In fitting out a caravan, the chief factors governing the calculation are:—
(1) What is the minimum number of armed men that should be taken into the district to be visited.
(2) Whether or not the district is waterless.
(3) The duration of the trip.
As regards the first consideration, I will mention different districts, and state what escort I should take into each, assuming political conditions to be as favourable as they were in 1893. Local disturbances of course arise, but on the whole the country is becoming safer every year for Europeans. My estimate may soon be out of date; and the political authorities in Aden, who are in touch with events in Somáliland, must be consulted as to the strength of the escort. Permission must be obtained from the same authorities to enter Northern Somáliland at all.
At ordinary times I would ride about alone, though of course armed, within the area contained by lines joining Berbera, Wagar, Hargeisa, and Elmas Mountain; and in this area the natives may often be seen unarmed. As a matter of fact a sportsman would always have a few Somális in attendance, either armed with his spare sporting rifles or with their own spears. An European who went unarmed about the country would excite the universal derision of the natives, for it is their own fashion to go armed.
Outside this area, in the explored parts of the British Protectorate, I think from eight to fifteen rifles should be distributed among the followers; and on the Abyssinian border, or in the Gadabursi and Dolbahanta countries, fifteen to twenty rifles. In distant Ogádén, on the Webbe Shabéleh, and on the western Gálla border, I recommend from twenty to thirty rifles, and the same in the unexplored country along the coast east of Karam. For the nearer Gálla tribes south of the Webbe, and for the Aulihán Somális, I should take from thirty to fifty rifles. For a distant exploration into the far interior of Gállaland, likely to be inhabited by hostile natives, were I going on such an expedition, I would not take less than from fifty to one hundred and fifty rifles. These estimates are necessarily very rough, for so much depends on the number of camels to be protected and the number of white men; and in the last case I have given my opinion on evidence obtained from the Somális, and not with any personal experience of the Gálla country itself. The strongest escort I have had at any time in my Somáli trips has been about thirty rifles.
The object of these escorts in all but the last case is to guard against a possible raid by some robber band. Once, to my knowledge, in the Jibril Abokr country, an English sportsman’s camp was, during his absence, sacked by some of these rascals. At night, too, the caravan of an European might easily be mistaken for that of Somáli traders, and in case of an attack it would be awkward, not to say undignified, for the caravan to be incapable of defence. It is very unlikely that the authorities at Aden would allow any traveller to go into the interior without his having made some provision of this sort.