In the Gólis Range there are many of the old elephant paths still existing, but the bones are very seldom found; and the Somális have a theory to account for this. In 1886 I went to Digwein, where an officer had shot a large bull elephant two years before, and I was shown the exact spot where it had been killed; and rummaging among the bushes we found the jaw-bones, with the heavy grinders still embedded in them. The Somális said this was all that was left of it, because the Esa Músa cattle and the koodoo antelopes had eaten all the soft parts of the bones.
The Black Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros bicornis)
Native name, Wiyil
Somáli Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros bicornis).
For many years the black rhinoceros has been known to exist in the interior of Somáliland; and going farther in every year, I have constantly been expecting to come into its ground.
The first Somáli rhinoceroses were shot by my brother and myself in our Abyssinian border trip in August 1892, and since then only a few have been bagged by Europeans. They come far north of the range of the zebras, sometimes wandering as far towards the coast as the open grass plains of Toyo, a hundred miles south of Berbera, where they hide in the patches of durr grass. They are common in the southern parts of the Haud; I never found any signs of them during many expeditions in the Habr Awal, Esa, and Gadabursi countries. They are most common in the valleys of the Tug Jerer and Tug Fáfan, and thence southward as far as the Webbe; and they are also plentiful beyond the Webbe in Gállaland. Rhinoceroses are said to exist to the south-east of Berbera, but in our trip to the Dolbahanta country we never saw any traces of them.
We found these to be the most stupid game animals we have encountered, and easily approached if the wind was right. They were not very prone to charge, and in their blind, headlong rush seemed to see nothing, so that by stepping to one side and standing perfectly still a man would probably be safe. The transparent and thorny nature of the billeil bush, which is always their last sanctuary, renders a man rather helpless, and if seen and charged, and unable to find elbow-room owing to the walls of impenetrable thorns, he would probably be killed. Rhinoceros-shooting is very exciting, but it is chiefly the fearful nature of the jungle which makes it so. I have never seen more than three of these brutes together. The ground they usually prefer is a network of very stony, broken hills, covered with galól or billeil jungle, and having some river-bed not too many miles distant, where they can go at night to drink and bathe. They travel considerable distances to the river, and wander all night up and down the channel looking for a convenient pool, and making a maze of tracks in the soft sand. The Abbasgúl, Malingúr, and Rer Amáden tribes eat their flesh when hungry, and I found it very good, and once lived for a week on very little else.
We could usually cut from fifteen to thirty fighting shields from each rhinoceros, three-quarters of an inch thick and from fifteen to eighteen inches in diameter, worth about a dollar apiece at the coast. Everywhere in Central Ogádén the caravan tracks are furrowed in grooves a yard or more long and six inches deep, which look like the work of a plough. This is done by the rhinoceros as he walks along.
A good pair of bull’s horns measures nineteen inches for the front and five inches for the back one.