As I have been nearly always travelling incessantly and generally on duty, I have seldom had time to wait among the Somáli karias for news of lions, and when I have been on leave, and time has permitted, I have generally preferred to camp among the mountains and look for large koodoo, amid fine scenery and away from the noise and dust of inhabited country. This, to my mind, is by far the most fascinating sport to be had in Somáliland. I have, however, had many shots at lions when marching, and have brought home the trophies of four. To make a good bag of lions, it is necessary to devote a trip exclusively to lion-shooting, but to my mind the bright moments of intense excitement do not come often enough to compensate for the long monotonous days in camp.
Lions are still numerous in Somáliland, chiefly in unexplored parts of the Haud and Ogádén. It is probable that many of the Haud lions never drink except when they can find pools of rain-water. They may be encountered at all times of the year at distances up to fifty miles or more from the nearest water. The Midgáns go after them a good deal, and bring their skins to Berbera and Aden for sale, but they are seldom good skins, very often being riddled with spear holes inflicted wantonly after death. When a lion has committed so many depredations among the karias that the men living in them are roused to the point of banding together to kill him, Somális and Midgáns, according to their own account, go after him on horseback till they bring him to a standstill in the open. Then they bait him by galloping round at full speed and shouting. The lion turns this way and that, trying to face them as they whirl round; and getting confused with the shouting and dust, he falls a prey to the arrows of the Midgáns, who mount and ride away to a safe distance with the other Somális, and wait for his death. Sometimes one of the horsemen is knocked over: an angry lion, unless too done up to make good his charge, being easily able to catch a bad or a tired pony.
The movements of the native encampments seem chiefly to influence the changes of quarters of the lions, the latter following the karias as they move to fresh pastures. When a family, with its flocks and herds and its karias, moves, its attendant lions, if there should be any, accompany it, being sometimes man-eaters and more often cattle-eaters. Last June my own caravan, while returning to the coast from Ogádén, was followed during two days, over a distance of forty miles, by a pair of hungry lions. We discovered this by chance, when some scouts of mine happened to go back along the road.
A few years ago there used to be plenty of lions in Guban, in the reeds bordering the Issutugan river, and about Kabri-Bahr, and along the foot of Gólis Range. Now the best country for them is decidedly the Haud Plateau and Ogádén, where there are still a good many. Milmil is sometimes a good place; also the base of Bur Dab Mountain, and the Waredad Plain, where there are patches of durr grass an acre or two in extent, with a few shady thorn-trees growing within them. They make their lair in the high grass under the shade of a tree, and as the grass patches are surrounded by bare red soil or sand, the pugs are easily found, and the brutes can be driven out into the open and shot. Lions living in the Haud, where it is elevated five thousand to six thousand feet, have better coats and manes than those found in Guban or in Ogádén, and the best skins I have seen have come from the elevated ban or open prairie. All the animals of the elevated country have thicker coats than those of the corresponding varieties found in the low country, this being necessary, no doubt, as a protection against the cold.
The Elephant (Elephas africanus)
Native name, Maródi
The Somáli elephant has within the last five years been much persecuted by sportsmen, and I am afraid that if this destruction goes on, in the near future there will be none left in Northern Somáliland, for they have entirely left their old haunts. In 1884, when Egypt evacuated Somáliland, elephants were plentiful on Wagar and Gólis, coming down to the southern edge of the Maritime mountains. Driven in December by the cold from the high interior, they wandered down the sand-rivers, feeding on the armo creepers and aloes.
Since Sir Richard Burton’s expedition thirty-nine years ago, few, if any, Europeans entered Somáliland until 1884, when two officers from Aden visited Gólis in search of elephants almost simultaneously with Mr. F. L. James’s expedition to the Webbe. From this time the disappearance of the elephant has been very rapid, and nearly all the herds have retired to the mountainous country in which the Tug Fáfan takes its rise; but a few herds still come down annually into the Gadabursi country. In 1884 elephants were shot at Dalaat and Digwein, places near Mandeira in the interior plain north of Gólis; and since that year I have never heard of them anywhere in this plain. In 1887 I had to ascend to Wagar before finding any, and since then they have retired from Wagar and Gólis altogether, and are never now by any chance, I believe, found east of Hargeisa, unless we except herds which wander eastward into the far interior of Ogádén from the western valleys of the Harar Highlands.
The cause of elephants having been driven away to such an extent is that sportsmen have not been satisfied with the death of a bull or two here and there, but have slaughtered large numbers of cows. In the first enthusiasm of elephant-shooting it is conceivable that a sportsman may shoot two or three cows as well as bulls, as I have done; but there is no reason, except the temptation afforded by very exciting sport, why large numbers of elephants of both sexes should be destroyed in Somáliland. They do no harm to the few plots of cultivation scattered at wide intervals, and very few Somális will eat their flesh. Though the elephants themselves are of the average size, this mountain ivory is probably as small as any to be found in Africa, sixty pounds being a very good pair of tusks, though greater weights have of course been recorded in exceptional cases.
I believe the question of the desirability of training and using the African elephants for transport is one which will become more important every year as Africa is opened up. Provided something could be done to stop the wholesale slaughter of elephants by English sportsmen, there is still a probability that the whole of our Somáli Protectorate would become restocked, for in the chaos of rugged gorges which descend abruptly from the Harar Highlands into Ogádén there are still plenty. I do not think that a moderate amount of elephant-shooting, properly regulated, does much harm, but the herds are certain to leave places where they have been hunted about without respite season after season, and where large numbers have been slaughtered.