game never failing, taking my two hunters and a camelman, I followed some zebra, and by mistake shot a mare, which dropped out of the herd, and after going a short way fell dead. A foal, which I had not observed before, trotted after her, and stood a few yards from the body. This occurred in very thick country; and approaching noiselessly under cover of a thicket, ten yards from the dead zebra, we quietly constructed a slip-knot, loading the noose at intervals with bullets which my men tore with their teeth and spear-points from the cartridges in my belt. Going to the edge of the thicket, a yard or two from the foal, we tried to cast the noose over its head; but kicking up its heels it made off through the jungle. On the way home I fell in with a large herd of oryx, and shot three of them after a long hunt. We prepared the meat for transportation, covering it with bushes to keep off vultures, and marched back towards camp an hour before sunset. While still two miles from camp we heard voices hailing us from the east, but not knowing who might be calling, friend or foe, we decided to walk on to camp without answering the challenge. I only had three men with me, and, the voices issuing from several directions, we thought the sounds might possibly come from a force of Rer Amáden; so we continued walking towards camp, the hailing of the voices sounding sometimes close to us. They were so close that, as a precautionary measure, we four more than once grouped ourselves round the trunk of a tree, back to back, with rifles ready. The owners of the voices had evidently heard my rifle an hour or two before, and tried to hit off our whereabouts.

Arriving at camp, I found Yunis and the other guide, and three Amáden tribesmen, waiting by my tent. It was these men’s voices which we had heard in the bush. Yunis had good news to tell. He and his companions had come upon some Amáden, a small party of men who had wandered from the main karias of their tribe, which was encamped two days’ journey to the south. This party had come into the uninhabited country to collect gum-arabic, which they pick off the bushes, and send down to the coast tribes by small caravans, which return with cloth to the interior. The gum-pickers are always a very poor lot of people, often starving, and camping without flocks and herds, they undergo great hardships while carrying on their trade. The “devils” of the night before turned out to have been these gum-pickers, who, bivouacking in the bush in a small party without fires, had been shouting to scare lions, which had a bad reputation here. They had afterwards seen our fires and had retired, fearing Abyssinians; and following their tracks next day, my two guides had come up with them. The two Amáden offered on the morrow to guide us to their tribe and put us well on the road to Imé. They said that their headmen, the most important of whom were Sheikh Abdul Káder and Jáma Deria, had heard much of the Englishmen who were at Berbera, and wanted to see one and shake his hand!

At night came Jáma Deria and Hirsi, his son, mounted on white ponies. They slept in my camp. Jáma Deria was really a beautiful old man. He was a fine old fighting chief with a white beard, his features being well formed, but the complexion nearly black; he is the leading minstrel of the Rer Amáden tribe, and has composed songs which are sung on horseback in the _dibáltig_, and on other occasions, far and wide in Somáliland. His great hobby is lifting cattle and fighting with his neighbours, with the natural accompaniments, love of horseflesh and minstrelsy. I found Jáma Deria, despite his failings, to be a dear old man, with splendid qualities, although his character was rather spoilt by a strong tendency to stinginess; however, I subsequently became great friends with him. He expressed himself delighted that an Englishman had at last found out the Rer Amáden; he said the old men, young men, and children would all welcome me; and that he would lead me to the Sheikh (Abdul Káder) at Dambaswerer, where they hoped to keep me as long as I would stop. He said that he knew all the Imé tribes, who were very much afraid of him; and he hoped, now that the English were the friends of the Rer Amáden, he would be able to keep the Abyssinians[41] in their proper place.

On the 2nd of May we broke up our camp at Enleh early in the morning and marched to Galadúr, where we camped again. Old Jáma Deria and his son escorted me, and he was delighted to have been before the Sheikh in welcoming me to the country. He is a rival of the Sheikh, and has sometimes been his open enemy, having killed several of Abdul Káder’s relations; he keeps all the neighbouring tribes in a constant state of alarm, being a regular firebrand and loving a quarrel for its own sake.

As we advanced in the fresh morning air, the old man, in high spirits, would dash past me at full gallop, to display to the Englishman the quality of his pony and the red tassels on his saddle and bridle, returning after each circle to cry “_Mót!_” I could not help thinking of old Tarquin, in the _Lays of Ancient Rome_, whose spear, according to Macaulay, “shook more with hate than age.” A Somáli, poising his spear before throwing it, does it by a sudden jerk against the palm of his hand, causing the shaft to quiver; and he claims that this keeps it straight in the air, the effect being somewhat like that of the feathers on an arrow, or the twist caused by the rifling on a bullet.

As we got into a bit of open grass I shot a Sœmmering’s gazelle. The buck dropped in his tracks, and old Jáma, hastily dismounting and handing his mare to his son, paused an instant to whirl the free end of his tobe from his shoulder and to coil it round his waist, leaving the chest bare; and then, running like a two-year-old, he raced to the gazelle to perform the _halal_—that is, to sever the jugular with his short sword, without which operation all meat is _harám_, or unlawful, to a Mussulmán.

The youth who brought up the horses could not induce them to come near to the dead gazelle; so Jáma, mounting his beautiful young mare, which he said was “blood-shy” and required teaching, by voice and heel coaxed her up to the meat till she brought her dilated nostrils close to it. He made her jump over the buck several times before he was satisfied. The Amáden, who had perhaps never seen game shot before, examined the hole in the buck with great interest, Jáma remarking that the Abyssinians couldn’t do that near so well, and that the English were good people. He said that I was to be _his_ Englishman, and while in the country shoot him lots of zebra, as all the Amáden liked the meat very much.

