On the evening of 11th May we parted from Abdul Káder, and made an evening march to Jáma Deria’s own karia. Here we remained one night, leaving early for our northern journey. Jáma Deria’s people received me with enthusiasm, the crowds pressing round the camp. Their great delight was the coloured picture in the Zoological Society’s Proceedings of the Somáli wild ass, which had become so dirty and so battered by handling that I had mounted it upon the cover of a packing-case to keep it together. The people fought with each other to get round me and see it; those who had not seen the picture kept besieging my camp, crying out, “Show us the picture.” I showed the women, as a great favour, a coloured print from an illustrated paper of two pretty English girls skating, which raised a clamour of admiration, one stout gabad (maiden), with tresses reeking with butter, calling out, “Why did Allah make us black and these white?” The men beginning to crowd round, and the remarks becoming too demonstrative, I put away the picture amid deep groans of disappointment. The men of the tribe sat round my tent in a dense mass as I produced a book of engravings of the Franco-Prussian war, from the pictures of Détaille and De Neuville, and as I explained each picture through the interpreter their faces became grave at the thought of so many white men fighting with rifles together, and of the numbers of dead. Contrary to my expectation they thoroughly understood all the pictures, liking, of course, the coloured ones the best. The snow upon the ground was the hardest thing to explain, but I had men among my escort who had been to London and Marseilles, as firemen on steamers, and I left it to them. Some of the people said, “It is all very wonderful; why are we not like the English, who have so big a name? Why has Allah given us nothing and you everything?”
Jáma’s people told me the Abyssinians were sending a strong expedition into the Arussi Gálla country shortly. They said also that last year the Arussi Gállas came from the direction of Daghatto in the north-west, and destroyed ten karias of the Amáden in a single night. A nephew of Jáma Deria, an actively built, tall young man, came to me saying he heard all white men were doctors, and would I examine him? and throwing the loose end of his tobe from his shoulder he exposed a ghastly wound. A small throwing spear had entered a few inches below the left nipple, and passing through his body, had protruded at the back between the shoulder blades. The wound at the back had healed, but the larger wound in the breast, nearly an inch wide, was open and discharging freely. Asking when the wound had been received, I was astonished to learn that it had been in a fight with some Gálla robbers in the previous Gu, or heavy rains, at least ten months before. The man had lived, and had latterly been going about his business, with the wound unhealed. He seemed thin, but otherwise not much the worse. I made him a big poultice, and advised him to take care of himself and not catch cold, and he and his relations went away, believing in my treatment. I was glad to hear from Jáma Deria, on coming this way four months later, that the man was still alive, and getting well; and I feel certain that the healthy, dry air of this elevated country, combined with total abstinence from liquor, and diet consisting almost entirely of camel-milk, gives a wound a much better chance than it would have under other circumstances.
Jáma Deria begged for everything in my tent on the evening of my arrival; he very much wanted a coloured plaid, and I found out privately that he had forbidden Gabba Oboho to ask for it when I left Imé, saying I had promised it to himself. He never, however, succeeded in making me part with it. He begged hard for my revolver, and I let him fire at an ant-hill. His womenfolk and all his relations begged me not to give it to him, for they said, “If you give that dreadful old man a pistol there will be no staying in the country; he will go and murder Abdul Káder and his sons, and will then go and make war on the Karanleh people.” On my shaking him off next morning, as I did after he had ridden by my side for four miles, always begging the coveted plaid and revolver, he finally shook hands with evident regret, saying he hoped I would come back and bring plenty of English with me, they would all be welcome; and I was to mind and let him know beforehand by a mounted messenger, so that he might have time to come and welcome us before his enemy, Sheikh Abdul Káder, could forestall him. A crowd followed us for quite a mile from the karias, saying they were sorry we were going; the English were their friends, and the Amhára would be afraid to do anything now.
I may here mention that Rás Makunan of Harar is the only Abyssinian whose name carries with it any respect in Ogádén. He has the reputation for trying to be just; and Somális say that if they could gain access to him the tyrannies of frontier Abyssinians would be stopped.
