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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER V
A RECONNAISSANCE OF THE ABYSSINIAN BORDER, 1892

First news of Abyssinian aggression—Start for Milmil—Unfortunate Bulhár—Across the “Haud” waterless plateau—Extraordinary landscape—Sudden meeting with the Rer Ali—Their consternation and pleasant greeting—News of a raid—Water-supply statistics—Great display at Milmil in honour of Au Mahomed Sufi—Agitation against Abyssinia—Unsuccessful lion hunt—Display in honour of the English—Interesting scene—The vulture-like elders—Success of an Arab pony—Our camp at Túli—The “Valley of Rhinoceroses”—Two rhinoceros hunts—Four bagged—Death of a bull rhinoceros—The Waror wells—Abbasgúl complaints against Abyssinia—First meeting with Abyssinians—Disturbed country—English sportsmen met at Hargeisa—Fresh start from Hargeisa—Incessant rains—Thousands of hartebeests near Gumbur Dúg—Scouting for the Abyssinians—Visit to the Abyssinian fort at Jig-Jiga—We approach Gildessa—The caravan imprisoned by the Abyssinians—Embarrassing situation—A letter to Rás Makunan of Harar—Exciting time at Gildessa—We retire by night—The answer of the Rás—March to Zeila.

The capture of Harar by the Abyssinians in January 1887 was an important event to the Somális, because, under the Emir Abdillahi, Harar had hitherto been a very effective little “buffer state” against Abyssinian encroachments. When the British Government first took over the Somáli coast in 1884 there was no Abyssinian question, and the authorities had only to deal with the Somáli tribes, which, although turbulent, were in fair equilibrium as regards power. Of late years, however, the Abyssinian question has risen into some importance, as will be seen by the narrative of later trips. The Abyssinians import large quantities of breech-loading small-arms from ports west of Zeila and outside the British Protectorate, while the Somáli tribes are only armed with spears or bows and arrows, and are not allowed to import firearms, of any sort whatever, from their own coast, which is administered by the British. Hence the equilibrium of power is affected, the Abyssinians help themselves to Somáli cattle when they like, and the owners, who are all Mahomedans, turn their eyes towards us for protection against their natural enemies. They place the most implicit faith in the British, and are quite persuaded in their own minds that our Government will never stand by and see them seriously pushed by the Abyssinians without giving them, at any rate, moral help of some sort. They turn to us as their natural protectors, as they would have turned to the Egyptians had that Government continued to hold the coast.

As related in the last chapter, we received the first news of Abyssinian interference with the Jibril Abokr when surveying in June ’91. A chief named Banagúsé had demanded tribute in cattle, and had also sent out marauding parties from Jig-Jiga, the fortified post which had been pushed out by the Abyssinians into the Marar Prairie, to lift cattle from the Jibril Abokr. This tribe, which is really a sub-tribe of the Habr Awal, who are under British protection, appealed to us for help from Aden, at a meeting of the elders held by me at Ujawáji, June ’91, in front of my tent. The elders there told us that the principal authors of the trouble were Banagúsé and Basha-Basha, two Abyssinian generals, the former being the responsible person at Jig-Jiga and the latter in western Ogádén.

It appears that these two chiefs had been using the Bertiri tribe, who live in the Harar Highlands, as a “cat’s paw” in making requisitions for cattle on the Habr Awal and Ogádén tribes. The tribute of cattle was always collected at Jig-Jiga and then sent up in a great mob to Harar, where the people were reported to be starving, and where the large number of Abyssinian soldiers occupying the place required to be rationed.

The fortified post of Jig-Jiga was also a constant menace to the large village of Hargeisa, within the British Protectorate, and the elders said that every year the trouble between the outlying Abyssinian chiefs and the nomad Somáli tribes near the coast would increase, unless something could be done to make the former cease their buccaneering raids.

