“The Bertiri come from Jig-Jiga armed with rifles and demand tribute of cattle from us, and in certain cases have looted our live stock when out grazing. We cannot make reprisals on the Bertiri, as they are protected by the Abyssinians. Ordinary feuds with our neighbours we think fair-play, but these Bertiri raids are a losing business for us all round. We are not allowed to import firearms, the only effective weapons against the Abyssinians; and we ask the British, who have occupied our ports, either to protect us, or to allow us to import guns with which we can protect ourselves.”
Owing, I believe, to action from Aden, the trouble was stopped, to the lasting satisfaction of the tribes on the northern side.[26] On the east, however, in Ogádén, the Abyssinians became more active than ever; and on another journey, in 1890, this time through Milmil, we again had to listen to complaints against them.
We arrived at Berbera for the Milmil trip, which was the first exploration of the eastern Abyssinian border by Europeans, on 1st July 1892. The Haga wind was at its height, and as nothing could be done during the first half of each day, owing to the storms, it was fully a week before we got our caravan under way.
The day before we left Berbera an enormous column of black smoke, which we estimated to be over two thousand feet high, was seen to rise from the sea-level in the west, over the site of Bulhár, forty miles away. Soon the news arrived that Bulhár had been burnt to the ground. This has always been an unlucky place. It has been burnt three times since the British occupation, and in 1892 was depopulated by cholera; and three years before that it was raided by the Esa in a dust-storm, and sixty-seven of the people killed.
We marched by easy stages to Hargeisa, by following the Aleyadéra nala, the home of the beautiful lesser koodoo, of which I managed to bag a couple of bucks the day before we reached Hargeisa, which we entered on 17th July, and found deserted. Sheikh Mattar had gone to Haraf, four miles up the river, according to his custom at the Haga season, because of the better pasture there; he, however, came with a lot of religious mullahs to meet us, and was very pleasant, giving us letters of introduction to the chiefs of the Rer Ali and Abbasgúl, Ogádén tribes to whose country we were bound.
For the first time we had to face the crossing of the waterless Haud plateau, there being a hundred miles between Hargeisa and Milmil without a drop of water. To accomplish this we took up two hundred and fifty gallons in the háns of plaited bark which we had brought for the purpose.
This was the first time my brother and I had had an opportunity of crossing the Haud plateau, which is here some five thousand feet above sea-level. I have traversed it many times since, and the description of this our first crossing will give an idea of the peculiar nature of the country. I will not give an account of our daily sport, but I may mention that in feeding our thirty men we shot many oryx or Sœmmering’s gazelles in the bush country, and hartebeests when crossing the open ban.
On the 20th of July we marched up to the level of the plateau behind Hargeisa village, over thorn-covered rolling ground, the soil being red earth. We did eleven miles and halted at Bombós, in a splendidly grassed hollow, just beyond some Habr Awal karias. Hearing from the karia people that there had been rain at Garabíss, near here, at about 9 P.M. we sent a camel with four háns, and the men returned with the water at 1 A.M.
The next day we made a morning march of twelve miles to Dobóya, over rolling ground, which is stony on the elevations and has good grass in the depressions, the whole country being covered with flat-topped thorn jungle about twenty feet high. Near our midday camp some Midgáns were skinning an oryx which had been killed by a lion the night before, and at Garabíss we crossed the tracks of a number of Eidegalla horsemen, who had come north to loot the karias which we had passed through the day before.
In the evening march, after going a little over five miles, we came to the end of the thorn-trees, and emerged on to a great open plain of short grass called Ban-ki-Aror, about five miles across, and stretching far away to the east and west, without a bush. Our caravan travelled through abundance of game, chiefly oryx, hartebeests, and Sœmmering’s gazelles, which followed our steps while we were in the ban. The sight of these open grass plains covered with wild animal life was always a source of the greatest pleasure to me.