SECOND JOURNEY TO THE WEBBE SHABÉLEH RIVER, 1893
The new caravan—Pass Lord Delamere’s party—Captain Abud in camp
at Hargeisa—Sheikh Mattar—Cross the Haud, and arrive at Seyyid
Mahomed’s town in Ogádén—Holy reputation—Why the Somális have
no Mahdi—Scene at the Seyyid’s town—Native impression of some
European travellers—Every European a doctor—Malingúr mission
to Harar—Ruspoli’s men seized—Jáma Deria’s Englishman—Reach
the Webbe and bag a waterbuck—Friendly Gilimiss Somális—First
news of the Webbe bushbuck—Shooting a crocodile—Great
beauty of our camp on the Webbe banks—Gálla raids on the
Gilimiss—The crossing of the Webbe at Karanleh—Unexpected
Gálla news—Entertain Gálla chiefs in camp; a defiant speech—A
Gálla trip planned—Fresh hippo tracks in the reeds—A waterbuck
swims the Webbe; a noble buck—Sad death of a horse—The
Aulihán—A row in camp—Unsuccessful buffalo hunting—Wounded
waterbuck struck down by a lion—Starving negroes eat the
carrion—Disturbed country; the Gálla trip impracticable—Recross
the Webbe—Driving for bushbuck—A fine wart-hog bagged—A man
seized by a lion; extraordinary story—A leopard bagged—A buck
killed by leopards before our eyes—A row at Garbo—Success of
the Lee-Metford—The Awáré pan; beautiful hunting ground—Lions
roaring at night—Unsuccessful lion hunts—Magnificent lion shot;
a surprising leap—Abundance of lions—Return to Berbera; and go
to England.
During the first trip to the Webbe we had been four and a half months in
the interior, travelling over more than eleven hundred miles of camel
track. I found at Aden that an extension of leave had been granted, and
at once prepared a second caravan, intending to go back to Imé, and
taking Gabba Oboho at his word, to explore Gállaland and the Juba under
his guidance.
On 30th July ’93 we landed again at Berbera with thirty-four men armed
with Snider carbines and forty-five fresh camels. The coast men were very
much afraid of Gállaland, and insisted that we ought to have at least a
hundred rifles; but fighting not being my object, I considered our party
strong enough, and after explaining that I would only cross the Gálla
border if the Gállas should prove peaceful, the men took a more cheerful
view of the prospects of my journey.
We marched from Berbera on 31st July, and on the second day we passed
Lord Delamere and his shooting party on their way to the coast. Captain
Abud was at that time encamped at Hargeisa, carrying on political
business with Eidegalla chiefs. Sheikh Mattar of Hargeisa, whom I met
here, advised me not to go to Imé, but to try Karanleh, three marches
farther down the Webbe; and he gave me an Arabic letter to Seyyid
Mahomed, a mullah whose permanent town lay in our front. By visiting the
Seyyid I should cross Ogádén by a route several days to the west of my
former one through Dagaha-Madóba.
I crossed the Haud by the Warda Gumaréd, the route we had taken on
our first crossing, when I had gone to Milmil with my brother the
year before; this time I carried water for five and a half days only.
About three marches out from Hargeisa I crossed the fresh tracks of
seventy-five horsemen of the Abdalla Saad, Habr Awal, who had gone to
loot the Eidegalla a few hours before my caravan passed over the ground.
Crossing the Rer Ali and Rer Harún tribes, always friendly, on the 16th I
arrived at Seyyid Mahomed’s town. It is a permanent village of three or
four hundred huts, about the size of Hargeisa, its site being near the
Tug Fáfan, in the Malingúr tribe. The banks of the stream, which we found
dry, were dotted with thriving and very extensive patches of _jowári_
cultivation. The inhabitants are mainly widads and mullahs from different
Somáli tribes.
Pitching camp under some shady trees near the river, on the Fáfan banks,
I went with the elders, through a dense crowd, to the Seyyid’s hut. He
was too old and feeble to walk over to camp, and had sent his son to
ask me if I would mind coming to him, to make his acquaintance and give
him medicine. The Seyyid is known far and wide as a holy man, even my
Dolbahanta headman, Adan Yusuf, having heard of him. Adan was glad to
meet such a holy man, who was said to be invulnerable. He added that
the Abyssinians lately tied the Seyyid up and fired at him point blank
with Remingtons, but the bullets melted; they then bound him to a _gudá_
thorn-tree, and collecting all the dry branches about, they lit a roaring
fire at his feet, but he obstinately refused to burn; so then they gave
up interfering with him!
If he were a fighting man the Seyyid would probably have developed into
a first-class Mahdi, and long ere this he could have made a combined
movement against Abyssinia; but his influence, like that of other Somáli
sheikhs and mullahs, is almost entirely social and religious. He lives
a quiet life, cultivating _jowári_, reading the Koran, and educating
youths. Among the nomad tribes the fighting elders abound, but they
have not the wide influence of these cosmopolitan Mahomedan priests,
and, moreover, there is no element of cohesion among them, each working
for the good of his own clan and ignoring the general interests of the
community. The Seyyid was cordial, and I gave him medicine at the door
of his hut in the presence of his wives and children, who squatted on
their heels in a semicircle around us, whilst the townspeople collected
in a dense mass to gaze at us through the palisades of the courtyard
which separated the hut from the main street of the village. He had
only seen one English party, that of Colonel Paget and Lord Wolverton,
two months before, and they had left a very good impression; not so the
caravan under Prince Ruspoli, for he, less fortunate, had had a good
deal of trouble with the natives in Gállaland, on the Webbe, and even in
Somáliland. I mention this because the troubles of this Italian caravan
had an adverse influence over the success of my trip.
Before we left the hut of the sick man he had written for me an Arabic
letter to Hussein-bin-Khalaf and Núr Róbleh, the two Mahomedan chiefs of
Karanleh. While we were halted at the Fáfan, crowds of sick people and
cripples from the village constantly loitered in and about camp, begging
for medical treatment from _ninki frinji wein_ (the great foreigner).[47]
Every European being believed to be a doctor, they rushed to me for
treatment, presenting the most complicated diseases, such as cataract in
the eye and cancer. My medicine bag containing only chlorodyne, pills,
vaseline, quinine, and the simplest medicines, I treated what cases I
could, and sent the worst away with a small present of meat or calico and
a few comforting words, which were listened to in dead silence by the
crowd of relations.
At the Seyyid’s village I heard that Ugáz Umr, the Malingúr chief, had
returned from Harar, after laying complaints against frontier Abyssinians
before Rás Makunan. Eight men, who had either deserted from Prince
Ruspoli or had been dismissed by him, said that some of their comrades
and all the guns had been seized by Ugáz Umr, and were to be sent to
Harar. They asked me to interfere; but for political reasons I declined.
On 22nd August, at sunset, we reached Bokhaiyer, another permanent
village, occupied by the Rer Amáden tribe. Here I met many old friends,
among them Jáma Deria and his sons, who had escorted me to Imé a few
months before, and were in this country on a short visit. I was standing
about, the centre of a mob of the villagers, when Jáma Deria and six
horsemen rode up, covering us with dust, and Jáma shouted that “his
Englishman had come.” He took jealous care of me, whipping away the
crowd, and never ceased begging till I left next morning.