During our evening march we were overtaken by a violent storm, the burst of the monsoon, which occurs very locally and at different dates in different places. We could not advance or retire, the camels having to stand loaded for over an hour up to their fetlocks in running water, with an impassable torrent a little distance off on either side, where all had been lately dry land; my cook Suleiman was caught by one of these streams while following the caravan; and he was turned over and over, and would have been drowned had we not gone to his assistance. After the storm had passed we had hard work to reach the top of the highest ground in the neighbourhood, a mile from where we had been caught, the camels slipping at every step on the sloping surfaces of soft red clay. It was the worst storm I have ever experienced, accompanied by constant thunder and vivid lightning. Lions roared in some nasty bush round our camp at night; luckily, however, they did not attack our horses; for the fuel on the spot being soaked, and it being too dark to send out to search for any, we could only make a small fire with a scanty supply which my cook Suleiman, always thoughtful, had wrapped up in a waterproof sheet and put on a camel just as the storm came on, for the preparation of my evening meal.

Next day, the 3rd May, we made a long march and reached Gullá. A lion roared at night, but he was on the farther side of a precipitous watercourse which he could not pass without going a great distance round; so he did not disturb my camp otherwise than by the grand music of his voice, which on the clear nights after heavy rain can be heard for miles, a performance which it was pleasant to lie awake and listen to.

On 4th May, crossing a beautiful stream called Samani at Bal Balaad, we marched to the Sheikh’s karia. Jáma Deria, who had been with us so far, now left us. As I rode up to Abdul Káder’s karia I was met by a dignified old man, who turned out to be the Sheikh himself, and I respectfully dismounted from the camel and shook hands; and the Sheikh, by way of emphasising the welcome, fumbled at the brim of my hat with outstretched hands to bless me, as is the custom, by touching my forehead and mumbling a few words of the Koran over me. Asking his permission through the interpreter, I ordered the men to pitch camp at once among the karias of the Amáden. I was received with enthusiasm by the Sheikh’s people, who are his own clan of the Amáden; his karias were also full of mullahs from every tribe. He gave me some sheep, and a camel worth twenty-five dollars, to be killed for my men, and a fat calf for myself; and lines of women came carrying large _háns_ decked with white beads and full of camel’s milk; and soon a long row of these vessels was set up at my tent door. In return I gave white shirting and red shawls, which are afterwards picked to pieces to make tassels for the saddlery. To the Sheikh’s principal wife I gave a red and blue tartan-patterned tobe worth four dollars, and a looking-glass; and to the other women I gave beads. As the Sheikh, supported by a thick stick and two stalwart sons, hobbled to my tent to pay me a formal call, I blew the alarm whistle and fell in all the men two deep, and loading with blank we fired two volleys in the air. Then, folding some red blankets and laying them over store boxes, I made the Sheikh and his sons and elders sit down. Abdul Káder, while sipping his coffee, his eyes wandering continually over the strange objects in my tent, and his fingers picking absently at my blankets, promised to do all he could for me, remarking significantly that he heard English people did not burn karias and murder women!

The hundreds of assembled tribesmen listened in silence to the sentences murmured in a high cracked voice by the old man, who had lost all his front teeth. Some of his small children, or perhaps grandchildren, naked and dusty, clung round the poles of my tent, sucking their thumbs, and gazing calmly at the first white man they had ever set eyes on! A dozen horsemen of the Rer Amáden then went through the _dibáltig_, covering us with dust, and the minstrel, sitting in the saddle facing my tent, gave me, appropriately put into verse, complaints against the neighbours of the Amáden, which, as a representative of the English, I was expected to settle, this place being about three hundred and thirty miles inland.[42]

While in camp here I set up a large astronomical telescope and turned it upon Jáma Deria’s karia, a few miles away on the side of a hill. The people came in crowds to look through this at all hours of the day, with a running fire of comments, such as, “By Allah! that is Jáma’s white cow. How big! like an elephant,” and so forth. The mullahs flocked round my tent begging for white paper to write sentences from the Koran, which are subsequently enclosed in a leather bag and sold, to be worn round the neck as a charm to stave off ill-luck. I gave the mullahs several _tusbas_ or scented prayer-chaplets made of black wooden beads and worn as necklaces. There is a superstition that a Somáli who wears a _tusba_ and does not count the beads in prayer at the regular times will be choked by the _tusba_ in revenge.[43]

Late at night, in the pitch darkness before the moon had risen, a small child, a little girl of seven, came over from one of the karias to my camp, begging for food, as she was starving. She had braved the terrible danger of hyænas, which swarm between the karias at night, to cross to my camp; so giving her some oryx meat and cooked rice, I sent her back under escort to her own habitations. I suspect this poor child had no relations. “I cannot help the child; it is not of my clan,” is too often the answer given by great healthy Somális on being accused of heartlessness. This is not due to natural ferocity of character, but to thoughtlessness, what is everybody’s business being nobody’s business; and the little sufferers starve and die.

Abdul Káder and Jáma Deria were both particularly glad to help me on to Imé, because for some months past the Amáden had been at war with the Adone or negroes at Imé; and Jáma Deria thought this would be a good opportunity of reopening negotiations. The country between the Sheikh’s karia and Imé was uninhabited for seventy-five miles, and the people told us that while passing over this tract we would be exposed to the risk of meeting Arussi Gálla wandering bands. It appeared that Jáma Deria and Abdul Káder, though jealous of one another, had settled their differences for the time being in order to assist me, and we arranged that Jáma and his son, and Abdul Káder’s son and another Amáden, should guide me to Imé on the 5th of May.

There being very little of my leave remaining, I decided that there would not be time to take the slowly-travelling caravan so far, and that it would be better to leave it, under command of a good camelman, encamped at Abdul Káder’s karias at Dambaswerer, while with my interpreter, two hunters, and four of the Amáden, I should ride to Imé and back. The distance would be about one hundred and fifty miles, according to the natives, and with the help of my mule and two Arab camels and five Amáden ponies, without any camp equipage, we hoped to accomplish a short stay at Imé and to be back again at Dambaswerer within six days. A glance at the map will show the confidence we felt in the friendship of the natives of Ogádén, to be able to cut ourselves adrift from the caravan in unexplored country so far in the interior. Imé is four hundred miles from the coast, and Dambaswerer is seventy-five miles short of Imé. In 1884, at the time of Mr. F. L. James’s journey to the Shabéleh district to the south-east, such a ride would have been very hazardous; but since then things have been changing for the better every day.

