The Gállas at this place a few years before my visit numbered between one and two thousand souls, rich in cattle, but latterly they had been annually raided by the Masai from the south and the Somális from the north, till the village of Golbánti had dwindled down to about one hundred and fifty inhabitants, and it had been only kept going by the exertions of, and protection afforded by the representative of the United Methodist Mission who was stationed there. Three years before my visit the former missionary and his wife, an English lady, had been murdered there by the Masai, and less than two years later the German station of Ngai, a few miles up-stream, had been burnt by a party of over a thousand Somális, who came to within a short distance of Golbánti, but were unprepared to attack the fine stockade and house which had been built by the missionaries, the upper verandah having been thoughtfully lined with a few rifles.[8] The German missionaries from Ngai had taken refuge in the Golbánti house, and saw the flare of their own mission burning a few miles away. The Gállas at Golbánti said they feared the Somális even more than the Masai, as the former being good swimmers, the Tana River was no obstacle to them.
The southern Somáli tribes are very bold, and are said to raid cattle from the Gállas and take them to the mixed Gálla and Arab town of Lámu, on the east coast, to sell them again. As they have horsemen, they are said to be able to cope with the Masai, whom they sometimes meet when both are raiding the Gállas near the Tana. I saw a few of the southern Somális walking about Lámu. They appear to be rougher, more savage, and finer men than the northern Somális.
The Gállas of Golbánti were well-featured men, very quiet in manners, brown in colour, with thin lips, and slightly built.[9] The Somális are very like them, but rather bigger and better built, and the only difference that I could observe was that there appeared to be some Arab blood in the Somális. The little I saw of the nomad Gállas at Imé and Karanleh on the Webbe tended to strengthen me in the belief that the Somális are Gállas with a very slight strain of Arab in their blood. The Somális themselves, of course, deny this, and claim their descent to be from the higher race. The Gállas and Somális, though such bitter enemies, are much alike, and both are utterly different from the negritic and mongrel Swahili races to the south.
On the Tana I found a river population called the Wapokómo, negroes of fine physique, lorded over and held in bondage by the warlike Gállas; and on the Webbe Shabéleh a river race called the Adone, who were also negroes, were working in the fields and punting rafts on the river for their masters, the Somális.
My theory is that the Gállas seem to be wedged in between the continually advancing Somális from the north and the Masai from the south, the apex of the wedge being somewhere near the Tana mouth, and the base at the sources of the Juba. The effect of this pressure is perhaps driving the Tana Gállas up the river, to the country where they are more numerous and can hold their own.
Monseigneur Taurin Cahaigne of Harar, who probably knows as much as any man living about the Gállas, hinted, so far as I can remember, that the origin of the Gálla nation was probably near the mouth of the Tana, and that they spread northward and westward from there.
The tribe occupying the coast round Zeila is the Esa, and those about Bulhár and Berbera are the Habr Awal, and farther east Habr Toljaala. The nearest inland tribe to Zeila is the Gadabursi, and those on the Berbera side are the Habr Gerhajis and Dolbahanta. The six above named are the tribes with which the British authorities have most directly to deal. Of these the most capable in war is probably the Esa. The Gadabursi and Habr Awal fear them, and it is only because the former tribes are mounted and the latter have no horses that the balance of power is maintained. The Esa are chaffed by the Ishák tribes for being uncouth and barbarous. The men go about dressed in a simple short cloth round the loins, while eastern Somális generally wrap themselves in a full tobe. The Esa women do not necessarily cover up the breast, while among the Ishák tribes all but the oldest and most destitute are well dressed from head to foot. In no tribe that I have seen do the Somáli women cover the face.
The Gadabursi tribe is rich in ponies of a poor stamp. The Jibril Abokr sub-tribe of the Habr Awal is, I think, the best mounted among the tribes named, and the Dolbahanta also have enormous numbers of good ponies, and are wild and addicted to raiding on a very large scale.
It is certain that Somáliland has at different times been occupied by highly-organised races, whose habits of life have been quite different from those of the present nomadic tribes. Widely distributed over the country are traces of permanent settlements, many of them probably of great antiquity. Some appear so ancient that they might belong to any time, of which all record has been lost. Many of these ruins are traced to Mussulman occupations by the Arabs from Yemen, some hundreds of years back, but other older remains are assigned by tradition to a people who were “before the Gállas.” There are no writings, and many of the remains are scarcely recognisable as being of human origin. Sometimes blocks of dressed stone are found lying in a rectangular pattern on the ground, overgrown and half buried by grass and jungle; a series of parallel revetment walls on a hill overlooking a pass is occasionally to be met with, and frequently one may observe the scanty evidences of an ancient tank to catch rain-water. It is possible to travel for weeks in Somáliland without coming on these remains; they are met with by chance, and it seldom occurs to the natives to think of pointing them out to travellers.
Near the mullah village of Guldu Hamed, at Upper Sheikh, are the remains of a very large ruined town, and close by there is a graveyard containing some five thousand graves. I believe these remains are not very ancient, but are traced to early Mussulman settlements from Yemen. West of Hargeisa is an old fort of considerable size, crowning the detached hill called Yoghol. In the Gadabursi country there is the ancient ruined town of Aubóba, and at the head of the Gáwa Pass, on a hill to the west, and about four hundred feet above it, are some massive ancient ruins, which must have once been a fort, commanding the pass. They are called Samawé, from the name of a sheikh whose tomb crowns the ruins. The hill-top is surrounded by parallel retaining walls built of dressed stone, rising in steps from the bottom. In some places the walls were six or eight feet high, and there were remains of extensive ancient buildings filling the enclosure. Surmounting the whole in the centre was the ruin of a building of cut stone, which appeared to be the sheikh’s tomb.