After several days’ hard marching we reached the Webbe at Sen Morettu, a
permanent village of the Gilimiss Somális, standing on the north bank,
about six marches south-east of Imé, Karanleh lying half-way between the
two villages.
In this journey, owing to the great difficulty in getting reliable
guides, we had made a détour to the east, doing fifty-two marches between
Berbera and the Webbe, the direct distance being forty short marches.
We actually struck the Webbe at Dagah-Yeleh on 25th August, and in the
evening I went out and shot my first adult _balanka_, or waterbuck. Both
the bucks I had shot at Imé, under the impression that they belonged to a
new species, I now found to be only young ones.
Next day we made one long march westward, by the river banks, to Sen
Morettu. The Gilimiss Somális were strong here, and came in numbers to
my camp to present their salaams. Late at night they brought for sale the
skin of a _dól_, or Webbe bushbuck. This was the first time I had heard
of such a thing as a _dól_, and I resolved not to leave the Webbe till I
had shot one. I got a very large crocodile by moonlight; it was floating
with the eyes above the water, only thirty yards from the tent, no doubt
waiting for one of the milch goats to come and drink.
This night camp on the banks of the Webbe at Sen Morettu was striking
in its scenery, and will ever live in my memory. The Gilimiss who had
brought the _dól_ skin had left, and the camp had settled down into
slumber, except for one watchful sentry. The moonlight was so bright
that everything had a distinctive colour, the sky being of a deep blue,
studded with stars in the regions farthest from the moon. I went to the
river bank and looked out on the water gliding by, in streaks of silver
and dark brown, across the shadows of the tall casuarina-trees,[48] which
rose one hundred and twenty yards away on the opposite bank. Several of
the trunks had fallen, and lay aslant upon the steep bank of the river.
Now and then a gust of wind swept with a peculiar roaring sound through
the feathery tree-tops, and ruffled the surface of the water with broad
patches of silver as it blew across to our camp. Sometimes monkeys
chattered, or squirrels shrieked, disturbed by prowling animals in the
dense evergreen bush, bordering the river. Each movement I made was the
signal for the splash of one or two crocodiles as they regained the water.
Glancing into the camp, I could see, in the bright moonlight, men and
animals lying in different positions, as if they had been suddenly struck
down by sleep. Adan’s horse lay by the cook’s fire fast asleep, with his
head against a camel-saddle, and on the other side of the glowing embers
were Suleiman the cook and three white milch goats, lying close together.
The forty-five camels were sitting on their hard nether humps packed
close, with tails to the wind, steadily chewing the cud, their eyes
flashing with quiet enjoyment; for this is the only time when they are
not pestered by flies, and they evidently deem it far too valuable to be
thrown away entirely in sleep; though occasionally, for a short spell,
the head and neck will be laid stretched out flat along the ground and
the eyes closed. All around were lying camel-trunks, water-casks, bags of
rice, and mountains of camel-mats, piled in the form of a rough circular
wall, enclosing the camels; and taking shelter from the wind between
these and the camels were the sleeping men, scattered in twos and threes,
with their rifles by their sides. The bright light threw deep black
shadows on the short grass; we were in a glade a quarter of a mile wide,
bordered by a fringe of tall casuarina-trees. At the edge of the glade,
up stream and near the river bank, a deserted village of large beehive
huts of brown straw stood out against the gray, indistinct background
of the trees. Large logs of driftwood and snags, with half their length
out of the water and looking very black, gave one the impression of
crocodiles; and certain pairs of gray dots, sometimes disappearing and
again reappearing a few yards away, resembling pieces of driftwood,
were really the projecting lumps on the heads of crocodiles, which were
floating with the eyes just above the water, looking out for prey.
The climate at Sen Morettu was perfect for sleeping out, and I found
myself regretting that before two months were over I should have to leave
this interesting river, and almost certainly never get a chance of seeing
it again.
We marched to Maaruf, a landing-stage exactly opposite to Karanleh, which
was on the south side of the river. We passed through numbers of the
Gilimiss people, who said they had come to the north bank for fear of the
Gállas, who were out raiding. The camels had been late in getting off
from Sen Morettu, so I walked on with the two shikáris. We found several
of the Gilimiss elders at the landing-stage, and had a long talk about
the means of getting across, while sitting under some very large trees
which gave a welcome shelter from the midday sun. The Webbe was rather
low, the width being only ninety yards. The people occupying the banks
were Gilimiss Somális and Adone, or Webbe negroes.
The Gilimiss cultivate on both sides of the river when not in fear of
the Arussi (Geríré) Gállas, who live in the hills ten miles away to the
south, and often raid along the south bank. The Gálla name for the Webbe
is Webbe Sidáma; no one calls it Webbe Shabéleh here. Shabéleh (“the
place of leopards”) is merely the name of the district farther down to
the south-east, where Mr. F. L. James and his companions first struck the
river in 1884. Since that journey no Englishman had visited the Webbe
till the previous spring, when my own caravan and that of Colonel Paget
reached it simultaneously, as I found on my return to Berbera in June.
I sent one of the Gilimiss into Karanleh to call Hussein-bin-Khalaf
and Núr Róbleh, and to present my Arabic letter. The first chief was
sick, but Núr Róbleh sent word to say he would come over to see me in
the evening. Meanwhile I went to look for bushbuck in the thick belt of
forest along the margin of the river.
On first arriving at the landing-stage I had been met by a rival of Núr
Róbleh, who undertook to take my caravan across on rafts made of dried
tree-trunks. But Núr Róbleh, arriving on the scene while I was away
hunting, arrested the other chief and his partisans, and tied them all up
at the foot of a tree, placing one of my escort on guard over them with
a loaded rifle. However, when I walked into camp, much to Núr Róbleh’s
disgust, I set them free.
The Amáden and Gilimiss told me it would take seven days to cross; but
before leaving Aden I had bought sixty fathoms of three-inch rope. This
we made fast to bollards driven deep into the mud on both sides of the
river, and pulling the rope taut we attached two of the native rafts to
it by running loops, so that they could be easily hauled backwards and
forwards; this was a great improvement on the primitive way of punting
and paddling the rafts across the swift current and landing four hundred
yards below the shoving-off point By this method, instead of seven days,
it took us only one day for the baggage and one day for the animals, all
the latter swimming over; the more timid of the camels were bound and
towed over by a crowd of swimming men, shouting and splashing to keep off
the crocodiles, while I fired a blank cartridge now and then from the
bank. I also shot two crocodiles, one a very large one. It lay dead on an
island, and four small boys jumped into the river, and swimming to the
island, towed the carcase to the bank. The natives are in the habit of
swimming their horses and cattle across when moving to better pasture.
We saw one negro family, including women, children, mats, cooking pots,
and all their effects, moving across on a raft so overloaded that half
of them were sitting in six inches of water. Where cows drink, the
natives construct brushwood semicircular fences to enclose the shallows
and so deter the crocodiles from attacking the animals; yet, despite all
precautions, the loss caused by crocodiles is very great.