Our cavalcade thus consisted of seven mounted Somális and myself, four of us having rifles, the other four only shields and spears. In the saddle-bags on the two Arab camels Abokr and I carried a few blankets and necessaries, and a bag of coffee, and for meat we depended on the game we expected to fall in with. We rode during the whole of 5th May, with a short interval to rest and cast loose the camels at noon; and at 5 P.M. we halted by the side of a pool of rain-water, hobbled the animals, lit a fire, and threw ourselves down in a circle round it to sleep, one man keeping watch over the animals. At 3 A.M. we were again on the move, and began to descend a long slope cut up by deep ravines, which falls to the Webbe Shabéleh river. We lost ourselves among impassable, precipitous watercourses several times; the guides, however, always managed, after much difficulty, to regain the path, which had been grown over with grass, and, because of the Amáden raids, had been unused for a year. We reached the Webbe Shabéleh at Imé at 1.30 P.M., having done the seventy-five miles in thirty-two hours at a moderate pace without a change of animals.

As we neared Imé the view became very fine. The Shabéleh or Haines river lay before us, flowing in a tortuous course from north-east to south-west, its banks marked by a line of very tall casuarina-trees, with dense undergrowth of many varieties of evergreen bush of great size and beauty. The lines of high trees, following the winding river banks, and covering the long narrow islands, reminded me of the banks of the Seine at Rouen, the casuarina growing in the shape of a poplar. The tall tops of these trees are constantly waving when there is any breeze at all, the gray-green foliage reflecting the light and giving a peculiarly lively character to the landscape. On the southern side were two low rocky hills, rising from the alluvial plain, wooded round their base; and in these woods, which were crowned by tall graceful “toddy” palms like those of India, lay the large cluster of beehive villages of the Adone, which are collectively called Imé.

Most of the open flats near the river banks are cultivated by these negroes, or are left as pasture-land, to be grazed over by the Adone cattle and by the frequent herds of water antelopes and Sœmmering’s gazelles. Behind the broad river valley, some fifteen miles to the south, rose a wall of lofty blue mountains, piled in picturesque confusion of peak and plateau to a height which I judged to be not less than eight or nine thousand feet above sea-level. The long slope of broken ground rising from the river to the base of the mountains was covered over its entire surface with monotonous thorn jungle. The Arussi Gállas, who are camel-owning nomads like the Somális, occupy these mountainous districts. These highlands are mysterious and attractive to the traveller, for the reason that no European penetrated them until the entry of the two well-armed expeditions of Captain Bottiga and of Prince Ruspoli, which, so far as I could ascertain from the Somális, were even then fighting their way through the Gálla tribes in front of me.

The difficulty and expense of fitting out a Somáli expedition may be realised when it is explained that in the four or five hundred miles between Berbera and Imé, on the routes I took, there was no permanent village. The karias are merely Somáli temporary kraals, and the huts are packed on camels when the natives move for change of pasture three or four times in the year; and in all my journeys, except during the week’s visit to Harar, I was never able to obtain anything but occasionally milk and mutton or other meat. Rations of rice, dates, and clarified butter were carried for the men for every day we spent in the interior; also water-casks capable of supplying us for six days when crossing the Haud. All these supplies had to be carried on camel-back, making a very large caravan for four and a half months, which was the time that elapsed before we returned to Berbera, and during which we covered about one thousand two hundred miles of route. By much cutting down of weight I had managed to do with thirty-three baggage camels, each carrying two hundred and seventy-five pounds, the cost price of each camel being £2. I took no furniture, sleeping on the ground or on camel-mats laid over store-boxes, in a double-fly tent weighing eighty pounds.

As we rode over the flats near the river, I sent Jáma Deria and his son forward to the villages, hidden among the palm clusters two thousand yards away, to warn Gabba Oboho, the Adone chief of Imé, of our arrival. He took, wrapped up in the end of his tobe, an Arabic letter from Sheikh Abdul Káder. With the other five Somális I sat down under a shady _gudá_ tree in the open plain and awaited developments, at the same time hobbling the animals and turning them out to graze.

This was an exciting crisis in the course of my expedition. Between my advanced party and the camp which we had left behind at Dambaswerer lay seventy-five miles of uninhabited wilderness. We were eight men in all, with four rifles. A mile away from us was a cluster of more than a dozen large villages teeming with suspicious and ignorant negroes, who were of a different race, and had lately been the enemies of the Amáden Somális who formed my escort. The only white men they had ever seen were Baudi and Candeo, and possibly Robecchi, and the party of Italians which had lately gone into Gállaland under circumstances by no means peaceful.

While we were waiting in suspense watching the long dark masses of beehive huts, the smoke of wood fires curling up among the palm-trees, and wondering what reception the first Englishman would meet at the hands of the Adone, a Sœmmering’s gazelle came along cropping at the short grass till within range of our tree. Unable to resist the tempting shot, resting my elbows on my knees, I fired, and dropped him dead. I had now given the alarm! We knew that all the villages had heard the shot, and so we caught all the animals, and tethering them to our tree, sat in a semicircle round them, knowing that if the Imé people should prove hostile we were in for it, and half expecting to see Jáma and his son come galloping to us in a cloud of dust followed by an excited, spear-throwing mob, which we might have to stop with our four rifles!

At the end of a quarter of an hour of suspense, Jáma Deria and his son appeared as two dots issuing from the forest and galloped up to us; and after circling their ponies a few times in triumph, and crying “_Mót!_” they dismounted, and shook hands with us all round delightedly, in the good old Somáli way, and we knew the suspense was over. Two good-natured-looking, flat-nosed negroes, who had followed behind them, then ran up, laughing, and shook hands. They were naked save a piece of dirty tobe thrown carelessly over the shoulders. They explained, through my interpreter, that Gabba Oboho had told them to bid me welcome to Imé; we were to drink first at the river, and then come to his village, where he was waiting with his counsellors to receive us.