On the evening of the 12th May, the day on which I had parted from Jáma Deria, we went on to a place in the uninhabited thorn bush called Anamaleh. It having been a very hot day and the camels being tired, at an hour before sunset we halted. While the men were engaged in pitching the camp, taking my .577 Express rifle, I strolled off quite alone into the bush to the east to look for gazelles. Getting on to a slight rise, I found myself on the top of a plateau, and here I tried to stalk two of the red Waller’s gazelles; but, hearing the noise made by my men pitching camp four hundred yards away, they made off. I then walked through open thorn jungle till I suddenly came on two oryx, which galloped away, but by a rapid shot as they were disappearing among the trees I brought one to the ground. Firing three more shots as signals, I brought up Géli and Hassan, and we carried the skull and haunches to camp, leaving the rest of the meat on the ground.
I always gave orders to my sentries to wake me if they heard a lion roar, because it is a sound which is not often heard, even in Somáliland, where lions are so plentiful; and it is always so interesting to hear. This night the sentry called me at 1 A.M., and at first I heard the low moans of a lion a mile or two away; then, after half an hour of silence, just as I was falling asleep, we again heard him roar louder, and, as it seemed, at the spot where we had left the oryx meat the evening before. He was heard again during the night; and so when I was awakened by the intense cold which precedes the dawn I roused Suleiman the cook, and then swallowing a cup of hot coffee, I prepared for a lion hunt. I told Adan Yusuf to take charge of the caravan and march about ten miles, and that we would, after the hunt, pick up the tracks of the camels; and he was to have the tent pitched and dinner ready at the noon camp awaiting my arrival.
As the sun rose I took a trotting camel, the mule, Daura Warsama, Abokr, the two hunters Géli and Hassan, and a Malingúr guide, with blankets, water-bottles, and dried meat; and we made straight for the spot where we had left the dead oryx, knowing well that we should find fresh lion tracks round the body. There was no oryx, but looking on the ground we saw last night’s story; a heap of half-digested grass and stains of blood all over the ground showed where the lion had cleaned the carcase, and the trail where he had dragged it away led to the north-east over smooth red earth; and we easily followed it, dotted as it was occasionally by the broad pugs of the lion.
After we had gone a mile we came to a glade of yellow grass about three feet high, and in the centre of this glade, which was a quarter of a mile broad, were three or four low, flat, khansa mimósas growing close together. Three foxes ran out from these, going off at different angles, and looking beyond the bushes we saw the lion dragging the carcase slowly over the ground, and keeping the bushes between himself and us. He looked grayish black, and I could see over the top of the grass that he had a fine mane. The distance was about one hundred and twenty yards, and as I thought he had winded us, and there was no time to be lost, I sat down, and holding the rifle, rested my elbows on my knees to fire. But I could see nothing over the bushes, so I again rose to my feet, and seeing he was still holding on into the open, pulling along the carcase, I walked up closer, keeping under cover of the bushes, and then I sat down again, holding the sights of the rifle fixed on a gap in the bushes where I expected to see his dark mane and head appear. He duly walked on, and his body was in full view in the gap when I fired. The shock told loudly, and answering it with a short and rather dismal roar, he bounded away at a good pace, dropping the carcase of the oryx; and crossing the grass he rushed into a long, dark jungle of mimósas, and we lost sight of him for the time. The remains of the oryx, consisting of the shoulders, ribs, and half the spine, lay where the lion had dropped them on being hit, and the path he had taken was plainly visible by the blood which had been plentifully sprinkled and smeared on the blades of the grass as he went along.
The hunt became more exciting as we followed into the dense khansa bushes, whose flat, wide-spread tops, meeting at a height of about five feet, formed very dark alleys, through which, however, the lion had kept on at the same pace. We skirted along a hundred yards to our right, to a thin place in the covert, and then crossing and searching the farther edge we found his tracks leading out into another glade, and so, leaving the jungle behind, we held on after him. Finding he had gone into another of these dark khansa jungles, we made a circuit round the outside till we were opposite to where he had gone in; but we found he had not left the khansa, so we continued round the edge till we came to the point where we had abandoned the tracks as they entered the jungle.