By the evening of 29th August our camp was properly established on the
southern bank, and we were on the Gálla side of the border. At night
Núr Róbleh returned to me. I had sent him out to look for Dubbi Harré
and Gudan Abatteri, two Arussi Gálla chiefs of great influence, to whom
Seyyid Mahomed had written a letter on my behalf. He now came with
news of one of these. He had given the letter to Dubbi Harré, who was
now staying in a village five miles to the south-east, owned by a rich
Somáli named Yahia; and Dubbi Harré had unexpectedly said that his own
tribe and all the Gállas had had serious difficulties with the Prince’s
caravan which was in front of me, these being the first Europeans they
had ever seen, and they wished no more white men to enter their country,
adding, if I still wished to see him, I might send soldiers to take him,
but he would have gone to Gállaland. He feared to come to camp lest I
should have him flogged, for he believed all Europeans were bad, and only
invited people to visit them in order to make them prisoners. The first
party of Europeans whose acquaintance he had made had said they meant
peace, and had made war. Of course I took his statements regarding this
caravan to be very one-sided and, because advanced by a native, probably
untrue.
Knowing that Prince Ruspoli had pushed through to the far interior of
Gállaland with about one hundred and twenty rifles, and that they had
lost a great many men in one way and another, I did not hope that my
party, consisting of a single white man, with only thirty followers and
with limited time, would be able to force its way through the tribes
which my predecessors had already passed, should they be hostile to us.
Fighting, except in self-defence, was not part of my programme, as I had
promised the men at Berbera; I meant, if possible, to enter the country
by the invitation of the natives or not at all.
I gave Núr Róbleh some calico and a Koran, telling him to ride quickly
to Dubbi Harré and give him the presents, and to assure him that if he
would come to my camp he would have safe conduct, and be hospitably
entertained, and free to go when he liked. After an interval of
twenty-four hours, during which I hunted unsuccessfully for _dól_, Núr
Róbleh returned with better news. He had found Dubbi Harré on the point
of leaving for the mountains; but, the presents softening him, the Gálla
chief had promised to come to me, though he protested that it would be of
no use; he had declared he would never be able to persuade his countrymen
that there could be any good in me.
On the morning of 30th August six horsemen came in. There were three
Somális, Yahia and two friends, and three Gállas, Dubbi Harré being one
of them. Dubbi Harré was a remarkably handsome and pleasant-looking old
man, clean shaven, with thin, well-cut features. Taking Dubbi Harré by
the hand I led them into the tent, in which had been arranged on the
right and left rows of boxes covered with folded blankets; there was also
a box for myself against the tent pole, and a mat on the ground for Adan
Yusuf, the interpreter. As usual, we began the conference with coffee.
Dubbi Harré said that his country had been peaceable and happy till
Europeans had come a few months ago; but that they and the Abyssinians
had brought in rifles, and had fought; and now the people were firmly
resolved to allow no one into the land who carried firearms or were
escorted by men so armed.
I contended that I had come as a friend. He answered, “Yes, the other
white men said that too.” Without going into the rights and wrongs of
the case, it seemed to me that the caravan which had gone before me had
been singularly unfortunate in the impression left behind, and I thought,
that being the case, in the limited period of my leave it would be at
least very uphill work ingratiating myself. I did my best, however, and
Dubbi Harré and I became good friends over our coffee. He said he had
seen my men as he came into camp; he liked the look of them; they were
well behaved and orderly; they were clean and respectable Mahomedans and
few in number, and altogether different from the rabble of Abyssinians,
Arabs, and Soudanese whom the other Europeans had brought; and now,
having seen us, he believed we wished him no harm. He and his two
companions were no longer afraid to be with us—though he had been afraid,
very much afraid, at first. I told him that if I had come for war I
should have brought more men, and that he, a chief skilled in fighting,
had seen there were only thirty, and could judge for himself whether we
looked like invaders.
Dubbi Harré spoke quietly, with a pleasant smile on his face. He looked
what he was, a fighting chief, of great intelligence. I said, “What
will happen if we go to Wéb, in your country?” He said his people would
fight; I declared we would hurt no one. He said, “No, but they will hurt
you, and I wish to prevent you going. They are looking for a white man
to kill, because they are angry with your countrymen the white men, who
came first and fought with them. If your countrymen had not come first we
should have received you well, but now it is different. I believe you,
but the tribes won’t; so take my advice and don’t go. You will find game
in the empty country between the Aulihán Somális and the Geríré Gállas;
there are elephants and giraffes; you can get Yahia here to arrange your
trip. If, however, you persist in wishing to go to the Webbe Wéb, I will
go on and tell my people, and will come back, and if I think it safe I
will take you there myself.”
Attracted by the prospect of shooting buffaloes and hippopotami, which
were to be found at the Wéb, and not in the Aulihán country, I stuck to
my idea of going into Gállaland, declaring that I had not come all this
way to see Somális. So it was arranged we should go to the Aulihán for
eleven days; and then, returning to Karanleh, meet Dubbi Harré, and be
taken by him to the Webbe Wéb. This matter having been settled, Dubbi
Harré and his friends remained my guests till the cool of the evening,
and then rode away with Yahia.
At sunrise, on 31st August, I broke up the Karanleh camp and marched
through some five miles of _jowári_ plantations, near the south bank of
the river, to Yahia’s village, where I shot a noted man-eating crocodile.
These hideous pests swarm here; once I shot a wild goose, which, falling
into the stream, was at once seized by a crocodile and drawn under while
still struggling. In the evening we made another march to a spot near
the river where we had been told to expect a school of hippopotami, and
I shot two good waterbuck bulls on the way there. We saw fresh tracks
of the hippos in the reeds, and I sat up by moonlight in the jungle
overlooking them, hoping to bag one as it came to feed on shore. But at 4
A.M., finding nothing stirring in the reeds, we gave it up and returned
to camp by moonlight. The Gilimiss, our guide, said that the hippopotami
were scarce and wary, as the Adone negroes, during a recent famine, when
nearly all their cattle had died of disease, had killed hippopotami for
food, and had greatly reduced their numbers.
The great epidemic of cattle disease which three or four years ago raged
in Masailand, and other parts of East Africa was also felt in Ogádén, the
cattle and the koodoo antelopes dying of it in large numbers. It was felt
as far north as the Marar Prairie.
We made a morning march on 1st September, and another in the evening.
While passing over ground blackened by fire, and covered with young
grass, I shot a buck Sœmmering’s gazelle and a waterbuck. At dusk, coming
to dense forest by the river, I ordered the men to pitch camp at the
edge, and entering the jungle unattended, I saw a red object standing
motionless near the stem of a large tree twenty yards away. I felt
certain it was an antelope, but was unable to make it out in the half
light. I put up the rifle and fired, when the animal rushed past me and
fell in a ravine close by, rolling over on its side; and on going up to
it, I found, to my delight, it was a young buck of the _dól_, or striped
and spotted Webbe bushbuck, which I had been so anxious to get. Going
into camp to call up the men, I shot a buck lesser koodoo. As the forest
appeared to have plenty of game in it I resolved to halt for a day’s
shooting. The camp was in a very pleasant place, at the corner of a
patch of forest looking down on the river from the edge of a steep bank.