Jáma Deria said that he and his son had suddenly come on the two Adone just inside the forest, and they, recognising the Amáden saddlery, had run at him spear in hand; but circling his horse round the bushes, he avoided them, and shouted out in Somáli the purport of Abdul Káder’s letter to Gabba Oboho. He had then left the letter on the ground, and retired a little way. The Adone picked up the letter, and were arguing whether this was a ruse or not, when they heard my shot at the Sœmmering’s gazelle, and knew that Jáma Deria had spoken the truth, and that an Englishman had really come. And so they had run off to tell Gabba Oboho, at his hut in the nearest village. The shot had had a very different effect in the other Imé villages, for the inhabitants had ferried the women and children across the river on rafts, to a place of refuge, believing the gun to have been fired by an Abyssinian force; and when we advanced into Imé we saw them perched in hundreds among the caves and recesses of the small hills across the water; but on seeing us enter the first village peacefully, and observing our meeting with their chief, they soon flocked down to look at the wonderful stranger.

We rode through a succession of _jowári_ fields to the river. After we had allayed our thirst, our guides led us to a large _darei_, or fig-tree, standing in a small glade, and here we found Gabba Oboho and all the elders of the Adone seated in solemn conclave on the grass, to the number of about a hundred. My advent was a great event to these negroes, whose dull lives are only enlivened by Abyssinian or Amáden raids, and who live their otherwise quiet existence on the banks of the Webbe, cultivating the ground or herding cows.

I walked through the throng to Gabba Oboho; and shaking hands with him and a dozen of the nearest counsellors, and spreading a camel-mat in the centre of the circle, I sat down with Adan Yusuf, my interpreter, sending the rest of my party away with the animals to get fodder and cook their evening meal. The greeting of the negroes was very friendly; they pressed round me, feeling my Elcho boots and admiring the leather and particularly the laces, pinching the material of my corduroy breeches; and taking off my canvas shooting hat, which was passed round with a buzz of wonder and then politely handed back to me. Gabba Oboho could not conceal his curiosity, and asked me why my arm was brown outside and white under the sleeve; so I gave a lecture on the effect of the sun on the European skin to an open-mouthed and admiring audience.

Gabba, now managing to secure silence, in the course of a long oration said he was glad an Englishman had come; that he and all the headmen wished to sign a paper with my Government, that all the inhabitants of the Webbe were “subjects” of the English, who, they had often heard, were good people; and he now wished to know at once whether I had brought the paper, so that he might make his mark. He stopped, and the expectant crowd waited for my reply. I explained that I had not been ordered to visit the country and had brought no paper; that I had come to look for wild animals and to see the great river, the Webbe, of which during some years I had heard so much; that the English wished to be friends with all people, and the officer who signed papers lived at Aden, more than twenty days’ journey, as they knew, to the north. I found it difficult to make them understand the difference between a British officer on duty and one on leave, and a subdued buzz of disapproval showed that they were not half satisfied with my reply.

An Adone elder pointed to our mule, and asked where we had got it; and on hearing it was a present from Rás Makunan, he said, “Ah! it is as we feared, you English have sold us to the Amhára!” I said the English had done nothing of the kind. I also told the elders that the English would be pleased if more caravans came trading to Berbera, and that Government would assist such caravans in every way possible. Gabba Oboho then led me, through an avenue of high palm-trees, to the nearest village, and into a dirty courtyard occupied by two cows and some goats, in the corner of which his own huts stood. He had turned out of the largest and caused it to be swept for my use; and he gave my followers a raised platform of wicker-work, outside the hut, to sleep upon.

I remained in the village all the evening, receiving the visits of the leading natives and a dense crowd of men, women, and children, constantly pressing round the hut, old Gabba now and then angrily whipping them off with a cowhide whip. The elders of Imé were very friendly indeed; and the climax was reached when one venerable, pointing to his hut in the distance, said I might have it if so disposed, and his best wife into the bargain; and he patted one of the surrounding females on the head. She was by no means a beauty; and turning to him and smiling blandly, I answered, “_Labadi donei-máyu_” (I don’t want either of them), much to the amusement and delight of his second-best wives.

The headmen asked me many questions about Europe; and whether I thought the Italians could conquer Abyssinia if so disposed; and which was the greatest nation in the world. To this poser I replied, “Allah knows; we are all strong,” whereat they exclaimed to one another, “He tells the truth; if he were a liar he would say the English were the strongest.” It speaks well for the management of affairs on our North Somáli coast, that although these people were so far in the interior that they had hitherto never seen one of my countrymen, yet they knew and felt respect for the English name.

The Adone living at Imé have been great cultivators of _jowári_, which they eat; but they declared that the Abyssinians had been there some months before my visit, had shot several people, and taken off live-stock; and that they sent emissaries occasionally to collect tribute. Many of the Imé people have therefore left Imé and have gone to Karanleh, another large collection of villages three marches down the river to the east; and they say that Karanleh has now become the more important place. The Imé people certainly seemed very poor and very timid. They were afraid to go outside the palisades of the villages at night, and they held Jáma Deria and the Amáden in great awe. Gabba Oboho said that if I wanted to shoot buffaloes, hippopotami, and giraffes, I must go three days’ march to the south, to the Webbe Web, which is a tributary of the Webbe Ganána or Juba river, and that the people there were Gurré Gállas. He represented them to be “good people,” and that if I were a friend of his they would be pleased to see me, if I did not loot or fight with them; and that I had better go to Berbera and return in two months’ time, when our camels would be able to ford the Webbe. He said that for my caravan to cross on their clumsy rafts in the present flooded state of the river would take from four to seven days.

My leave was now coming to an end. I had already asked for an extension, but to find out whether it was granted I had to make all haste to the coast. We stayed four days at Imé hunting for the _balanka_ or waterbuck, which is unobtainable anywhere in Somáliland except on the Webbe. Crowds of Adone thrust themselves on us during our rambles, hoping to get meat. I found the sport in the Webbe valley very interesting, though the heat was great, intensified by the high buffalo-grass through which we had to force our way. We were generally out on foot all day, often going to the river to rest in the cool, dense forest which clothes the banks for a hundred yards on either side of the stream. I shot two waterbuck, thinking, on account of their small size, that they must be a new species. But later experience on a second trip proved them to be young ones.

