In one bit of glade I worked my way through the caterpillars had played devastator; every leaf was eaten. I hurried on. I rested again on a fallen guda tree, hunting first to see no snake shared my seat with me. I kept utterly silent for an hour or more, when my patience was rewarded. Through the bushes I saw a white chin bobbing up and down as it chose out the most succulent thorns. Lower it went. I hardly breathed. To see a lesser koodoo in his haunts one sometimes has to wait for months. Here was I, in the limits of a morning’s patrol, so lucky. The great broad ear flickered in and out. Because this antelope mostly lives in thick cover where quick hearing is his only safety, his ear has grown in accordance with necessities. Somali hunters never seem to differentiate between the koodoo and the lesser koodoo. They are both one and the same to them, and are called “Godir” indiscriminately. And yet the two animals are so different it seems absurd to think of confusion.
The koodoo (strepsiceros koodoo) is the biggest antelope in Somaliland, heavy, magnificent and warlike. It inhabits mountainous parts, and the reason would seem to be plain. Space for such great horns is required, and though on occasion they frequent jungly parts of the Golis, their nature and habit is to live in the stony gorges, and stalking one is not unlike stalking one of our own Scotch deer. The lesser koodoo (strepsiceros imberbis) is the personification of all the graces. What the koodoo gains in majesty the lesser has in exquisite symmetry of line and contour. The lesser koodoo never grows much larger than a small donkey, the horns are replicas in little of the average three footer of the koodoo, and there is no beard, but a short mane. Like the koodoo, the lesser is striped down each side like the white ribs of a skeleton.
My friend still fed, rustling the bushes as he chose out his favourite herbage. I had seen nothing to fire at, but, in any case, I did not mean to try for him, as in my lone condition it would mean a return to camp for assistance, and meanwhile the beautiful antelope would be food for any prowling beast. I hated at all times to kill wastefully. The head of the lesser koodoo looked, as far as I could see, a fair one, the light of the sun glinting through the shadowy depths occasionally caught the curving horns. But since he might not be mine, since I could not get him back to camp, I would not kill wantonly.
In speaking of the wholesale slaughter of Somaliland fauna by sportsmen and sportsmen so-called, one ought really to include the Somalis themselves. They have assisted materially to decimate the country—of elephants particularly. On lions they have not made much impression, as these animals are too big a job to tackle unless they are driven to it. But in the days when the elephant roamed the land, their slaughter for the sake of the ivory was wholesale, terrific and amazing. Clarence, who was of the Gadabursi country, well remembers his father and his tribe hunting the elephant on a colossal scale, killing several a week. The manner of it was courageous, to say the least. The tribe went out, mounted on swift ponies, and the marked-down elephant being selected from the herd, he was ridden down in the open. One agile Somali would caper in front of the pachyderm to attract his attention, and a rider at the gallop would pass in swift flying rush behind and cut the ham-string or tendon of one of the hind legs. The elephant would then be at the mercy of the hunters. It must have been a dangerously exciting business. The sword used—I saw one in the hut of a Mullah at the Upper Sheik—is of native make, apparently, strong, and longer in the blade than the bilâwa, which is often seen in its scabbard of white leather bound round the waist of a Somali. It was not unlike the familiar sword known to us as the “Dervish”—two-edged, with a groove down the centre, and light. The handle was of horn, and bound about with leather. And yet we think ourselves brave to venture in the vicinity of my lord the elephant with the latest thing in rifles in our hands!
What with the ham-stringing, and all hunters killing cows and bulls indiscriminately, the result has been that the elephant has left his old haunts, never to return. The Somalis wasted the entire carcase. They do not care to eat the flesh, and even the hide is not so beloved as that of the oryx and rhino. The Somali tusks were never of the vast proportions attained in other parts of Africa. Ivory still forms part of the stock of some trading caravans, so the elephants must exist in the flesh somewhere in Somaliland, unless these traders trade with others again at the rear of the back of beyond.
A twig cracked! No twig of mine, I swear, since I sat like a statue carved in stone. My foot had long since gone to sleep, and pins and needles pricked it. The bushes trembled, then were still, and stealthily, with very little movement, the beautiful antelope moved away. I saw him as he circled round a bend in the jungle, and in a flash he was gone. Really I had enjoyed my morning as keenly as though I had added to my bag an hundredfold.
And so back to camp I went, and as I went I notched the trees that I might find the right place in my “Hedd-Godir” (koodoo forest) again. I wanted Cecily to come with me and try and track my friend the lesser koodoo. When I got home, I found all the men congregated round one whom they said was grievously hurt through a camel falling on him. I couldn’t find anything wrong, no broken bones, but the man said the pain internally was very great, almost unbearable. I got out my hypodermic syringe and injected some of the morphia we had in case of emergencies into the arm, to the wonderment of the men, and then I had the invalid placed down on a camel-mat to sleep, and all the other men were forbidden to disturb the invalid. And lo! when the effects of the morphia wore off we heard no more of aches and pains. It was the cure of the trip. And the “coogeri” medicine was held in high esteem ever afterwards. I asked what “coogeri” meant, and was told—“inside.”
Sitting on a camp chair in peace and quietness, with a book and the cup that cheers, Clarence broke in on us to say that a party of twenty-five horsemen had arrived prepared to dibaltig before us—Heaven only knows why, or where the men had dropped from. With as good grace as we could, and a cup of tea in hand, we went outside the zareba to see a crowd of Somalis, mounted, in the usual lively get-up, khaili tobes, shields, spears, and the other necessaries of performers of the dibâltig. The ponies were so be-tasselled on a bright red band over the eyes, I don’t know how they were to see the way at all. One stalwart, the head-man of the party, had decorated his steed with a frill of lions’ mane around its neck, fastening in front with a large bunch of yellow ribbons. Very hot and uncomfortable for the pony, but very effective and circus-like.
“Salaam aleikum,” and “Mot! Mot! io Mot!” Then the chorister-in-chief (these dibâltig performances are somewhat like the “waits” at Christmas) began a long song, all—Clarence said—about us, wishing us health, happiness, and many wives.
“Wives, Clarence?”