Next day at dawn I went out and soon came upon a waterbuck. We had been
making for a wide glade of fresh grass, and on emerging from the forest
we caught sight of him going up a bank two hundred yards away. I fired,
and we ran to the spot, but his tracks leading away without any sign of
blood, I knew I had missed. He took us through several very thick patches
of bush, the game paths sometimes forming tunnels four feet high in the
vegetation; and at last, the light appearing ahead, we forced our way
through a thicket and found ourselves unexpectedly on the very verge of
the Webbe, a few yards from the water’s edge.
[Illustration: Waterbuck swimming]
Directly we showed our heads outside the jungle my man Géli pushed me
back and pointed out into the centre of the stream, which lay before us,
flowing deep and swift, a hundred yards broad; out in the middle appeared
the head and horns of the noble waterbuck swimming for the opposite
shore. It was too good a prize to lose, so, waiting till he shook the
water from his flanks and cantered up the slope of stiff mud, I fired,
and striking him behind the withers brought him down; and then another
shot finished him. In his struggles he had slipped down the bank to
within six feet of the water, and I was in a great fright lest after all
his splendid head should go to the crocodiles. We ran the three miles
back to camp along the margin of the water, and on reaching it I set
all the men to work, cutting down the trunks of dead dry trees to form a
raft, and by the afternoon it was ready.
Géli and a Gilimiss guide then poled themselves across the river,
and after three hours they returned with the head. I was so anxious
to measure it that I shouted to Géli to place the horn against his
Snider rifle, while I marked another Snider which my men handed to
me, and found that the buck’s horns could not measure much less than
twenty-four inches, a large pair for the Webbe, where waterbuck horns
are comparatively short. I anxiously watched the men come over with my
specimen, and then I carried it to my tent. At night we had several
alarms, caused by hyænas and lions, the camels rising suddenly together,
running about camp, and stumbling over tent-ropes in the dark. I remained
several days hunting waterbuck with great success.
While we were encamped here Adan Yusuf’s horse met with his death in
rather a melancholy way. At noon the men were lying under shady trees
round camp, sleeping like hogs, and I sat in my tent writing up my
journal. The camels were a mile away, browsing under the care of one man,
and the horse and Rás Makunan’s mule were hobbled by tying the near fore
and near hind leg together, according to Somáli custom. The three milch
goats and the horse and mule were allowed to wander about near camp, the
man who usually looked after them, thinking I had gone to sleep, having
retired to the shade of a tree to do likewise.
About an hour afterwards I heard a loud whinny from the mule, and looking
out of the tent I saw her swimming out in the middle of the stream, her
head bobbing up and down in the water. She was being carried down fast,
so I fired a gun into the air to wake the men, and we all jumped up and
ran to the edge of the water. There was a perpendicular scarp just below
the site of the camp, where the swift current had undermined the bank,
and towards this she was being carried. We ran to the beginning of the
steep place, and two of the men, plunging into the river, caught her head
as she came on with the current, and bringing her to the bank, after
a hard struggle, with all hands helping, we landed her high and dry.
Examining the bank, we found several long streaks in the mud showing
where the mule, while drinking, had slid in; and then we went to look for
Adan’s horse, and a search up and down the river only disclosed similar
marks in the mud farther down stream; we never saw the horse again, and
no doubt the crocodiles got him. Indeed, hobbled as she was, it was
wonderful how the mule kept above water and it was lucky she had the
sense to whinny, and so attract attention to her accident.
The Gilimiss guide whom we had taken from Karanleh told me that we should
be attacked by the Aulihán if we followed the river down as far as Burka,
and represented the Aulihán to be very dangerous people. But I found,
upon questioning my own men, that the guide had lately been concerned in
the killing of an Aulihán, and that tribe naturally wanted his blood;
so, to avoid trouble, I dismissed him and went on without a guide. This
was not difficult, because a good native path followed the course of the
river, and we were never so far from the bends that we could not bring
from them, in our casks, the water for camp use.
On 5th September we arrived at a low precipitous hill called Burka,
shooting a bull oryx on the way. We met some of the Aulihán who were
watering their flocks, and on 6th September we followed them to their
karias, which were some distance inland. The name of this sub-tribe was
Rer Afgab, Aulihán. They gave us milk and a display on horseback; and
they asked us to go to their country to shoot, stating they would barter
cattle in exchange for cloth, and that if I took the cattle afterwards to
the Gállas in the Wéb country I would get plenty of ivory.
On 7th September, finding that the giraffe ground was at least four days
to the south of Burka, we marched back towards Karanleh, to be ready to
meet Dubbi Harré on the day appointed. We made a long march to our old
camp at Ellán, where I had lost the horse, and thence we went to Yahia’s
village. Dubbi Harré had not yet arrived, so we retraced our steps down
the river to shoot for a few days, halting at a place called Shendil. Our
camp was pitched on open ground outside a belt of forest some four miles
long by one mile deep, fringing the Webbe. On the northern bank, opposite
to Shendil, was Sen Morettu, where we had first struck the river a
fortnight before. To the south of us lay an even plain gradually rising
towards the Gálla mountains, being covered in alternate patches of thick
thorn bush and glades of long, coarse, buffalo grass.
The operation of pitching camp was interrupted by a row between two
of my men, one of whom had two fingers broken by the descending butt
of a Snider rifle, which had been intended for his head. Having held
an inquiry, and disarmed and placed the culprits under supervision at
opposite ends of the camp, to let them cool down, I went out into the
thick bush to the south and had some exciting shooting, getting two very
fine waterbuck.
On the 12th I went out shooting on a wide open plain which had been
cleared by fire, only the leafless trees with charred stems being left
standing above the black ground; young grass, always very attractive to
game, had begun to spring up, and here I shot two more waterbuck, both
carrying good heads. In the evening, going into the high forest by the
river to look for the _dól_, or bushbuck, to our astonishment we came
to some very large bovine tracks, which my guide, a Gilimiss, at once
pronounced to be those of wild buffalo. There were two old bulls. We
followed them in and out among the glades and thick cover near the margin
of the river, and found the marks where they had lain and rolled in the
mud during the previous night; but it became dark before we could come up
with them. My guide, a Midgán, said that four bull buffaloes had strayed
from the Gálla country a few years before, and that his father had shot
two of them with poisoned arrows, those which we were hunting being the
two survivors; and I am inclined to think these two were perhaps the only
specimens on the Webbe, for I had always been told that buffalo did not
exist anywhere near Somáliland.
I made a very strong zeríba while we were halted here; for the Aulihán at
Burka told me that the Gállas were constantly raiding down to the river,
and that while on the southern side we were liable to attack, owing to
the strong antipathy to white men which had sprung up in Gállaland. We
were reminded of the insecurity of the border by passing the skeletons of
two Gállas, who a month before had been promptly killed by the Aulihán
“because they looked like robbers.” Their unburied bodies had been
cleaned by vultures, and left to lie in the long grass by the side of the
path; and whenever, attended by my two hunters, I went out to shoot on
the burnt ground west of camp, we passed them; and the grinning skulls
made us involuntarily feel along our cartridge belts to see that they
were not empty. This condition of insecurity is very uncomfortable, and
it is also a great nuisance when one is out shooting, as when hunting
_dól_ in the thick bush one cannot hope for success if attended by more
than two men, because of the difficulty in moving silently; and three
riflemen, miles from camp in thick bush, would make a poor defence
against a strong raiding party of Gállas.