We found the cotton-bush flourishing wild on the river banks, and heard that cotton is grown farther to the east, towards the Shabéleh district. The name of this river at Imé is not the Webbe Shabéleh, but the Webbe Sidáma, which, I heard, is the Gálla name for the river. Shabéleh appears to be the name of the district through which the river runs at the point where Mr. F. L. James’s expedition struck it in 1884. The chief sources of the Juba are the Webbe Web, Webbe Ganána, and Webbe Dau, in order from north to south. The Imé people were calling their own river simply the Webbe (River).

I had now only time to ride back to the Rer Amáden karias at Dambaswerer, where my caravan was, and then to go quickly for thirty marches, occupying fifteen days, to Berbera. Bidding good-bye to our friends the Adone, we left at 2.50 P.M. on the 9th May for Dambaswerer, mounted on the same animals which had brought us to the Webbe. We rode till late at night, sleeping as before in the open, and at 3 A.M. resumed our ride, and going on with two short intervals for repose, we reached Dambaswerer at sunset on the same day. The sturdy Abyssinian mule which I rode came in first, then the two Arab camels, and last the five Amáden on their ponies, straggling in one by one; these latter were very much done up, having been in bad condition at starting.

Rás Makunan’s mule had been a marvel of staying capacity throughout the journey, and I would never wish for a better animal for steady work. The Arab trotting camels from Aden are excellent, having both speed and endurance; and a certain amount of kit can be carried on them in saddle-bags in addition to the rider.

On the evening of 11th May we parted from Abdul Káder, and made an evening march to Jáma Deria’s own karia. Here we remained one night, leaving early for our northern journey. Jáma Deria’s people received me with enthusiasm, the crowds pressing round the camp. Their great delight was the coloured picture in the Zoological Society’s _Proceedings_ of the Somáli wild ass, which had become so dirty and so battered by handling that I had mounted it upon the cover of a packing-case to keep it together. The people fought with each other to get round me and see it; those who had not seen the picture kept besieging my camp, crying out, “Show us the picture.” I showed the women, as a great favour, a coloured print from an illustrated paper of two pretty English girls skating, which raised a clamour of admiration, one stout _gabad_ (maiden), with tresses reeking with butter, calling out, “Why did Allah make us black and these white?” The men beginning to crowd round, and the remarks becoming too demonstrative, I put away the picture amid deep groans of disappointment. The men of the tribe sat round my tent in a dense mass as I produced a book of engravings of the Franco-Prussian war, from the pictures of Détaille and De Neuville, and as I explained each picture through the interpreter their faces became grave at the thought of so many white men fighting with rifles together, and of the numbers of dead. Contrary to my expectation they thoroughly understood all the pictures, liking, of course, the coloured ones the best. The snow upon the ground was the hardest thing to explain, but I had men among my escort who had been to London and Marseilles, as firemen on steamers, and I left it to them. Some of the people said, “It is all very wonderful; why are we not like the English, who have so big a name? Why has Allah given us nothing and you everything?”

Jáma’s people told me the Abyssinians were sending a strong expedition into the Arussi Gálla country shortly. They said also that last year the Arussi Gállas came from the direction of Daghatto in the north-west, and destroyed ten karias of the Amáden in a single night. A nephew of Jáma Deria, an actively built, tall young man, came to me saying he heard all white men were doctors, and would I examine him? and throwing the loose end of his tobe from his shoulder he exposed a ghastly wound. A small throwing spear had entered a few inches below the left nipple, and passing through his body, had protruded at the back between the shoulder blades. The wound at the back had healed, but the larger wound in the breast, nearly an inch wide, was open and discharging freely. Asking when the wound had been received, I was astonished to learn that it had been in a fight with some Gálla robbers in the previous _Gu_, or heavy rains, at least ten months before. The man had lived, and had latterly been going about his business, with the wound unhealed. He seemed thin, but otherwise not much the worse. I made him a big poultice, and advised him to take care of himself and not catch cold, and he and his relations went away, believing in my treatment. I was glad to hear from Jáma Deria, on coming this way four months later, that the man was still alive, and getting well; and I feel certain that the healthy, dry air of this elevated country, combined with total abstinence from liquor, and diet consisting almost entirely of camel-milk, gives a wound a much better chance than it would have under other circumstances.

Jáma Deria begged for everything in my tent on the evening of my arrival; he very much wanted a coloured plaid, and I found out privately that he had forbidden Gabba Oboho to ask for it when I left Imé, saying I had promised it to himself. He never, however, succeeded in making me part with it. He begged hard for my revolver, and I let him fire at an ant-hill. His womenfolk and all his relations begged me not to give it to him, for they said, “If you give that dreadful old man a pistol there will be no staying in the country; he will go and murder Abdul Káder and his sons, and will then go and make war on the Karanleh people.” On my shaking him off next morning, as I did after he had ridden by my side for four miles, always begging the coveted plaid and revolver, he finally shook hands with evident regret, saying he hoped I would come back and bring plenty of English with me, they would all be welcome; and I was to mind and let him know beforehand by a mounted messenger, so that he might have time to come and welcome us before his enemy, Sheikh Abdul Káder, could forestall him. A crowd followed us for quite a mile from the karias, saying they were sorry we were going; the English were their friends, and the Amhára would be afraid to do anything now.

I may here mention that Rás Makunan of Harar is the only Abyssinian whose name carries with it any respect in Ogádén. He has the reputation for trying to be just; and Somális say that if they could gain access to him the tyrannies of frontier Abyssinians would be stopped.

On the evening of the 12th May, the day on which I had parted from Jáma Deria, we went on to a place in the uninhabited thorn bush called Anamaleh. It having been a very hot day and the camels being tired, at an hour before sunset we halted. While the men were engaged in pitching the camp, taking my .577 Express rifle, I strolled off quite alone into the bush to the east to look for gazelles. Getting on to a slight rise, I found myself on the top of a plateau, and here I tried to stalk two of the red Waller’s gazelles; but, hearing the noise made by my men pitching camp four hundred yards away, they made off. I then walked through open thorn jungle till I suddenly came on two oryx, which galloped away, but by a rapid shot as they were disappearing among the trees I brought one to the ground. Firing three more shots as signals, I brought up Géli and Hassan, and we carried the skull and haunches to camp, leaving the rest of the meat on the ground.

