A Herd of Oryx
While it was yet light a large spotted hyæna came warily up to the water, looking round to right and left, and starting nervously at every sound, and I shot him through the brain as he drank, his body dropping into the water. At dusk a beautiful male leopard walked down to the pool, and I fired, hitting him through the lungs; he stumbled away and fell in a ravine a few yards on the farther side of the pool. Fearing hyænas would come and spoil the skin, we got a lantern and went to look for him, and walking up cautiously to the ravine we found him lying dead. With my whistle I called up three men, and bearing the leopard to camp, we skinned him by the camp fire. I then returned to the pool and missed a hyæna, and finding it was too dark to shoot, and that mosquitoes, which breed in these stagnant pools, were rather bad round our bower, making it impossible to keep still, I went to camp and turned in for the night.
On 14th April we marched to Eil-ki-Gabro, and found lion and rhino tracks at the water. Making another shelter I sat up on the chance of a shot, but saw nothing.
Disappointed here, the next day we went to Náno, a small valley in the mountains, where we found plenty of game, the kinds seen being koodoo, lesser koodoo, oryx, Sœmmering’s and Waller’s gazelles, and a rhinoceros. I had a long hunt after the last, as the men were pitching camp, but going hard for two or three miles over very broken thorny country he fairly beat us, and we gave him up and returned to camp, knocked up by the hot sun.
We made an evening march to a river-bed, choked with dense, evergreen jungle and some high trees hung with rope-like creepers, and our guide, going into the thickest of this to look for water, started a cow rhinoceros and calf. He came running back to us shouting, “Wiyil, wiyil” (Rhinoceros), while the mother and her young one galloped out on the farther side of the jungle with a crash, and took away over the low stony hills. By the time I could get possession of my big rifle and run after them, they were seen quite a thousand yards away disappearing round the shoulder of a rocky, thorn-covered hill, and running up to this spot a few minutes later I was unable to sight them again, and the ground being unsuitable for tracking we lost them.
We made three more marches to Durhi; and I came upon the tracks of a herd of zebras an hour before pitching camp there on the 17th. Here we found several karias of the Malingúr Ogádén. The first people we saw were a group standing round an open grave; and on inquiring we found they were burying the body of a young woman who had been torn out of a hut from among several of her sleeping friends on the night before by a man-eating lion.
These people had never seen one of my countrymen before, but on hearing I was Ingrés (English) they ran at me, calling out that I must shoot the lion and drive away the Amhára. I was led some miles into the bush to the west, where I found a party of the Malingúr following the lion, armed with their spears; but the tracks led on to very stony and thorny hills, and my guides being either unable or unwilling to keep them, we gave it up and I returned to camp, which had been pitched between two large karias. We had a severe thunder-storm at night; a lion walked round my tent during the storm, as we saw next morning by his tracks in the mud only five yards away from the head of my bed!
On the following day I went out and shot two Grevy’s zebras, the meat of which my men finished. We also saw tracks of another lion.
Next day I shot another zebra, the flesh of which I gave to the Malingúr. I tied up a camel at night, intending to sit out for a lion, but owing to the rain I had to abandon the idea; and when we went to the camel at midnight, we found it had been killed by hyænas, an enormous number of which haunted the outskirts of the karias.
While I was encamped at Durhi the Malingúr told me that their chief, Umr Ugaz, had gone to Harar to make a compact with Rás Makunan, agreeing to pay regular tribute and to acknowledge his sovereignty. The Malingúr, although demonstrative in their first welcome to me, afterwards became very reserved, because they feared that civility to Europeans might get them into trouble with the Abyssinians. They are in the line of Abyssinian invasion eastward along the Fáfan Valley, and have been utterly cowed. Having been deprived of most of their horses their fighting power is much reduced.