Satisfied with my success so far as it went, I did not follow the herd, and in answer to my whistle the Midgáns came up, astonished to see that a single bullet had done the business. The camels were brought up, and we formed our bivouac by the dead elephant, and at dusk the tusks lay beside the camp-fire. Next day we marched to Sheikh, and found the camp safe, and in the evening began our march back to Berbera.
Two months later I set out again, beginning by a dhow voyage of one hundred and fifty miles across the Gulf of Aden. I hired four camels and two camelmen at five rupees a day, or about £10 for a whole month.[14] I also engaged a caravan leader, three servants, two Somáli trackers, and a Midgán, not a large party to go into an unknown country with. To guard against the possible attack by robbers at a time when the English even at the coast were very little known, I lent my three servants a Snider carbine each. The remainder of the men had their spears and shields, and the Midgán, Adan, carried his bow and arrows. My “butler,” Núr Osman, had been a camelman in the Nile expedition for the relief of Gordon, and had become a very fair shot.
By the light of a full moon we started across the Berbera Maritime Plain, going south-west; and at 1 A.M. we reached a small tree called “Nasíya” (the resting-place), sixteen miles from the coast. Early in the night we passed several karias of trading caravans which were halted round Berbera for the trading season, each circle of mat huts pouring out a crowd of Midgán dogs to give us a surly salute. At the last karia I fired at a spotted hyæna, but missed him. At Nasíya we threw ourselves down on the sand, and unloading the camels took a short sleep to refresh ourselves for the work yet before us, and at 4 A.M. we pushed on again towards the first water, Deregódleh, which is twenty-two miles from Berbera. As we advanced the bare-looking Maritime Plain began to break up into stony watercourses and thorny bush. We passed, to our right, a detached flat-topped hill of trap formation called Sýene, part of the first low Maritime Range.
Near Sýene I saw two buck Sœmmering’s gazelles, looking large and white by the light of the rising sun, which was at my back. The wind was blowing from the front, and I made a careful stalk, but on raising my head from the last watercourse the aoul had removed themselves three hundred yards distant, and were stopping to gaze. They had seen my camels coming along. Then with whisking tails they trotted away, and I never saw them again. Very nearly related to this gazelle is the Cape springbuck. Sœmmering’s gazelle carries a pair of graceful, lyre-shaped black horns, about fourteen inches in length and well ringed. When still scarcely clear of Sýene, catching a glimpse of dark red in a watercourse two hundred yards to my left, I walked towards it, put up a Waller’s gazelle, and bagged him with my Martini-Henry rifle.
At 10 A.M. we reached Deregódleh, a watercourse which has cut its way deep into the limestone rock of the interior plain and hollowed it out into caves, in which sheep, when waiting at the wells, take shelter from the sun. There is some very low cover on each bank, in which hares and the little Sakáro antelopes are to be found.
We left Deregódleh and marched to Mandeira, a delightful headquarters. It is a valley about three miles wide, under Gán Libah mountain, a bluff of the great Gólis Range. The mountains overlooking this valley rise to about six thousand feet above sea-level. The high country beyond them is called Ogo, the interior and Maritime Plains below them are called Guban. The Ogo climate is much cooler than that of Guban, and the grass and jungle more luxuriant. At Mandeira, all along the foot of Gólis, is more or less dense forest of the large gudá thorn-tree, with a thick undergrowth of aloes and thorny bushes. Here are found leopards, lesser koodoo, Walleri, and wart-hog. The pugs of an occasional lion may be seen, and in the gorges of the mountain is to be found the large koodoo, with his splendid spiral horns, and the Alakud or klipspringer. In the stony interior plains between Gólis and the Maritime Range are found oryx, wild ass, the ubiquitous Walleri, the lowland gazelles, and a few shy ostriches. Spotted hyænas are common, striped hyænas rare.
We camped near the water at Mandeira at midday, and found the valley occupied by a section of the Habr Gerhajis tribe, who were friendly. While here I shot a buck lesser koodoo and missed a splendid bull koodoo, which crossed a ledge of rock two hundred feet above us. The buck lesser koodoo is, I think, the most beautiful wild animal in Somáliland; his coat is fairly long, of a French gray colour in old males, and nicely marked with white bands across the body. The horns are spiral, and about twenty-five inches long, and he has a bushy tail tipped with white. When disturbed he goes away in great bounds, flying the bushes and clumps of aloes, and presenting a most difficult shot.
“Flying the Bushes.”
Hearing that there were elephants near Little Harar (Hargeisa), we went on to Gulánleh, about twenty miles short of that place and ninety south-west of Berbera. At Gulánleh the country became open and undulating, the Gólis Range having ceased, and Guban rising gradually to the level of Ogo. Hargeisa is situated in the district between Ogo and Guban, which is called Ogo-Gudan.[15] The country immediately north of Hargeisa is called the Damel Plain, a vast plateau of rolling ground covered with gravel or red earth, and low thorny scrub, and traversed by tributaries of the Issutugan river-bed. The Issutugan is a sand-river at places from one to five hundred yards wide, which, rising near Hargeisa, cuts through the Maritime Range and sends its freshets over the Maritime Plain to reach the sea near Bulhár or Géri. The tributaries are generally dry and sandy, with patches of dense reeds, and are bordered by belts of high tree jungle about a mile wide. These reeds, generally ten feet high, were at that time infested by lions, which did not appear in the daytime, but left plenty of tracks in the sand, showing where they had prowled up and down the river-beds at night. In May, June, and December elephants used to come down these rivers to feed on the creepers and aloes of the forest belts along their banks, often leaving the shelter of the trees to stand in the patches of reeds.