I always gave orders to my sentries to wake me if they heard a lion roar, because it is a sound which is not often heard, even in Somáliland, where lions are so plentiful; and it is always so interesting to hear. This night the sentry called me at 1 A.M., and at first I heard the low moans of a lion a mile or two away; then, after half an hour of silence, just as I was falling asleep, we again heard him roar louder, and, as it seemed, at the spot where we had left the oryx meat the evening before. He was heard again during the night; and so when I was awakened by the intense cold which precedes the dawn I roused Suleiman the cook, and then swallowing a cup of hot coffee, I prepared for a lion hunt. I told Adan Yusuf to take charge of the caravan and march about ten miles, and that we would, after the hunt, pick up the tracks of the camels; and he was to have the tent pitched and dinner ready at the noon camp awaiting my arrival.

As the sun rose I took a trotting camel, the mule, Daura Warsama, Abokr, the two hunters Géli and Hassan, and a Malingúr guide, with blankets, water-bottles, and dried meat; and we made straight for the spot where we had left the dead oryx, knowing well that we should find fresh lion tracks round the body. There was no oryx, but looking on the ground we saw last night’s story; a heap of half-digested grass and stains of blood all over the ground showed where the lion had cleaned the carcase, and the trail where he had dragged it away led to the north-east over smooth red earth; and we easily followed it, dotted as it was occasionally by the broad pugs of the lion.

After we had gone a mile we came to a glade of yellow grass about three feet high, and in the centre of this glade, which was a quarter of a mile broad, were three or four low, flat, _khansa_ mimósas growing close together. Three foxes ran out from these, going off at different angles, and looking beyond the bushes we saw the lion dragging the carcase slowly over the ground, and keeping the bushes between himself and us. He looked grayish black, and I could see over the top of the grass that he had a fine mane. The distance was about one hundred and twenty yards, and as I thought he had winded us, and there was no time to be lost, I sat down, and holding the rifle, rested my elbows on my knees to fire. But I could see nothing over the bushes, so I again rose to my feet, and seeing he was still holding on into the open, pulling along the carcase, I walked up closer, keeping under cover of the bushes, and then I sat down again, holding the sights of the rifle fixed on a gap in the bushes where I expected to see his dark mane and head appear. He duly walked on, and his body was in full view in the gap when I fired. The shock told loudly, and answering it with a short and rather dismal roar, he bounded away at a good pace, dropping the carcase of the oryx; and crossing the grass he rushed into a long, dark jungle of mimósas, and we lost sight of him for the time. The remains of the oryx, consisting of the shoulders, ribs, and half the spine, lay where the lion had dropped them on being hit, and the path he had taken was plainly visible by the blood which had been plentifully sprinkled and smeared on the blades of the grass as he went along.

The hunt became more exciting as we followed into the dense _khansa_ bushes, whose flat, wide-spread tops, meeting at a height of about five feet, formed very dark alleys, through which, however, the lion had kept on at the same pace. We skirted along a hundred yards to our right, to a thin place in the covert, and then crossing and searching the farther edge we found his tracks leading out into another glade, and so, leaving the jungle behind, we held on after him. Finding he had gone into another of these dark _khansa_ jungles, we made a circuit round the outside till we were opposite to where he had gone in; but we found he had not left the _khansa_, so we continued round the edge till we came to the point where we had abandoned the tracks as they entered the jungle.

He was therefore evidently in the covert, which we had ringed completely, and there was nothing to be done but to follow him by the blood along these dark alleys till we came on him. We should find one of three things: either the lion would be seen by us alive in the covert, where I hoped to shoot him; or we should find he had bounded away in front of us; or we should find him lying dead. Following a wounded lion into the _khansa_ is very exciting work, because if he charges there is so little room that it is possible one may shoot a man instead of the lion; and also when pressing through with rifle at full cock, the slightest catching of the trigger or hammers in the branches would cause an accident. It is almost impossible to move through these thorns without a sound, and the lion, if he is crouching, can mark your progress towards him, and will certainly see you first.

Moving into the thicket yard by yard, we found where the lion had been lying while we had been walking round him on the outside; and he had got up and bounded away and out of the cover, his pugs on the soft sand outside, where the grass was thin, being over my boot-marks, showing that he had only just gone. We followed this lion for nearly three miles, through glades of grass and dense strips of _khansa_, taking the precaution to “ring” each strip to ascertain whether he had gone out on the farther side, thereby avoiding much unnecessary danger and loss of time. Many times he had managed to sneak away without being seen when we were close to him; so, as the sun was now hot, and we were very much done up with the hard work, we sat down to consult; we thought also that if we left him sitting in one place long enough to get his wounds stiff, there would be more chance of coming up with him. We decided it would be best for Abokr, Daura, and the Malingúr, with the mule and camel, to follow very slowly on the tracks, thus driving the lion in front of them, while, with my two hunters Géli and Hassan, I made a circuit round to the front, and sat in the grass, ready to fire at the lion in case he should sneak past us. We tried this twice without success; but the third time the party with the camel followed the tracks into a strip of _khansa_ half a mile long, its length being in the direction in which we were going. Under the bushes it was so dark that sometimes we could scarcely see the sights of our rifles. The lion, if lying anywhere in this, would be certain to sneak away under cover, and if I went quickly along outside and sat down where the bushes were thin, as the cover was only about a hundred yards wide, he could not pass without our seeing him.

