Later on we struck south through the khansa jungle to Bér in Khansa. E⸺ saw a lioness, but she bounded into the long grass before he had a chance of getting a shot at her. Leaving him at the Bér camp, I made a reconnaissance into the open prairie of Toyo, sleeping out two nights without a tent, and shooting for the first time two hartebeests, which were afterwards found to be new to science, and being submitted to Dr. Sclater, Secretary of the London Zoological Society, they were described, and named Swayne’s Hartebeests (Bubalis swaynei). Returning to Bér, and finding E⸺ had gone, I followed in his tracks, and halted for the night at a pasture called Taláwa-yér, among the karias of the Kásin Ishák, Habr Gerhajis. As I was riding ahead of the caravan, towards sunset, looking out for a dead tree near which to camp, and so save labour in collecting firewood, some karia people came running to report that a panther had just struck down a goat, and had then been driven off by the herdboys. I ordered the men to pitch camp and walked over to the body of the goat. We built a screen of boughs two feet high, taking ten minutes over the work, and then, with the setting sun scorching our backs, I sat down with my two hunters behind the screen, and only five yards from the goat. Several men, who had helped us to make the brushwood screen, then walked away towards camp, purposely talking aloud to lead the brute to suppose we had all gone together; and while they were yet only a hundred yards away I looked towards the goat and saw the panther was standing over it, his tail towards me. I fired, and hit him high on the left side, the bullet raking forward, and he rolled over, and looking under the smoke I finished him with a second shot as he lay twisting and growling in the grass; and we carried him to camp and skinned him by firelight. This was the first panther I had ever bagged, though I had seen many. At dawn I continued the march, and arrived at my brother’s halting-place before noon.
We made several marches westward, and on 8th June we reached Hargeisa. This town is built some five hundred yards from the right bank of the Aleyadéra nala,[22] and at an elevation of thirty or forty feet above it. Round the place is a patch of jowári cultivation (Holcus sorghum), two and a half miles long and a quarter of a mile broad. Quantities of live stock of all kinds graze on the low undulating hills for half a mile from the Aleyadéra nala on either bank. Hargeisa is situated on two important caravan routes, one from Ogádén and the other from Harar. There are good direct camel roads to Berbera and Bulhár. Supplies of rice, tobacco, and dates can sometimes be bought here in the trading season. Some four hundred people are employed looking after the jowári fields, and can be seen sitting on platforms, shouting and throwing stones to scare away the birds from the crops. There is abundance of good water in the bed of the river, and a masonry well has been built, and is kept in order by an Arab from Aden. The town is full of blind and lame people, who are under the protection of Sheikh Mattar and his mullahs. The soil is red alluvial earth with a thin layer of fine sand on the top, and it is not better than that which we had seen in the Tug Dér valley, at Bér, and in the Haud. Jowári crops flourish here as they would in most of the higher tracts of Somáliland, if the people were not in a chronic state of petty warfare, and cared to cultivate.
At the time of our visit great anxiety was felt because the Abyssinians occupying Harar had threatened to attack Hargeisa, and had already exacted tribute of cattle from some clans of the Jibril Abokr, Habr Awal. Sheikh Mattar told us that he thought if the Abyssinians came down they would choose the time of the harvest, six weeks later.
From Hargeisa we continued our journey westwards, camping at Abbárso. Our tents were pitched five yards apart at this camp, and as I was sitting outside in the balmy air, enjoying the quiet moonlight scene, I observed a panther crouching under the outer fly of E⸺’s tent, evidently stalking something in the centre of the camp. Diving quickly into my own tent for a loaded rifle, I came out again, only to find the panther had sprung into the centre of camp and seized a milk goat. There had been a crowd of men sleeping round the goat, and to get at it he had leaped over them, placing his paw upon the face of my brother’s cook, without, however, injuring him. On the sentry running towards him with the butt of his Snider rifle raised to strike, the brute dropped the goat and discreetly sprang over some more men and out of the zeríba, and then sneaked away. The same goat was killed by another panther springing into camp a few nights later.
We separated our caravans on 14th June, meeting again at Ujawáji on the 17th, among the karias of the Rer Yunis Jibril, Jibril Abokr. The great subject of conversation among the natives here was the expected approach of an Abyssinian force, mounted scouts having been thrown out by the tribes, and news coming in daily.
Near Ujawáji the country gradually became more grassy and open, the thorn bushes being only thinly scattered about the plain. We passed a tree called “Mattan,” and two miles beyond this tree, which was a conspicuous landmark, a long hazy yellow line marked the commencement of the ban or open grass plain, which is called the Marar Prairie. It was first crossed by Burton, and is mentioned in First Footsteps in East Africa. A conspicuous rock, called “Moga Medir,” or “Jifa Medir” (Moga’s eye-tooth of Burton), lay ten miles to the west of us on the edge of the bush. On the evening of our arrival at Ujawáji we went out to shoot some hartebeests to provide meat for the men. As we left camp the bushes gave place to low scrub, and this presently ended also. Then a curious scene presented itself to us. As far as the eye could reach was an unbroken plain of rolling yellow grass, rising gradually towards the north, and bounded twenty miles off in that direction by a waving blue line of hills running along the horizon, and here and there disappearing below it.
The plains were covered with the camels and ponies of the Rer Dollol and Rer Yunis Jibril sub-tribes, the number of animals giving one the idea of a swarm of young locusts moving over the ground. Everything showed up dark against the background of yellow grass; and single bull hartebeests, knee-deep in grass, were seen wandering about between the droves of camels, looking like black dots in the distance. Beyond the masses of domestic animals we could see, far out on the plains, long dark lines, which, by using the glasses, we made out to be vast herds of hartebeests, oryx, and Sœmmering’s gazelles. The rich soil, of a reddish brown colour, is here and there undermined by burrowing animals and caved in, making galloping dangerous. The white ants had built up the earth into ant-hills, whose spires, from ten to twenty feet high, were dotted over the plain. We shot two hartebeests, both good bulls, and returned to camp with the meat and trophies, being caught by a heavy downpour of rain on the way.
Early next morning we had to witness a great equestrian display by the Rer Dollol and Yunis Jibril horsemen, given in our honour. After the dibáltig they told us there had been fighting at some wells near us the day before, the Gadabursi having attacked them from the west, killing one man and wounding another; and also that an elephant had been killed, not far away, by Midgáns, with poisoned arrows.
We had promised the Jibril Abokr that we would wait at Ujawáji to hear further news of the Abyssinians, and to record the complaints of the elders, for submission to Government; meanwhile, having been told by the horsemen in the morning that lions were numerous in the Jifa bush, we resolved to go and look for them there, taking the camp with us. The Jibril Abokr lent us horsemen to help us search for lion tracks, and we started ahead of the caravan, sitting on camels which were led by our gunbearers.
We got away from camp late in the morning, and besides the men we had engaged, we were followed by a crowd of horsemen, who were anxious to witness our shooting, and to come in for a share of any venison we might obtain on the plains between Ujawáji and Jifa. Soon we found ourselves out in the open, masses of game giving way before us as we advanced. The size of the party prevented our coming within close range, but we wounded a bull hartebeest, and E⸺, mounting one of the Somáli ponies, gave chase, with an Indian hog-spear in his hand. The hartebeest is known to be the most enduring of the antelopes, having a long and untiring stride, and though E⸺ circled round the horizon, followed by two horsemen, at a great pace, it gradually increased its distance, and finally disappeared into one of the great wave-like dips of the ground.