I devoted one day to a buffalo hunt, which was more exciting than
successful. In the early morning we went into the forest again and came
on the fresh tracks of the two buffalo, in the densest bush near the
river bank, the whole jungle being composed of evergreens and a network
of creepers. It was necessary to stoop and sometimes to crawl on all
fours through the tunnels of vegetation; sometimes five or six creepers
clinging around arms and legs held me fast, so that it would have been
impossible to shoot; I had to go bareheaded because of the tangled vines
which constantly swept off my canvas hat; but this did not matter,
because the density of the forest afforded protection from the sun’s
rays,—indeed there was perpetual twilight inside. Underfoot were the
débris of all kinds of timber, almost impossible to climb over without
making some noise. The whole jungle smelt of monkeys. They could be seen
overhead covering the branches in clusters, their chattering giving
notice of our approach as we stole along. There were two kinds: the
large dog-faced baboon, different from those found in the mountains of
Somáliland chiefly in the absence of the full gray mane; and a small tree
monkey, whose scientific name I am ignorant of.
After creeping about noiselessly for the space of two hours with Géli and
Hassan, I put up the buffalo at a distance of about twenty yards, but we
could only hear the heavy pounding of the earth and cracking of sticks
as they galloped off, with continuous crashing through the undergrowth,
and the hollow sound of the larger limbs of the trees breaking as they
charged ahead. We followed, in the course of the morning putting them up
no less than seven times. Once we came to their lair, at a spot in the
densest line of thicket close to the river, where four large banyan-trees
grew together, their roots and descending branches interlacing to form a
labyrinth of caves with upright pillars. The place was nearly dark; it
smelt of buffalo and was full of their droppings; one of the exits was a
tunnel through the thicket about five feet high. Through this they had
escaped, and finding they could not pass under a branch six inches thick,
which spread horizontally across this opening at a height of four feet,
they had charged it full tilt and broken it short off. Following the
buffalo, we put them up again, but they broke back towards the eastern
part of the jungle, the original end from which we had first driven them.
I had been after them for three hours, and though we had heard their rush
close to us many times we had never obtained a glimpse of them. They were
dodging about in the thickest parts of the forest and would not face us
among the glades.
[Illustration: CENTRAL AFRICAN BUFFALO (_Bubalis centralis_).]
At last I decided to go to camp and organise a drive. I assembled all
the men, and sending them in at the west end, I sat with the two hunters
on an old platform from which the boys were accustomed to scare birds
from the crops, at the east end, and waited for the buffalo to be driven
past me. The platform was a flimsy structure some six feet high, and
commanded a good view of the edge of the woods and the reeds bordering
the river, through which I hoped the buffalo would break.
The men from the west end of the jungle were extended to form a
semicircle, and they moved towards me, firing guns and shouting. The
brutes now got into a patch of the thickest bush, near where we had
found their lair in the four trees growing together, so to get them out
of this stronghold my men set fire to the jungle. Towards evening, when
the fire was at its height, the buffalo at last made up their minds,
and instead of coming into the reeds they broke back through the line
of men, charging into them in spite of a shower of badly-aimed Snider
bullets; and escaping from the forest, they cantered over a mile of open
grass plain to the dense thorn bush and high grass on the slope leading
up towards the Gálla mountains. Of course by the time I had run through
the half mile of covert into the open they had disappeared. They never
returned to Shendil while we were encamped there, and I have no doubt
they left the country altogether.
At dusk on the evening of the 13th I went out to the burnt plain and got
up to a herd of waterbuck, shooting a cow in mistake for the bull, and
then wounding the bull. He got away into long grass, and night coming on
I lost him. Going to follow him up next morning I first made for the body
of the cow. I found that a lion had discovered it early in the night,
and, eating his fill, had left the remainder to the hyænas. Following up
the tracks of the lion, I found the carcase of the wounded bull, which
the lion had followed up and struck down, close to a thicket of thorn
bush and high grass. Part of the haunches was consumed, and the lion had
apparently gone into the patch of grass to sleep or watch over the meat.
Silently sitting down behind a bush close by with my two hunters, I
waited from eight o’clock till noon for the lion to come out. Vultures
were perched on all the tops of the thorn-trees, and would occasionally
swoop to the ground and walk round at a respectful distance from the
meat; but they always took alarm again and flew back to their perches,
no doubt fearing the lion would come out. Lions often watch meat in this
manner by day. So still did we sit behind our screen of bushes watching
the dead waterbuck that a large spotted hyæna came up to within two yards
of my face without seeing me! I had to cough, otherwise he would have
been right on to me, and there is no knowing what even a hyæna would do
when so close. He gave one look, and the hair bristling up along his back
he rushed away, coming to a halt eighty yards off to look back. Then he
cantered through the jungle and I lost sight of him.
Finding the lion did not come out of the grass, we searched it through
and through, and discovered that he must have heard us coming when we
first found the carcase in the morning, and retired before us. So we
gave it up and returned to camp. We had scarcely left the spot twenty
yards behind us on our way home, when two Adone women, one of them young,
plump, and almost pretty, came up and asked us for meat. We pointed to
the carcase of the waterbuck, which had been partly eaten by the lion,
and although it had lain under a tropical sun all the morning, they at
once set to work to cut off the meat which was left, to take home for
their own dinner.
The _Dair_, or rainy season, now coming on, the river began to rise
rapidly. It was long past the time agreed upon for meeting the Gálla
chief Dubbi Harré at Karanleh, and Yahia now sent me word that the Gállas
had looted several animals from the Karanleh people, and fighting between
the Somális and Gállas had broken out, all communication with Gállaland
being thus interrupted. Finding that I had not enough leave left to go
into Gállaland unless Dubbi Harré came down to Karanleh to help me, I
decided to march as quickly as possible through Ogádén and the Habr
Gerhajis country to the coast, four hundred miles distant.
On the 15th I went to the burnt plain and shot a very fine lesser koodoo
buck, and in the evening, while marching to Yahia’s, I bagged two more
waterbuck.
The next day we arrived at the ford at Karanleh, called Maaruf, where we
had first crossed the river. The stream was now in flood, the bollards
which we had driven into the mud had been carried away, and it took
all the evening to stretch the rope across. I had not a fathom of rope
to spare, and I feared that unless we could cross next day we might be
kept a week or two on the southern bank through the further rising of
the river. We, however, crossed with great difficulty on the following
day. During the passage a freshet came down, drowning one camel and
overturning a raft, with a good deal of valuable kit and a Snider rifle,
several documents, amongst which were several maps, going down in thirty
feet of water. The loss I felt most was that of my botanical collection.
Although my men spent the whole evening diving for the things they were
never recovered. I did not care to halt on the northern bank and order
another day’s diving, because of the danger from crocodiles. The men had
done their best, but in the strong current the efforts of even my Aden
Somális, who are superb divers, were in vain.
