Our caravan had now swelled to a long procession, as a number of people had come with us from the last karias to take advantage of our protection past the Eidegalla country.
Game on the Plains
We camped on the farther side of this great plain, near some Samanter Abdalla karias. Here we heard that a lion roared nightly round them, and next evening, at Gudaweina, we saw his pugs in the path. Thus we had found lion, ostrich, oryx, hartebeest, and Sœmmering’s gazelle, all living at least forty miles from water. The effect of thirst on our domestic animals was to make them abnormally tame. Often as I lay in my tent at the noon camp the donkeys and ponies would force their heads within the tent door, and the goats would walk straight in, putting their muzzles into every cup to look for water. As we arrived at one halting-place at dusk, a wild fox came trotting like a dog behind the caravan, a few yards from the last camel, having smelt the water which we carried in the háns on the camels’ backs.
Travelling constantly over rolling, densely-wooded country, we were now entering the part of the Haud which is grazed over by the Ogádén from the south, and struck the Warda-Gumaréd, one of the great trade arteries between Berbera and the Webbe Shabéleh. The track here, for thirty miles at least, over red powdery earth, is so well worn and smooth that a bicycle might easily be ridden at full speed on it. On either side of the path all was thorn forest and grassy glades. The grasses were chiefly the darémo, growing in tufts to about a foot, and durr, growing to six feet, both very fattening for live stock. The umbrella mimósa, called khansa, grows to a height of ten feet, the bushes spreading out till their tops meet, forming shady tunnels which are the favourite haunt of lions and leopards during the heat of the day. They come out at night into the great plains and feed on the herds of game which live in the open. Sometimes, when gorged and lazy, the lions are caught in the early morning returning over the plains, and are ridden to a standstill by the Somális, and killed with poisoned arrows and spears.
Dik-Dik Antelope (Sakdro gussuli).
After passing Garodki Mayagód, an ancient clearing in the thorn forest, we came to the usual caravan halting-place, a zeríba of thorns, occupied occasionally by the nomads or by caravans as they pass along the road. At the side of the track were shallow depressions in the soil where rain-water had rested, and round these dry pools were rows of small pits six inches deep, dug by Somális in order to stand up the water háns to be filled.
The jungle now began to get more open and the glades wider, the durr grass growing in beautiful feathery clumps. Huge red ant-hills appeared at every hundred yards or so, often twelve feet thick at the base, and with a pinnacle twenty-five feet high, looking like a giant hand and beckoning forefinger.