We ran on along the edge of the jungle, and getting to a thin place we sat down to wait for the slowly-moving men and animals to drive the lion to us. I had scarcely settled down when Hassan gently patted me on the back and pointed ahead, and there was the lion already stealing along in front, limping painfully. The distance was ninety yards, and sitting down and aiming at him over the grass I hit him again, the bullet catching him in his already lacerated forearm. We crouched to see under the smoke, which hung in the damp grass (for there had been heavy rain in the early part of the night), and we heard his growl as he sprang into the mimósas. Hassan spied him again two hundred yards farther on, as we were running to try and keep him in sight, and bringing myself to a halt suddenly and putting up the rifle, I fired again, catching him in the shoulder. He roared again and fell in the bushes. We advanced, and thought he had gone on; and we were about to run after him when Daura, who had come up, pointed him out to me crouching in the thick bushes thirty yards away, his head between his paws. We all stood still, and then as I moved sideways to try and spot him he gave a low growl. I could not see him plainly, but fired into the dark yellow mass which Daura had shown me, and which I believed to be the lion. The shot told loudly as if hitting bone, and all was silent, the yellow patch remaining in the same place. We then walked round the mimósa bush through which I had fired, and found the lion lying on his side, unconsciously gnawing his wounded forearm. As we stood over him he showed signs of reviving, and I gave him another shot. He was a fine lion, and we were very glad at the successful end to our hard work.

Allowing my men to skin the lion, I retired to the shade of a spreading _khansa_, and opening a haversack which had been brought on the camel, I made a hearty lunch of oryx meat and water. We then put the skull and wet lion-skin on the camel, and after another hour or two, following the tracks of the caravan, we found the camp pitched and my tent ready. My men, of course, all insisted on shaking hands in congratulation. The skin of the lion when pegged out in camp measured nine feet six inches. He was an old fellow, with a good deal of gray in his mane.

We left Géli and Hassan to rest under the trees and watch the skin of the lion, which we had stretched to dry in the hot sun for two hours, and telling them towards sunset to pick up the skin and bring it on to the evening camp, we went on to a place called Dólababa. We made three more marches through an extensive forest of _khansa_ called Dúd Libah, or the “Lion’s Forest,” and in this I knocked over a buck lesser koodoo.

On the 15th we again came among natives, at a place called Tálla. There were five karias here, and the people, who were Rer Amáden, welcomed us warmly. I sat up for a lion in a zeríba, but without success. The people said that lions were eating men daily to the north, at the Malingúr karias a few marches ahead. This was good news, but the sequel was to be a sad one!

Passing through my old camp at Segag, I made a short trip into the Daghatto Valley, but bagged nothing at first, although there were many lion tracks about. While hunting along the river on the evening of the 18th, I shot a beautiful lesser koodoo buck; and returning towards sunset, when nearing camp we detected a lioness in the grass, but she saw us first, and a hurried shot missed her as she bounded away. She had been stalking my camels which were scattered round camp feeding before being driven in for the night.

Four marches more, during which we experienced heavy thunder-storms, brought us to Durhi, the place where, on coming from Berbera, we had found the Malingúr burying a woman who had been killed by a lion. The two large karias between which we had formerly camped were deserted. I made a zeríba outside camp, and sat up unsuccessfully for lions in it on the night of 19th May. My men made a great noise, singing in chorus to attract lions; and Daura Warsama, one of my best men, led the singing, sometimes running out into the dark night and calling, “_Libaha káli, kaleiya, Sirkál-ki wa dóneiya!_” (Oh, lion, come; the Sahib wants you!) Daura was a fine fellow, whom I had engaged at Bulhár, belonging to the Jibril Abokr tribe. He and the interpreter, Adan Yusuf, were older than most of the men, who were almost boys, and, like many of the Jibril Abokr, in his youth he had been a great raider. He was always full of fun, danced well, and led the men’s amusements, and was the most popular man in camp, as well as the smartest I had out of a particularly good lot. Daura had been with me on five expeditions during 1891-93. On this trip, since we had left Harar, I had given him charge of Rás Makunan’s mule, as he knew a good deal about horses.

Finding the lions had left Durhi, having, no doubt, followed the karias, as lions will, we struck camp next morning and made for Dagaha Madóba,[44] where we expected to find the Malingúr. The whole of the ground between Durhi and Dagaha Madóba appeared to be hidden under an unbroken expanse of _khansa_ bush, covering the low hills and wave-like undulations of the country as far as the eye could reach on every side. Game was plentiful, and we saw Sœmmering’s and Waller’s gazelles, zebra and oryx. I shot two zebras and wounded an oryx in the course of a long hunt which took me several miles to the south-east of the caravan track. When I first came on the zebras at about 9 A.M., Abokr was riding the Arab camel far behind me, and the party with me consisted of my two hunters Géli and Hassan, and Daura Warsama, while I rode my mule. I had been riding armed only with a pistol, Daura carrying my Express rifle; and when we saw the zebras and I dismounted, Daura pushed the rifle into my hands, and jumping into the saddle with a switch in his own hand, took the mule away to the rear to join Abokr, and, as I thought, arm himself with one of the rifles which were on the camel, while Géli, Hassan, and I ran after the zebras.

At the end of the hunt, more than an hour afterwards, while we were cutting up the zebra meat, Abokr came up leading the camel and mule, and looking put out. He said he had caught the mule, which he had found galloping about riderless, and he thought that Daura must have come to some harm from Gálla marauders.

Carefully going back to where Abokr had caught the mule, and taking up the back trail, we met two Malingúr, the first we had seen for some days; and answering to our anxious inquiries they first, native-like, said they knew nothing, and then that they had seen marks in the ground, showing that a lion had carried away a man. Promising a reward, I took these men as guides, and they led us to a small ravine, where, on examining the sand, we found what had been poor Daura’s fate. While he had been quietly riding along at a walk across the ravine a lioness had rushed upon the mule, which, shying, had thrown Daura upon the ground and galloped away. The lioness had sprung upon Daura, and after a struggle, as was shown by the state of the sand, killed him; and his stick, broken in three places, lay on the scene of the fight. The lioness had then dragged him away into the jungle, up a slope covered with thick _khansa_ bushes; and following at a run, we saw pieces of red-bordered waist-cloth, which we knew to be Daura’s, hanging to the thorn bushes; later on the piece of leather, enclosing a verse of the Koran, which he had worn round his neck, and the pouch, with a jag and piece of oiled rag, with which he had been accustomed to clean his own rifle, and which he had always carried, attached to an old luggage-strap, round his waist. On coming to some very large and dense _khansa_ bushes a little ahead of the men, I at last found Daura’s body. Every vestige of clothing had been torn off by the bushes. There were twenty holes in his throat from the teeth of the lioness, and his right leg had been bitten off at the hip, leaving a foot of the thigh-bone protruding. His hands and cheeks were also bitten through, showing that he had fought for his life; and it seemed particularly hard luck that he of all my men had been caught thus unarmed, for he was the best shot in the party, and would have been well able to defend himself if he had only carried the Martini-Henry which was usually in his possession.

