Near Daba Dalól was a mullah’s village named Kob-Fardód, with a little cultivation. These people told us that the Mahamud Gerád were out against the Arasama, another sub-tribe of the Dolbahanta, and that there had been a fight, two days’ march ahead on our route.
Next day we had a scare among the camelmen. At noon, while the camels and horses were watering at the well, two miles from camp, under a weak guard of three riflemen, one of them ran in to say they had been attacked and the camels looted. E⸺ went out with a portion of our escort to search for the missing camels; but they had only gone half a mile when fifteen horsemen, the supposed enemy, cantered up and shouted that they were Arasama, and that they had come three days’ march to welcome us into the Dolbahanta country. They told us that more than a dozen caravans were in their country, afraid to go to Berbera on account of the Mahamud Gerád. One caravan had even gone round to Berbera by way of the Haud, preferring to go through waterless country and to carry ten days’ water on the camels, rather than run the risk of being looted. They also declared that we were the first Europeans in this country, and denied all knowledge of some Italians who were reported to have already come to Bur Dab. Here we met gum-pickers, wandering about the jungle, collecting gum in sacks. They seemed very poor, with old and rotten tobes.
The Arasama, to whom we had given presents at Daba-Dalól, followed us through the Ain valley, giving great annoyance by loud-voiced demands for more. Wherever we halted we were at once surrounded by a crowd of elders, clamouring for tobes. They were dragged from hand to hand, with a chorus of angry shouts, the bald-headed old chiefs looking like human vultures.
We halted at a steep, flat-topped hill called Kabr Ogádén, or the Ogádén graves, where a great Ogádén army once perished at the hands of the Dolbahanta. The whole country was dotted with Gálla cairns, one of these curious structures being visible on every hill-top. From the summit of the hill we got a splendid view of the broad Nogal Valley, and chose our theodolite station at a Gálla cairn on the highest point.
Next day, followed by the Arasama headmen, still clamouring for tobes, we marched to their great watering-place, Eil Dab (rocky well). The tribe was here in strength, with enormous droves of camels and ponies and flocks of sheep. For a mile round the wells there were clouds of dust, kicked up by the thirsty animals. The water in the wells, which are caves in gypsum rock, was very foul. Vulturine guinea-fowl abounded. We marched due south, crossing to the south side of the Nogal, but we could not shake off the Arasama, who followed us on their ponies, continually demanding presents and refusing to be satisfied with what we gave. One old chief presented us with a sheep, but not liking my return present of two tobes, he crept into our zeríba at night and stole his sheep back, while a friend of his engaged the attention of our sentry.
At our Biyo Ado camp more elders from other tribes joined the Arasama, and while E⸺ and I were up the hill with the theodolite, they issued forth and looted some camels of the Allegiri tribe which were seen passing four miles out on the plain. They also took three men prisoners, but we eventually forced them to release both camels and prisoners. The Allegiri brought us news of a fight between the Arasama and Barkad Gerád on one side and Mahamud Gerád on the other, in which the latter were successful.
Next day, while we were away watering our ponies, the Arasama issued from our camp, and chasing two Allegiri, whom they had seen from the hill, they brought them in as hostages for exchange with some looted camels. Finding the prisoners on our return we released them, and after turning all the Arasama elders neck and crop out of camp, we gave out that we intended to be friends with all tribes and would not be mixed up in their quarrels.
Followed by a large number of avaricious elders, we marched north-east to Badwein, where we found more wells, and a large tank of water, four hundred yards in circumference, with perpendicular sides forty feet deep, supposed to have been excavated in the limestone rocks by ancient Gállas; but the water was utterly unfit for human consumption. Ruins, which rise half smothered from among a tangle of aloes and thorn jungle close by, cover an area of forty thousand square yards, and in some of the houses the walls are still ten feet high. E⸺ rode into a large house or temple, to find it two hundred feet long and one hundred feet wide, divided by a number of partition walls. They are built of limestone and very much decomposed by rains, and are supposed to be the work of the Gállas, but no one knows who built them. Some of the Somális say they date back to the time of some race before the Gállas. The people at Badwein had just come from Gosaweina, driven from there through fear of the Mahamud Gerád, and we were assured we would most certainly be attacked by that tribe if we held to our determination of going to Gosaweina. We were further told that the plains were very open and the horsemen “as numerous as the sand,” and that some years ago a force of natives armed with one hundred matchlocks had been completely wiped out there by a night attack.
Marching eastward, we soon entered the open grass plains, where we saw the smouldering zeríbas of the Arasama and Barkad Gerád sub-tribes, which had fled before the Mahamud Gerád. The next day we held across the open plains to Gosaweina, and scarcely had we started when a party of horsemen was seen halted on some low hills to the north! We, however, kept straight on, and the horsemen, constantly increasing in numbers, followed us, moving parallel to us on the higher ground.
Without halting the camels, we whistled the men up and they formed line, and moved out to protect the caravan. The horsemen came towards us at a gallop, but pulled up on our running with a few men towards them. On getting up to them my men were greatly relieved in their minds to find that instead of the terrible Mahamud Gerád, they were a detachment of the Arasama and Barkad Gerád, who had been out protecting their flocks and herds at Eil Dab and Badwein by scouting for the Mahamud Gerád. They followed us to Gosaweina, clamouring for cloth, and hobbling their horses, they made a bivouac on the plain with us at night. We did not light fires, not wishing to attract the Mahamud Gerád. The horsemen told us that rain had fallen in the plain to the north of us, below Bur Dab, and that at Waredad there was a pool full of water.