On the following day we journeyed down the river along the northern or
Somáli bank, and made two marches to the neighbourhood of Sen Morettu,
halting just opposite the forest at Shendil, where I had unsuccessfully
hunted buffalo a few days before. I sent men across on an Adone raft
which I had caused to be towed down from Karanleh, but they returned
and reported that the buffalo had not come back from the hills. On the
short march to Sen Morettu I shot a very fine waterbuck and a Sœmmering’s
gazelle, and the next day I shot a waterbuck and a lesser koodoo. I was
anxious to get a good specimen of the _dól_, with a view to having it
scientifically identified, so we had all the pitfalls in the neighbouring
forest repaired by the Adone; but none of the bushbucks fell in while I
was at Sen Morettu.
On the 21st I organised a beat for _dól_. I saw nothing, but one of the
men in the line of beaters, Hadji Adan, shot a fine buck with his Snider.
He was in company with a doe, which broke back through the line, hopping
over one of the men, hitting his forehead with her hoofs, and so knocking
him down! She succeeded in making good her escape, as the other men were
too astonished to fire. At sunset I shot another good waterbuck.
I now marched for the coast. The return journey was over ground most
of which I have previously described. We passed through several Somáli
tribes, all of which were of course friendly. On the way the natives told
me that the Abyssinians had received a great defeat from the Danakil
tribes near Obok, and that my Abyssinian friend Basha-Basha had been
killed; also that war had broken out between the Abyssinians and the
Suákin dervishes. But I was unable to verify either of these reports.
During three days I made six marches, covering sixty miles, in a course
running almost due north. The only game I saw on these marches was a
wart-hog, which appeared staring me in the face at a distance of ten
feet, as I was moving through long grass at dawn. The rising sun was
shining in his eyes, and I knocked him over stone dead by a shot in the
chest before he had time to realise the situation. He had a beautiful
pair of tusks, long, thick, and white.
On the morning of the 26th I heard that near a karia ahead of us a man
had been lately attacked by a man-eating lion and was not expected to
live. I made a short march to the karia and halted for the noon camp
close by. At the request of the relations of the sick man, while camp was
being pitched, I walked over to the karia with my hunters, carrying a
bucket full of carbolic lotion, a quart of carbolic oil, iodoform, lint
and bandages, and a syringe. We came to a hut, outside which was a crowd
of people; and looking in I saw, lying on the bare ground, the body of a
man without any clothing on. He was smeared over the head and body with
dust and blood, and had seven or eight deep fang wounds in the small of
the back and low down in his left side near the bowel. All these wounds
were uncared for, and on closer inspection I found them to be swarming
with white maggots! I asked permission to have him carried outside the
hut, where it was lighter; but his relations at first objected, saying in
his hearing that he was sure to die, it would only give him unnecessary
pain, and it was the will of Allah that he should die. The man, however,
after some persuasion consented, and as gently as we could we lifted him
from the floor of the hut, where he had been lying for the last thirty
hours, and laid him on a camel-mat outside.
Having obtained permission to try my best with the medicines I had
brought, I first got his wife to wash him all over, the other relations
looking on at every movement of the white man with great interest;
I don’t think they cared much about the sick man. When he had been
washed he looked more cheerful, and turning him over I made a careful
examination of the wounds. There were eight deep holes in the small of
the back, dangerously near the spine, where the lion had taken him up
and dropped him two or three times; and there were a couple of wounds
deep in the left side, which had not, fortunately, penetrated the bowel.
I told the man that there was no reason, with luck, why he should not
recover, and he became quite cheerful, and gave me permission to probe
the wounds. His uncle now appeared with a piece of stick having a shred
of tobe twisted round it, and with this rough instrument we probed all
the wounds, and I syringed them out carefully with carbolic lotion.
The bystanders never ceased wondering at the performance of the glass
syringe. The wounded man, like a true Somáli, never even murmured during
this treatment. At last I was able to let him sit up, clean and almost
smiling, all the holes in his body neatly plugged with pieces of lint
soaked in carbolic oil; I gave his relations medicine for twenty days’
use, and a new tobe for bandaging, as well as a lecture on further
treatment. They never ceased begging for the syringe, but I could not
spare that, as we were going through lion country and might want it.
The story of the occurrence, which the natives then told me, was
interesting. This man, with twenty other men and boys, had been asleep,
two nights before, in a camel karia a few miles away. The camel karias
are merely thorn fences round the camels, and there are no huts, the
men sleeping on the inside of the fence in the open air. At about five
in the morning, just before dawn, a lion sprang into the zeríba and
seized this man, his companions making off, and the camels stampeding
into the darkness. The man’s own account of what occurred then follows.
He struck at the lion frantically with his hands, and the brute let
him go, retiring to a little distance to watch him. The lion came on
again, taking him up a second time and carrying him a few yards to the
edge of the fence. Again the man struck out at the lion and he let go. A
third time he took him up, and again the man, who was nearly exhausted,
drove him off; and the lion, either frightened away by the dawn of day
or impressed at the spirit shown by his victim, sneaked off. The man
remembered no more till his friends returned some time afterwards,
expecting to find only a few bones; and they carried him to the home
karia and threw him into a hut to die, the thought of giving him food
or washing the blood and dust from him not occurring to them; and there
he had lain for thirty hours. To this day I have never heard whether
or not he recovered, but having seen instances of wonderful recoveries
among Somális, I am inclined to think he had a very good chance, that is,
provided his relations used the carbolic lotion and did not steal the
white tobe directly my back was turned.
On the evening of the same day I made another short march, and arrived
at a place where a leopard had just killed a goat while the flocks were
returning from pasture to a karia. We hastily constructed a shelter,
and I sat two yards from one of my own goats, which I had tied up as a
bait, with the wind blowing in my face, and the two hunters at my side
with spare rifles. There was a faint moon, and at about nine o’clock a
leopard charged the goat and killed it. I sat quietly till the hubbub had
subsided, and then, as the leopard lay on the goat sucking its blood,
with its back to me and its tail twitching close to my feet, I fired for
the centre of its back, and it rolled over stone dead, with its four paws
in the air, beside its victim. We raised a cheer, and all the men coming
from camp, we carried it to the door of my tent and skinned it by the
light of torches.
Next morning, as I had had good sport with the leopard, before marching
I gave the women at the karias a large present of beads. Directly they
knew that I had given the beads to Adan Yusuf to be distributed, they all
rushed at him like tigresses, and in a fright he dropped the beads and
fled. The women fought and wrangled till we had loaded and marched away.
Several of the old men came to me and said that now I had given the
beads the women would be quarrelling with each other for days, and would
neglect the cattle, and require to be well beaten before things settled
down again. As we marched off through the bush I shot a prowling hyæna.
On the 28th, while I was marching ahead of the caravan with the two
hunters, I saw a herd of seven Waller’s gazelles and began stalking
them. While we were still two hundred yards away, three leopards charged
into the middle of the herd and killed a young doe before our eyes,
scattering the others in every direction. We ran up to where the leopards
were squatting over the carcase, in the middle of a broad open glade,
but while we were still some distance away they saw us and all three
made off at a canter. I think they were ordinary leopards, and not the
long-legged, pale-skinned hunting leopard (the _chítah_ of India). I
fired at one of them and missed, and then we sat by the side of the dead
Walleri till the caravan came up, hoping to see the brutes, but they
never returned.