The substance of the statement made by the spokesman at the meeting in my camp was as follows:—

“The Bertiri come from Jig-Jiga armed with rifles and demand tribute of cattle from us, and in certain cases have looted our live stock when out grazing. We cannot make reprisals on the Bertiri, as they are protected by the Abyssinians. Ordinary feuds with our neighbours we think fair-play, but these Bertiri raids are a losing business for us all round. We are not allowed to import firearms, the only effective weapons against the Abyssinians; and we ask the British, who have occupied our ports, either to protect us, or to allow us to import guns with which we can protect ourselves.”

Owing, I believe, to action from Aden, the trouble was stopped, to the lasting satisfaction of the tribes on the northern side.[26] On the east, however, in Ogádén, the Abyssinians became more active than ever; and on another journey, in 1890, this time through Milmil, we again had to listen to complaints against them.

We arrived at Berbera for the Milmil trip, which was the first exploration of the eastern Abyssinian border by Europeans, on 1st July 1892. The Haga wind was at its height, and as nothing could be done during the first half of each day, owing to the storms, it was fully a week before we got our caravan under way.

The day before we left Berbera an enormous column of black smoke, which we estimated to be over two thousand feet high, was seen to rise from the sea-level in the west, over the site of Bulhár, forty miles away. Soon the news arrived that Bulhár had been burnt to the ground. This has always been an unlucky place. It has been burnt three times since the British occupation, and in 1892 was depopulated by cholera; and three years before that it was raided by the Esa in a dust-storm, and sixty-seven of the people killed.

We marched by easy stages to Hargeisa, by following the Aleyadéra nala, the home of the beautiful lesser koodoo, of which I managed to bag a couple of bucks the day before we reached Hargeisa, which we entered on 17th July, and found deserted. Sheikh Mattar had gone to Haraf, four miles up the river, according to his custom at the Haga season, because of the better pasture there; he, however, came with a lot of religious mullahs to meet us, and was very pleasant, giving us letters of introduction to the chiefs of the Rer Ali and Abbasgúl, Ogádén tribes to whose country we were bound.

For the first time we had to face the crossing of the waterless Haud plateau, there being a hundred miles between Hargeisa and Milmil without a drop of water. To accomplish this we took up two hundred and fifty gallons in the háns of plaited bark which we had brought for the purpose.

This was the first time my brother and I had had an opportunity of crossing the Haud plateau, which is here some five thousand feet above sea-level. I have traversed it many times since, and the description of this our first crossing will give an idea of the peculiar nature of the country. I will not give an account of our daily sport, but I may mention that in feeding our thirty men we shot many oryx or Sœmmering’s gazelles in the bush country, and hartebeests when crossing the open ban.

On the 20th of July we marched up to the level of the plateau behind Hargeisa village, over thorn-covered rolling ground, the soil being red earth. We did eleven miles and halted at Bombós, in a splendidly grassed hollow, just beyond some Habr Awal karias. Hearing from the karia people that there had been rain at Garabíss, near here, at about 9 P.M. we sent a camel with four háns, and the men returned with the water at 1 A.M.

The next day we made a morning march of twelve miles to Dobóya, over rolling ground, which is stony on the elevations and has good grass in the depressions, the whole country being covered with flat-topped thorn jungle about twenty feet high. Near our midday camp some Midgáns were skinning an oryx which had been killed by a lion the night before, and at Garabíss we crossed the tracks of a number of Eidegalla horsemen, who had come north to loot the karias which we had passed through the day before.

In the evening march, after going a little over five miles, we came to the end of the thorn-trees, and emerged on to a great open plain of short grass called Ban-ki-Aror, about five miles across, and stretching far away to the east and west, without a bush. Our caravan travelled through abundance of game, chiefly oryx, hartebeests, and Sœmmering’s gazelles, which followed our steps while we were in the ban. The sight of these open grass plains covered with wild animal life was always a source of the greatest pleasure to me.

Our caravan had now swelled to a long procession, as a number of people had come with us from the last karias to take advantage of our protection past the Eidegalla country.

