It now became a matter for our deep consideration as to how far our trip should extend.
We had known before we started that Somaliland is no longer the old time sportsman’s paradise. The shikar obtainable is not what it was, and every year lessens the chances. The truth is the country is fairly shot out.
Fifteen years ago the most excellent shooting was to be had all over; now, unless one penetrates right into the interior where a certain amount of danger from warlike tribes must be looked for, there is not much hope of a truly great and representative bag. The reserving of the Hargeisa and Mirso as entirely protected regions has also necessarily restricted the game area. The day of the sportsman in all Africa was in that Golden Age when he, all untrammelled, might stalk the more important fauna, to say nothing of the lesser, as he listed. Now he pays heavy toll, varying with the scarcity of the quarry, and the licences are not the least part of the expenses. Of course the needful preservation of big game should, and inevitably must, lead to good results, since to husband the resources of anything is to accumulate in the long run. But the idea of artificial preservation and legislation seems to knock some of the elemental romance out of hunting. Anything cut and dried seems out of place in sport of big game variety, and brings it down to the nearer level of shooting pheasants that know you by sight, and which have been on terms of friendship with their slaughterers. The Ogaden country, in parts, like the curate’s egg, still possesses potentialities not to be sneered at, and if one is willing to penetrate the interior, getting clear away from the beaten track, the possibilities become certainties.
To go onwards through the Mijertain meant striking into, or crossing the “Mary Ann Desert,” as Cecily persisted in styling the Marehan. This was a somewhat daunting enterprise, but to put against any drawbacks there was the attraction and magnet of unlimited sport at the other side. We consulted our maps, and understood them sufficiently to plan a route and leave the rest to Providence, which useful commodity or personage we confidently hoped would be good enough to see us through.
We told Clarence and the caravan generally in an off-hand manner, very confidently, that we proposed trekking eventually to Joh in the Haweea country, but I cannot say they received the news in the same spirit of easy confidence. Clarence was and looked taken aback. He murmured something about its being a great journey, days and days, that he had never penetrated so far before. Even our shikari uncle had stopped at the Bun Arnwein. This rather settled the matter. Oh, to go one better than our relative!
We mapped our homeward route so that it permitted of a day or more on the Bun Toyo with the new grass all a-blowing and a-growing to tempt out buck in dozens, even though it all meant going over much of our old shooting ground. We had not yet got a “sig,” Swayne’s hartebeest, among our trophies. We also intended to pass through a new—to us—part of the Golis, and try our luck there.
This Ogaden country is a God-forsaken spot, and the eye aches at last with the dull brown of everything. Even the haze of the early morning is khaki-tinted. As for ourselves, we matched the landscape. Our hands were sienna-coloured, and our complexions———, but maybe the very word is out of place in connection with our sun-dried faces.
Cecily was very bent on shooting a rhino on her own,’ saying she would not count the one that fell to my rifle as anything to do with her. I offered half share in it enthusiastically, for I had no desire to meet another.
I had killed one, to say nothing of the Baron, and was more than sated. Cecily, however, would not be put off with any sophistry on my part, so we had the order on hand.
At last we came on the oasis called Galadi, a very remarkable place, set like a jewel in a rim of iron. We could hardly believe our eyes. It was such a faceted gem. No more dingy brown landscape, but a peaceful sylvan scene of great trees, real turf, and a wealth of green vegetation. This patch of emerald extended for a mile or more and seemed like a little Heaven. I was very interested in the wells we came on here and there. They were of immense antiquity, very deep, cut in the solid rock. We could not but be impressed with the industry of the long dead hewers. Naturally in some places, though the wells are deep, the work of excavation is rendered less difficult by the nature of the ground cut through, which is in most parts of red earth. There are always steps cut all the way down, on which the Somalis balance themselves with the greatest sang-froid, doing the necessary conjuring trick with-the buckets from hand to hand the while. They are made from the ubiquitous leather—in no country, I imagine, can leather be more pressed into service—and a number of Somalis often descend a deep well at one time, passing up the full buckets in continuous chain, receiving back the returning empty ones as the other leaves the hand. All the time the ever helpful songs are sung.