The following day we arrived at a deep well called Garbo. As we
approached this well we saw vultures swooping towards two or three dead
trees which overtopped the jungle, and searching about we found the
bodies of a leopard and seven spotted hyænas, which had been poisoned
during the night by a Midgán. He had drawn up water from the deep well
and exposed it for the night in a shallow wooden bowl,[49] mixed with
poison which he had concocted from various herbs. The success of his
manœuvre was evident. The leopard had been half eaten by the hyænas, but
I preserved the skull.
The natives whom we found encamped near here were very suspicious and
surly, as they had had some disagreement with Prince Ruspoli’s caravan
which had passed through before me. As we marched in the afternoon I left
Hadji Adan with four men, and three camels loaded with water-casks, to
follow us with a good supply of water. We had only gone a mile when we
heard several shots fired in quick succession, and all running back to
the wells, we found my men in sole possession. The natives had refused
to allow them to take any water, and my men, instead of returning and
complaining to me as they should have done, thinking to have a bit of
fun, had fired a few shots over the heads of the crowd, sending them
flying, with a worse impression of European caravans than they had
before. I was naturally very angry and disgusted with Hadji Adan, who
looked sheepish when I told him, in choice language, what I thought of
him. On this march I fired three shots with my Lee-Metford rifle at a
beautiful oryx bull which was galloping away. When he was already three
hundred yards distant my third shot brought him down, and we camped by
the body to take full advantage of the supply of meat.
Next day we made two hard marches to Daba-Jérissa, where I remained
on 1st October, shooting a fine lesser koodoo buck. The people at
Daba-Jérissa asked me to give judgment, in my capacity of Englishman,
as to the amount of blood-money to be paid by another tribe for the
murder of one of their number; but I said I would only arbitrate if both
parties would appeal to me as a disinterested stranger, and that I could
not undertake to act for the British Government, especially so far from
Berbera.[50]
On 2nd October we made two long marches to the wells at Sassamani, where
guinea-fowl swarmed in tens of thousands, blackening the river-bed as
they came to drink in the evenings; and I had good sport here with the
gun. On the way I attacked a herd of Sœmmering’s gazelles with the
Lee-Metford, and dropped four bucks with six shots, at ranges between
two hundred and fifty and three hundred yards. I gave most of the meat
to some people whom we found at the wells, instead of a present of cloth
which they asked me for.
On 5th October we arrived at the Gagáb wells at Milmil. Here I arranged
a division of the caravan into two parts, sending one portion to Berbera
by the shortest route, so that the men might be paid off and the camels
sold; and I kept the other portion to accompany me in a leisurely
journey to the coast by way of the Eidegalla Haud, where I hoped to
get some lions. We left Milmil on the 6th of October and marched to a
Rer Ali karia, and on the following day we made two marches to a large
water-pan at Awáré. As no rain had fallen for months in this locality
till quite recently, the pan was dry, but a deep well sunk through its
bed contained plenty of water. The pan at Awáré is an isolated depression
far out on the Haud Plateau, which contains rain-water for several weeks
at a time. It is three marches to the north of Milmil, the last Ogádén
watering-place on the southern edge of the Haud; and when the pan, or
the well which the natives sink through its bed, contains water, the
flocks and camels of the Rer Ali and Rer Harún are brought to Awáré to
take advantage of the rich Haud pastures, which have better fattening
qualities than those of Milmil. While passing through the Rer Ali grazing
camels, of which there were many hundreds, on our way to the pan, we were
all much amused by watching my hunter Geli, who was walking in front with
my spare rifle over his shoulder. Before he joined me he had often, with
the rest of his tribe, who were the Eidegalla, made looting excursions on
horseback to this part of the Haud. As he walked on, looking at the fat
humps of the camels to right and left, he wore an angelic smile on his
face, and sang softly, “_Hilib badan ai-y-ee ee_” (Lots of meat, plenty
of meat!) When he turned round and saw the whole caravan laughing at him
he stopped and looked sheepish.
Geli was a capital fellow, and my men used to tell a story about him
which he never contradicted. It appears that when only sixteen years
old he was out looking after goats with his mother and sisters. A lion
bolted off with one of the flock, and Geli, with the women, began idly
to track him up, to see if he had gone far; because, if the lion was not
far off, it might be worth while to call up the men from the karia to
follow him. Geli went on ahead, and found the lion asleep under a bush,
having eaten the goat. Geli decided to go and tell the tribe, but as he
was turning away he thought he would just throw his spear, it looked so
easy! He aimed at the lion’s ribs, hurled his spear, and then ran for his
karia as hard as he could go; and coming back to look with twenty men on
horseback, he found the lion dead.
The Haud in this locality is one mass of unbroken thorn forest, sometimes
light and open, sometimes very dense, with high _durr_ grass. Round the
Awáré pan the forest is composed of very fine _gudá_ thorn-trees, which
grow for about fifteen feet without branches, and then shoot up and
outwards in a fan-shape to a height of from thirty to forty feet The bark
is black, and the foliage is made up of small star-shaped leaves, massed
together and very green. It is the most picturesque tree in the Haud
forest, and nothing can be prettier than the Awáré pan when the margin of
open, flat meadow-land is covered with a carpet of fresh turf, and the
trees are in foliage. On arriving at Awáré we pitched camp under a large
_gudá_ tree at the north-west corner of the pan, and I made my bed on
the flat top of another on the eastern side, and tied up a donkey below.
Lions roared in the forest a mile or two away, but did not come near the
camp.
Next morning, without waiting for coffee, I got down from the tree and
made straight for where we had heard the lions. About three miles from
our tree we came on the fresh tracks of a large lion and lioness, and
followed them. The bush was rather open, and the lioness must have been
doing sentry and have seen us,[51] for we could hear her roaring in the
jungle some distance ahead of us as she roused her mate; and running on
in the direction of the noise, we were just in time to see a very large
black-maned lion bound out of a thicket and make off, followed by a
lioness. The grass was rather long, only showing their heads, and owing
to intervening thorn-trees and the distance, I could not get a chance to
shoot. We tracked these lions until a heavy shower of rain came on and
lost us the tracks in the afternoon. I was hungry and suffering from a
galled foot, and we were twice drenched with rain before we got home.
I lay at night on the top of the _gudá_ tree near camp, but did not get a
shot. A lion roared several times, early in the night, in the distance,
but a shower of rain coming on before dawn, the people whom I sent out
from camp failed to find his tracks.
On the 9th we moved the camp to a karia a few miles to the north-west,
where lions were reported to be common. I sat all night in the top of a
tree over a heifer tethered below, to no purpose. Next morning we came
upon tracks of two lionesses and three cubs; but we only found them at 8
A.M., and the enormous flocks and herds of the Rer Ali had wandered about
the jungle in every direction, and almost entirely obliterated the signs,
so we gave it up; and we moved camp back to the former site at the Awáré
pan. In the evening news of lions came from two opposite directions,
south-west and north-east. I sent several horsemen out to verify the
first, and I sent Hassan five miles to the south-east to the carcase of
a camel which had been struck down by the lions, and ordered him to sit
in a tree all night, and keep hyænas from the carcase by throwing stones
at it. He had seen a lioness bound away as he came up to the spot at
sunset, and sitting in a _galól_ tree waiting for the brute’s return, he
spent a most miserable night, for it rained heavily, and became so dark
that a mob of hyænas dragged away the meat in spite of his stoning. In
the morning, because of this rain, Hassan failed to find any tracks; so
he returned to my camp, aching all over, for a rotten and twisted _galól_
tree covered with large black ants is not a comfortable perch on a cold
night. The horsemen whom I sent to the south-west reported the lion
news to be a hoax of the karia people there, concocted in the hope of
obtaining _bakshísh_.[52] During the day I received a visit from some Rer
Ali headmen and minstrels, who serenaded me on foot while I was trying to
get a little sleep at noon.