We camped on the farther side of this great plain, near some Samanter Abdalla karias. Here we heard that a lion roared nightly round them, and next evening, at Gudaweina, we saw his pugs in the path. Thus we had found lion, ostrich, oryx, hartebeest, and Sœmmering’s gazelle, all living at least forty miles from water. The effect of thirst on our domestic animals was to make them abnormally tame. Often as I lay in my tent at the noon camp the donkeys and ponies would force their heads within the tent door, and the goats would walk straight in, putting their muzzles into every cup to look for water. As we arrived at one halting-place at dusk, a wild fox came trotting like a dog behind the caravan, a few yards from the last camel, having smelt the water which we carried in the háns on the camels’ backs.

Travelling constantly over rolling, densely-wooded country, we were now entering the part of the Haud which is grazed over by the Ogádén from the south, and struck the Warda-Gumaréd, one of the great trade arteries between Berbera and the Webbe Shabéleh. The track here, for thirty miles at least, over red powdery earth, is so well worn and smooth that a bicycle might easily be ridden at full speed on it. On either side of the path all was thorn forest and grassy glades. The grasses were chiefly the darémo, growing in tufts to about a foot, and durr, growing to six feet, both very fattening for live stock. The umbrella mimósa, called khansa, grows to a height of ten feet, the bushes spreading out till their tops meet, forming shady tunnels which are the favourite haunt of lions and leopards during the heat of the day. They come out at night into the great plains and feed on the herds of game which live in the open. Sometimes, when gorged and lazy, the lions are caught in the early morning returning over the plains, and are ridden to a standstill by the Somális, and killed with poisoned arrows and spears.

After passing Garodki Mayagód, an ancient clearing in the thorn forest, we came to the usual caravan halting-place, a zeríba of thorns, occupied occasionally by the nomads or by caravans as they pass along the road. At the side of the track were shallow depressions in the soil where rain-water had rested, and round these dry pools were rows of small pits six inches deep, dug by Somális in order to stand up the water háns to be filled.

The jungle now began to get more open and the glades wider, the durr grass growing in beautiful feathery clumps. Huge red ant-hills appeared at every hundred yards or so, often twelve feet thick at the base, and with a pinnacle twenty-five feet high, looking like a giant hand and beckoning forefinger.

On the evening of the third day we got on to high ground almost imperceptibly, and camped at the southern side of an old fire clearing near Gudaweina. Looking back we could see, in the clear air of the elevated Haud, beyond the tops of the nearer thorn-trees, the various gradations of tint—yellow, brown, green, or blue—on the several bits of jungle or grass glades which we had come through; and beyond all a high rim of deep indigo blue, looking like a sea-horizon, running without a single landmark, showing the great expanse of the Haud forest stretching in every direction in everlasting dips and rises of ground. All the hills about Hargeisa had long ago sunk out of sight.

On the fourth day we marched on to Kheidub-Ayéyu. For a mile we went slowly in the dawning light through thorny jungle, and then we came out into a glade of durr grass, the camels swinging along faster as the path became more visible. We passed a chief’s grave, encircled by a stockade of trunks of thorn-trees twelve feet high.[27] We afterwards emerged on to open rising ground, where we saw oryx and Waller’s gazelles feeding, and in the centre of the path a wart-hog had been rooting up the ground.

The open pasture here was dotted with the old zeríbas of the Samanter Abdalla, Habr Awal, who come from the north for a season every year. They were here six weeks before us, but the rain falling, they had returned to Aror, where we had seen them a few days previously when crossing the open ban. These were also the most northern pastures of the Ogádén tribes, none of which we had ever visited, and we were doubtful as to the nature of our reception.

We entered a patch of bush, when suddenly the jungle became alive with camels and sheep, and several young women rushed at the caravan with their hands spread out and eyes flashing, screaming loudly for help, while others plied sticks and stones to drive off the flocks, in a deafening clamour and clouds of dust; and boys ran off in haste to summon the fighting men of the tribe.

I sat down in the path, trying to look as amiable as possible, for I realised what our sudden appearance must have been to these natives. Several of my men, more ready, raced forward and caught the flying messengers, and brought them back to me as prisoners. The women were sure we were Abyssinians, for we carried guns; but finding we were English, a revulsion of feeling set in, and the boys went off to tell the tribe the joyful news, and the women to get milk for our men.

