Next day a large number of horsemen came to welcome us at our own camp, and said they had come to dibáltig to us as representatives of the English Government. We appointed midday for this ceremony.
Meanwhile I went after a lion, climbing one of the bluffs, which are two or three hundred feet high; and after hunting through thick high grass for some time, I sat down to rest below the edge of a bluff. While my men were wandering about, the lion got up with a low grunt, a few yards above the rock on which I sat, and made off into the grass. Following, I found his lair, and the half-eaten carcase of a young camel, about as large as a donkey, which the lion had dragged to the top of the hill, afterwards going to sleep by its side. It was within a few yards of the sleeping lion that I had been unconsciously sitting for ten minutes. He went down the stony, bush-covered hill, and eventually escaped us.
It was during the early part of the afternoon that some five hundred horse and foot came to our camp for the promised ceremonies. Au Mahomed Sufi attended, and we gave him a place beside us. On a signal being given, the horsemen drew up in line in front of us, and the chief tribal minstrel of the Rer Ali, while sitting in the saddle, sang a refrain in honour of the English, and of myself and my brother, who had “deigned to visit their poor oppressed country.” A splendid array they made, well mounted and warlike, the biceps standing out on some of the men’s arms in a way that is seldom seen on these sparely-built Somális.
On the conclusion of the song the horsemen gave a series of shrill yells, and with arms and legs flying, they started off at full gallop in pursuit of an imaginary enemy up the river-bed; and the pounding of the hoofs could be heard long after they had been lost to sight in clouds of red dust. Presently they came back again, the glinting of the sun on their spears being first fitfully seen in the pall of dust; and darting up furiously, they brought their ponies on to their haunches with the cruel bit, forming a dense semicircle of horses’ heads within a foot of me, the riders crying, “Mót!” and being answered by “Kul leban” and a hand-shake.
Au Mahomed Sufi began a long speech, which was heard in dead silence by the crowd, saying that now the white men had come it was time to attack the Abyssinians, and that if we would lead them with our thirty rifles, they could soon collect a large force and march on the Abyssinian chief, Basha-Basha.
We interrupted him, broke up the meeting, and retired to our tents, saying we had come to survey caravan routes and not to be mixed up in their quarrels.
In the evening we gave a performance in return, parading the thirty camp-followers in line, armed with their Snider carbines, advancing and retiring in skirmishing order, and forming rallying groups; and we fired off blank cartridge, each volley being echoed by an answering yell from the delighted tribesmen.
They said that now the English, their masters, had come, the Abyssinians would leave off raiding their camels and carrying off their women. Many of the chiefs came to our tents begging for written testimonials, saying that they were sure a scrap of paper written on by an Englishman was enough alone to keep back an Abyssinian army. The women and children hung round my camel and my brother’s pony in crowds, crying out, “Now it’s all right; the English have come.”
Then came the question of presents. The people had brought us a few sheep and a donkey, and long rows of their milk-vessels, which are prettily decorated with white shells. We picked out an ákil to whom Sheikh Mattar of Hargeisa had given us a letter of introduction; then we put into his hands several white tobes and two khaili tobes, and asked him to settle with the chiefs of clans. There arose a tremendous clamour, each clan having sent an advocate to represent it in the scramble for tobes, which occurred in the river-bed below. An indescribable uproar continued until nightfall, the clamouring “wise men” squatting on the ground in circles, looking for all the world like vultures with their skinny necks and shaven skulls, clawing with lean fingers at the presents spread out on the sand. There was a scuffle down at the wells, across the river, where two men had retired to settle an old feud. After throwing their spears, they closed and stabbed at each other, the spears striking the shields with a hollow thud, which we could hear from our tents three hundred yards away; but they were subsequently parted by a posse of relations.
One of the things which pleased the Rer Ali most was my Arab pony, which I had taken from Abdul Kader’s stables in Bombay to test the Somáli climate. My brother mounted him and tried a friendly gallop with one or two of the tribesmen in succession, and he proved, to their great wonder, faster than any pony which the Rer Ali could bring against him. He afterwards beat many Somáli ponies all over the country, and gained a great reputation, although I had only bought him as a useful animal up to weight, and he would be considered quite slow among Arab ponies of his height, which was about 13.3. I have often since been identified by Somális as the owner of “that Hindi pony which could gallop like the wind.”