On the 12th I sent out horsemen to collect news of lions from the karias,
and to make wide circles in the jungle in quest of tracks; they found
those of a family of lionesses and part-grown lions, there being seven
in all; so at night we tied up a donkey three miles from camp. I was
prevented from sitting up over the bait by very heavy rain coming on
towards evening, so I remained in camp. Next morning we found the donkey
killed by lions and eaten. Coming up in the half light of early dawn,
and stooping under the bushes, I saw several hyænas, and among them a
lioness, stealing away. The range was nearly two hundred yards, but I
fired and missed. I followed at best pace, and after twenty minutes’
tracking I saw her head for a moment looking over a tuft of grass, as
she crouched thirty yards away, but she bounded off before I had time
to look over the sight. I fired a shot after her into the grass, which
must have missed. We again tied up a donkey in the same place, and sat
up over it. But at about ten o’clock the dry _galól_, upon the flat top
of which we had placed my bed, gave way, breaking off at the fork of the
stem, and dropping us, with guns, water-bottles, and lantern, a distance
of twelve feet, to the ground! It was very dark and a heavy thunder-storm
was coming up, so we lit the lantern and trudged home through the bush.
We left the donkey tied up, and coming next morning to take him away, we
found he had been untouched by lions, and several cowardly hyænas had
prowled round him all night afraid to tackle him; so that, except in his
feelings, he was unhurt.
On the morning of the 14th, having heard a lion roar not far from camp at
midnight, I sent out horsemen, and at 9 A.M. they reported tracks of two
lionesses. Almost simultaneously came news that a goat had been killed
by a lion at a karia about five miles away. The men said it must have
been a large lion by the tracks and by the sound of his roar as he had
bounded away, quite unlike the voice of a lioness. So I walked there with
my two hunters, arriving soon after ten o’clock, and taking the owner of
the goat as my guide, I made straight for the karia where the kill had
occurred. The two horsemen who had brought the news followed me, leading
their horses, in red and blue _khaili_ tobes; but I dropped these men
at the karia as being too conspicuous and likely to attract the lion’s
attention.
We then followed the pugs of the lion from the zeríba, the parallel lines
in the red soil showing where he had dragged his victim along. The trail
was difficult to follow, as the ground had been overrun by sheep during
the morning. At last we came to a very small boy in charge of a flock of
sheep, and he told us there were no more domestic animals farther on,
and that the lion had gone into a dark jungle of _khansa_ and _durr_
grass. We entered the jungle, and as we rounded a _khansa_ thicket my
hunter Liban said, “There he is!” and I saw his great shock head and
shoulders come from out of a black overhanging _khansa_ bush twenty-five
yards away, which had been his lair, and in which we subsequently found
the body of the goat. I had only time to see his huge head and mane come
indistinctly through the foliage, when he bounded away to my left, across
a space of two yards of open, into a patch of _durr_ grass six feet
high. I followed him with the sight of the rifle on his shoulder as he
disappeared, and the trigger being rather heavy I did not actually get
it off till he was well inside the grass. The rifle went off, and a loud
roar followed as he galloped on, showing that he had been hit. The roar
died away at once into a suppressed growl, then all was silence.
Now came the work of following him up. Making a circuit to the right we
examined the expanse of grass and jungle into which he had sprung; it was
very thick and extensive, stretching to the right and left for several
hundred yards, so there was nothing for it but to follow him through it.
We first fired a Snider at the place where we had last heard him, at the
same time throwing sticks and shouting; and then, foot by foot, we took
up his path, which was bathed in blood, straight through the high grass.
From the very hurried nature of my shot I did not hope to have disabled
him, although the rifle I had been shooting with was a heavy eight-bore
Paradox. After going another half dozen yards, as we came to a mimósa,
Liban said, “He is lying dead beyond that _khansa_ bush.” Peeping through
and seeing a mass of yellow, I saw that Liban was right. Skirting round,
we found a noble, yellow-maned lion, the finest I had seen, in perfect
condition and in the prime of life. My natives called my attention to
the peculiar position in which he was lying, under the farther side of
the mimósa. He had bounded away from his lair, getting my eight-bore
bullet obliquely in behind the left lung, and out at the point of the
right shoulder. He had roared and bounded on with this wound, and after
going fifteen yards had taken the mimósa in one spring, falling dead in
his tracks. We measured the bush over which he had sprung, and found it
was eighteen feet broad and eight feet high, and absence of marks on the
surrounding sand showed that he could not possibly have gone round. My
theory is that the wound took full effect just as he made this supreme
effort, landing him practically lifeless. The skin, when taken off,
measured 10 feet 11 inches from nose to tip of tail when spread without
stretching or pegging out. As I knelt looking at his head, surrounded
by the men, women, and children who had flocked from the karias, I only
wished for an European companion to help me admire him!
In the evening I made another platform in a _gudá_ tree three miles
to the south of camp. From my tent to about a mile south of it there
was gravel. I found that lions, in passing camp to go to prospect some
karias to the south-west of us, avoided the gravel, no doubt because
it was uncomfortable for their feet, and invariably walked over the
fine red clay a little farther to the south. Hence the choice of my new
hiding-place. I spread my bed on the flat top of the tree, fourteen feet
from the ground. It was like a spring mattress, gently waving before a
cool breeze; and we slept beautifully most of the night, hung up in the
air, with a brilliant canopy of stars above us and the mysterious sea
of bush around us, with lions roaring frequently during the night. Next
morning I was taken off on a “wild-goose chase” to a karia six miles
distant to the north, where a lioness had taken a small goat in sight of
the karia people; but the sheep and camels had since been driven over the
tracks and we lost her, having to abandon, besides, the search for the
tracks of the lion which had roared near my machán the night before.
I remained in camp on the 15th to let the skin of the large lion dry, and
again slept in the machán three miles to the south of camp. The lions
roared again; for there were a pair of them, the voice of the lioness
being easily distinguishable from that of her mate. They never came to
the donkey, and a heavy thunder-storm drenching us and our bedding, we
lit a lantern and threaded our way to camp, leading the donkey, through
the darkness. Sending out horsemen next morning, the tracks of the pair
could not be found anywhere, so it was decided that their roars must
either have been uttered from an immense distance, or that they must have
been devils! But I think that, owing to the wet weather, their voices
appeared to be very much nearer than they really were.
[Illustration: A SNAP SHOT
“As he bounded away to my left.”]
My leave now being at an end, we marched for Adadleh, over a waterless
tract of Haud ninety miles in extent. We covered this distance in nine
marches, or four and a half days, the whole of the country passed over
having been one continuous sea of dense bush, dotted over with red
ant-hills, some of the spires being twenty-five feet high. We arrived at
Berbera on the 31st of October 1893, and I crossed to Aden next day on
the way to England.
[Illustration]