The mounted guard soon galloped up to us, a sturdy-looking lot, some twenty of the Rer Ali tribe; they expressed their delight by circling their horses, shouting, “Mót! Mót! io Mót!” and coming up again and again, bending down in the saddle to shake hands with us; and their steaming ponies formed a dense circle round us as we endeavoured to do justice to the hands.

The people asked us to stop for a few hours to shoot rhinoceroses, but of course we were unable to spare the time, as we were carrying on a rapid survey, and also had too little water to be able to loiter here in the centre of the Haud. We passed enormous flocks of fat sheep, and near camp we met a pretty young woman driving along her dowry of a hundred camels. Our men said this Rer Ali wealth was good to look at, and that a few determined horsemen armed with guns could have taken off ten thousand camels at one swoop.

While camped at Kheidub-Ayéyu we observed a long strip of jungle-fire creeping along the ridge of thorn forest in our front. Clouds of smoke were floating far ahead of the fire, and it must have been driven by a strong south-west gale, judging by the pace. The Habr Gerhajis and two sub-tribes of the Habr Awal had at different times taken advantage of this solitary occupation by trying to loot the karias, but were always driven off. Although living in only two, there were a large number of fighting men in proportion to the women and children in this clan; and they were some of the best mounted of the Rer Ali, always a warlike tribe. The chief of the clan was called Mahomed Liba.

We marched through patches of burnt jungle, with the trees still smouldering, and pits left in the ground full of white ashes, where the roots had been burnt out.

Near Yoaleh we came to stony ground, the first since leaving Aror. On 25th July we left the Haud and descended into the valley of the Tug Milmil, a sandy nala wooded with gób[28] trees about eighty feet high, fringing the river-bed and growing on islands in the centre of the expanse of sand, some seventy yards wide at this point. We found ponies, sheep, and camels of the Rer Harún and Rer Ali, Ogádén, watering at Milmil wells. One continuous stream of camels marched up and down the river-bed, and we must have seen some twenty thousand in all.

There had been a quarrel just before our arrival between the Rer Harún here and Mahomed Liba’s clan which we had met at Kheidub-Ayéyu, in which two men had been killed and two hundred camels had changed owners.

On the day of our arrival at Milmil, at the end of the Haud crossing of one hundred and five miles, I had still seven full háns in my portion of the caravan, nine having been expended, say forty gallons of water for fifteen men for five days. About fifteen gallons of this had been spilt from various causes, so that fifteen men, one Arab fast camel, and two goats drank only twenty-seven gallons, or a little over five gallons a day, including cooking water. I attribute this moderation partly to the coolness of the weather in the elevated Haud. We had crossed in five days, thus doing twenty-one miles a day; this fact will indicate the good state of the caravan track over the red stoneless soil. Indeed, as I have stated before, a bicycle might have been ridden at speed over nine-tenths of the distance.

The Haud ends at Milmil in a succession of bluffs a hundred feet high, and as one descends between them to the Milmil nala, one emerges on to the general level of Ogádén, and farther on at the wells the country opens up, disclosing several hills; two of these, called Firk-Firk, resemble the remarkable twin hills at Hargeisa which are called “Náso Hablod,” or the “Maiden’s Breasts.”

Soon after we had pitched camp at the part of Milmil which is called Gagáb an important travelling sheikh arrived. The Somáli so-called sheikh is a religious mullah who has gained a great and wide-spread reputation for piety, and being intelligent, even among mullahs, can often read and write Arabic, although he is generally as black or brown in skin as any other Somáli.

The horsemen of the Rer Ali came down in scores, attired in all their finery of red-tasselled saddlery and red and blue khaili tobes, to go through the usual dibáltig before the great man, whose name is Au Mahomed Sufi. They formed a large crowd on the sand of the river-bed below our tent, which was pitched under some large trees overhanging the Milmil nala. The sheikh’s own bivouac was on the same bank of the river, about five hundred yards to the north of us. I joined the crowd of onlookers with my brother, and Au Mahomed Sufi, the recipient of the honours of the day, came forward and shook hands with us, and gave us a place by his side.