The lioness had disappeared; so wrapping Daura’s body in a waterproof sheet, and roping it up on to a camel, I started the men off for camp, and cantered on ahead on the mule to give orders for a grave to be dug. I had first asked my men to help me follow the lioness up at once, but they insisted that Daura must be buried first.

As I reined up in camp the camelmen came to me smiling to say “_Salaam aleikum_,” expecting to hear that I had bagged a lion, which had made me late. Passing those in front I rode into the zeríba quietly and said, “Daura is dead.” A curious change came over all the men, who stood about awkwardly, not knowing where to look; and when I told off men for the burying party, and another party to follow the lioness with me, the men moved about dreamily as if not understanding the calamity which had fallen upon them. Some one said, “Not Daura? Not our Daura?” and they only realised what had happened when Daura’s body was brought up on the camel and laid on the grass before them.

I determined to devote the next twenty-four hours to hunting up the lioness, and having organised a party of trackers, I left the remainder of the men to bury my follower, and we started off on foot for the _khansa_ thicket where we had found the body. We described a circle at fifty yards’ distance from the thicket, the ground being very stony and covered with bushes, when we at last came upon the track of the lioness; and following this for three miles over most difficult ground, always covered with dense thickets, at sunset we gave it up.

Returning to camp I chanced to look round, when my eye fell upon the lioness, her head being raised above a tuft of grass in a passage between two _khansa_ bushes.[45] Turning round I took a quiet pot shot at her; a lioness’s head half hidden in grass, at ninety yards’ distance and in the dusk, is not a good target, and before I could see under the smoke I knew that I had missed, for there was only the ringing of the metal of my rifle in my ears, and no answering thud of the bullet hitting flesh. Running up to the spot on which she had been crouching, we examined the track where she had bounded away, and holding the trail for a quarter of a mile through the thick covert, and with the greatest difficulty, the men kneeling over displaced gravel, broken twigs, and other scanty evidences of her passage, and finding no sign of blood, we gave her up and sadly made for camp, which was reached an hour or two after dark.

On the next day we again took up the signs from where we had left them, slight rain having fallen in the night; and search as we would, we could never find any indication of her having stayed in the neighbourhood. All the tracks were those of the night before, and making a final circular cast of a mile round through the bush over gravelly ground, we gave up the search, and I resolved to march on towards the coast, having no more leave to spare.

Passing Daura’s grave we surprised two hyænas trying to grub up the stones that had been heaped over the poor fellow, and dropped one dead, and sent the other moaning away with a bullet in his ribs. The Malingúr, who turned out to be those who had been at Durhi a month ago, begged me to remain and have another try for the lion and lioness (for there were a pair of man-eaters here), so I had a zeríba built, and tied up a donkey, and sat up all night six feet away from it, but without result. The Malingúr said that since the lion had killed the woman a month ago, five men and another woman had been carried off by the pair, my man Daura being the eighth human victim within the month!

We resumed our journey on the following morning towards the coast.[46] Passing through the Sheikh Ash tribe and thence by Milmil, we reached the Rer Ali at Warma-kés in the Haud Plateau, after eight marches, on 24th May.

The Rer Ali turned out fifty horsemen to _dibáltig_ before me, and I gave a show in return, advancing over the plain and firing volleys of blank cartridge with my twenty camelmen, and whistling them up to form rallying groups against cavalry. I refused, however, to part with any tobes, so they said I was “good but stingy.” They told me that lately an English officer had been sent from Aden to Harar, and he had ordered the Abyssinians to evacuate the town within a fortnight. This information turned out to be based on my own peaceful visit to Rás Makunan, and was thus distorted by passing from mouth to mouth! We made a detour to the east of several days’ journey in order to come on to ground frequented by Clarke’s gazelle, and I was so fortunate as to shoot a very good buck of this rare antelope and to pick up two pairs of horns.

While marching through a jungle called Gouss in the Haud, I started about forty oryx, which galloped past us looking like a body of cavalry with sloped swords. Sorely tempted, I fired at the galloping line, and then ran up and found a splendid bull lying dead. His horns were the best I have ever possessed, being nearly three feet long, very thick, and with a slight and very beautiful curve backwards.

A large Somáli caravan, going to Berbera, took advantage of our escort to pass through the Eidegalla tribe with us. I found some interesting artificial pools in the Eidegalla Haud, and the natives told me that these had been dug out from time to time in honour of well-known _Sultáns_ and elders who had died. I examined them, and was glad to find that they held water for many weeks after rain had fallen, a proof that the red Haud soil will hold rain-water in suitable places, and that tanks might be made on a larger scale.

As we came to the Eidegalla tribe, the men, women, and children ran away on first sighting us, thinking we were Abyssinians; but when they recognised us they were civil enough. On the evening of 3rd June we arrived at Syk fig-tree, near the top of the Jeráto Pass, which is sixty miles from Berbera, and leads from the high Ogo country down into Guban, the coast district. Coming down into the defile called Aff-ki-Jeráto next day, I met some Biladiers, or native irregular police, with my mail-bag, containing four months’ letters; and finding that, owing to my having received an extension, my leave would not expire immediately, I settled down steadily to hunt the large koodoo in the great Gólis Range, round Gán Libah, Henweina, and Garbadir.