This man was travelling through Ogádén, and was, I afterwards learnt, part of an organised plot for rousing the Somáli tribes to combine against the Abyssinians. After the dibáltig he lifted his spear and addressed the assembled people, beginning by himself singing what appeared to be a composition of his own.

In the evening, taking my hunters, I followed the tracks of a lion which had stolen a sheep from the Rer Ali flocks in broad daylight. Getting into broken country at the base of one of the bluffs, we put up two lions. We could not see them, although we heard them roar significantly, as though they had seen us. We found their lair, and part of the carcase of the sheep, close by, and within a yard of it was a dead vulture, which the lions had just killed, no doubt, by springing out of the ambush from which they had kept watch over the meat. Several vultures were perched on the branches of the trees around, looking wistfully down, but not daring to come to the feast. The lions eventually got on to stony ground and we lost them.

Next day a large number of horsemen came to welcome us at our own camp, and said they had come to dibáltig to us as representatives of the English Government. We appointed midday for this ceremony.

Meanwhile I went after a lion, climbing one of the bluffs, which are two or three hundred feet high; and after hunting through thick high grass for some time, I sat down to rest below the edge of a bluff. While my men were wandering about, the lion got up with a low grunt, a few yards above the rock on which I sat, and made off into the grass. Following, I found his lair, and the half-eaten carcase of a young camel, about as large as a donkey, which the lion had dragged to the top of the hill, afterwards going to sleep by its side. It was within a few yards of the sleeping lion that I had been unconsciously sitting for ten minutes. He went down the stony, bush-covered hill, and eventually escaped us.

It was during the early part of the afternoon that some five hundred horse and foot came to our camp for the promised ceremonies. Au Mahomed Sufi attended, and we gave him a place beside us. On a signal being given, the horsemen drew up in line in front of us, and the chief tribal minstrel of the Rer Ali, while sitting in the saddle, sang a refrain in honour of the English, and of myself and my brother, who had “deigned to visit their poor oppressed country.” A splendid array they made, well mounted and warlike, the biceps standing out on some of the men’s arms in a way that is seldom seen on these sparely-built Somális.

On the conclusion of the song the horsemen gave a series of shrill yells, and with arms and legs flying, they started off at full gallop in pursuit of an imaginary enemy up the river-bed; and the pounding of the hoofs could be heard long after they had been lost to sight in clouds of red dust. Presently they came back again, the glinting of the sun on their spears being first fitfully seen in the pall of dust; and darting up furiously, they brought their ponies on to their haunches with the cruel bit, forming a dense semicircle of horses’ heads within a foot of me, the riders crying, “Mót!” and being answered by “Kul leban” and a hand-shake.

Au Mahomed Sufi began a long speech, which was heard in dead silence by the crowd, saying that now the white men had come it was time to attack the Abyssinians, and that if we would lead them with our thirty rifles, they could soon collect a large force and march on the Abyssinian chief, Basha-Basha.

We interrupted him, broke up the meeting, and retired to our tents, saying we had come to survey caravan routes and not to be mixed up in their quarrels.

In the evening we gave a performance in return, parading the thirty camp-followers in line, armed with their Snider carbines, advancing and retiring in skirmishing order, and forming rallying groups; and we fired off blank cartridge, each volley being echoed by an answering yell from the delighted tribesmen.

They said that now the English, their masters, had come, the Abyssinians would leave off raiding their camels and carrying off their women. Many of the chiefs came to our tents begging for written testimonials, saying that they were sure a scrap of paper written on by an Englishman was enough alone to keep back an Abyssinian army. The women and children hung round my camel and my brother’s pony in crowds, crying out, “Now it’s all right; the English have come.”

Then came the question of presents. The people had brought us a few sheep and a donkey, and long rows of their milk-vessels, which are prettily decorated with white shells. We picked out an ákil to whom Sheikh Mattar of Hargeisa had given us a letter of introduction; then we put into his hands several white tobes and two khaili tobes, and asked him to settle with the chiefs of clans. There arose a tremendous clamour, each clan having sent an advocate to represent it in the scramble for tobes, which occurred in the river-bed below. An indescribable uproar continued until nightfall, the clamouring “wise men” squatting on the ground in circles, looking for all the world like vultures with their skinny necks and shaven skulls, clawing with lean fingers at the presents spread out on the sand. There was a scuffle down at the wells, across the river, where two men had retired to settle an old feud. After throwing their spears, they closed and stabbed at each other, the spears striking the shields with a hollow thud, which we could hear from our tents three hundred yards away; but they were subsequently parted by a posse of relations.

One of the things which pleased the Rer Ali most was my Arab pony, which I had taken from Abdul Kader’s stables in Bombay to test the Somáli climate. My brother mounted him and tried a friendly gallop with one or two of the tribesmen in succession, and he proved, to their great wonder, faster than any pony which the Rer Ali could bring against him. He afterwards beat many Somáli ponies all over the country, and gained a great reputation, although I had only bought him as a useful animal up to weight, and he would be considered quite slow among Arab ponies of his height, which was about 13.3. I have often since been identified by Somális as the owner of “that Hindi pony which could gallop like the wind.”

By nightfall we were glad that the long dusty day of ceremony was over, and next morning, when a number of Rer Harún horsemen arrived and asked to be allowed to repeat the show, we found ourselves obliged to decline the honour, and continued our survey westward towards the Abyssinian border.

Our men, on the night of the Rer Ali dibáltig, went to the karias and danced till nearly daylight, the women clapping their hands and jumping up and down, keeping up a monotonous refrain. Next day half our men were ill, having gorged themselves upon the mutton and camel meat which had been generously provided by the Rer Ali.

We passed the deserted village of Dagahbúr and reached a rounded grassy hill called Túli, and it was while encamped here that we shot the first Somáli rhinoceros, an animal which for many years we had expected to come upon, but which up till then had never been seen or shot by an European. We found plenty of game at Túli, and as I rode up to the rounded hill to choose a site for my camp, a troop of ostriches went racing away into the sea of bush and grass to the north-west.

To the west of Gumbur Túli lay a valley covered with dense dark mimósa forest, called Dih Wiyileh,[29] or Rhinoceros Valley. Between Dagahbúr and Waror, an interval of fifty miles, the country was waterless at this season, and hearing that Waror was occupied by Abyssinian soldiers, I deemed it advisable to arrive there with a supply of water on the camels; so finding the háns rather low, I had to wait at Túli a couple of days while we sent back to Dagahbúr for more water.

The time had come when I hoped to make the acquaintance of the long-sought rhinoceroses; and I left camp in the early morning with my two gunbearers Géli and Hassan, and another man called Au Ismail, who led our one camel and acted as guide.

Taking a line to the south-west across the Dih Wiyileh from Túli Hill, we presently came on fresh rhinoceros signs. These we took up till nearly midday, the two beasts we were following having made a maze of tracks there while feeding in the morning. At last Géli pointed to our game—two rhinoceroses standing, apparently asleep, under a shady thorn bush. I advanced to forty yards, and opened fire with the four-bore, putting a four-ounce bullet into the shoulder of each with a right and left, making them tear away at a gallop through the jungle. I followed at best pace, putting in two more cartridges as I ran, and so finishing one of the rhinos. Passing this one, I found the other standing in thick bush broadside on, listening and looking for its fellow. Feeling for cartridges, I put my hand into empty pockets, the rest having fallen out in my haste, so I ran back to the camel to snatch more out of a haversack. Au Ismail saw me running back away from the rhinoceros, and jumped to the conclusion that I was running away! So he began to bolt with the camel. I ran harder and harder, shouting to him to stop, and at last I got hold of him and explained what I wanted. Then, rearmed, I returned to the rhinoceros, which had been standing meanwhile in the same place, apparently unable to make out what I was about, and too sick to charge. Another shot finished it. Unfortunately they were both cows, but I was very pleased at the result of my first rhino hunt.