On 13th June I took a camel and a few necessaries for spending the night away from camp; and after looking for koodoo all day we arrived at a lovely little burn half buried in reeds, at the base of Banyéro Mountain, which is between six thousand and six thousand five hundred feet high. This was a charming spot, a clear stream flowing over boulders of many colours, there being occasionally narrow stretches of red sand, on which were imprinted the fresh tracks of koodoo and lion. Above, on the side of Banyéro Mountain, was a precipice two hundred feet or so in height, and on the smooth, perpendicular face of this were a number of holes and cracks leading into the rock, each tenanted by a group of gray-maned, dog-faced baboons, their long tails hanging down perpendicularly against the precipice. The crowded clusters of baboons, of a blue-gray colour, constantly moving their heads, tails, or legs, and chattering at us, formed a curious and lively picture against the brick-red face of the rock. There must have been three hundred altogether, including the little ones, which clung to the rocks or to their mothers’ backs; and with all heads looking at us, they kept up a tremendous barking as we crossed the stream, and it continued all night close to our bivouac, so that it was a long time before we were able to get any sleep. Some of the males seemed as large as retriever dogs, with gray manes as imposing as that of the lion.
Next morning we had to pass these baboons as we ascended a gorge to watch for koodoo, and they ran round to the head of the gully in a small army, like little men determined to block our passage. They hid in the rocks across our path, chattering at us as we came on, and when we were fifty yards away they still sat ferociously watching us. One gray old fellow had his head looking over a stone, and pointing my Martini-Henry at it, I was amused to see him duck behind a rock exactly as a man would have done. I again raised the rifle and down went his head again. This was curious, for he had certainly never seen a rifle before. My men stormed the pass, intent on catching a young one, but they were too quick for us, and retired slowly up the ravine, disputing with their short angry bark every inch of the ground. Of course I did not fire at the human-looking brutes; and the Somális, approving, said that they were little men, and it was unlucky to kill them.
In the forenoon we saw three cow koodoos and a young bull with half-grown horns, grazing up a patch of green meadow grass in a valley several hundred feet below us; but after watching them for an hour, and seeing that no old bull joined them, we gave it up for the day, and prepared for the long journey back to the main camp. As we descended to our bivouac to pack up our blankets and cooking-pots, we gave these koodoos a slant of our wind, and one of the females stood pawing the ground and looking up at us, both of the huge rounded ears held forward. We did not move, and every minute or so she emitted a loud bark which went echoing up the hillsides.
This alarm-note is given by an old cow when she scents or sees danger, but cannot quite make out its nature, and so she calls the attention of the herd. Sometimes three or four females on hearing the bark of one will throw up their heads, and joining her will stand motionless, all eyes turned to the direction of danger, as if in council, and then they canter away, followed by the ruck of the herd. By remaining motionless, even if on the bare hillside, you may keep up this performance for any length of time; but once you move, having made you out, off they go. More than once I have been first warned of the presence of koodoo in a valley below me by the loud echoing bark coming across to me from half a mile away, and arresting ourselves as if turned to stone, we have searched the opposite slopes, and have at last made out three or four brown bodies, standing under the shade of an overhanging precipice, in colour so like the background that we should never have seen them but for that warning bark. The old doe is usually a splendid sentry, but often she betrays the herd in this way.
On the 14th we came back to our former bivouac at the reed-margined spring, hoping to see the herd again in the morning, perhaps accompanied by an old bull. We arrived late, and found the baboons again in force. We lit fires and threw ourselves down under a fig-tree for the night. This was a very picturesque night camp. The stream was just below us, giving out a murmuring of running water which was refreshing after the hot march of the day. An hour after the sun had gone down a crescent moon rose in the east, and just disappearing in the west, following the sun, blazing in the clear mountain air, was the Hedig wa Galab, or evening star.
The two goats which I had brought to supply milk for my morning coffee were standing against each other, head to tail, between the two fires, trying to keep warm in spite of a current of air which blew down from the higher gorges of Banyéro, where the mist hung very white, shreds of it clinging to the side ravines and round the shoulders of the mountain. Between the fires, and around the goats, lay coiled the four natives. The camel sat alone, a little farther out, chewing the cud with regular cadence of sound and gazing into the darkness, its large eyes reflecting the firelight. The baboons kept up their barking all night as on the former occasion, and next morning were seen crossing the top of an adjacent cliff, inspecting our camp.
The next day we hunted for koodoo all the morning, but only once more saw the same family of cows with the half-grown bull; so we made for the Henweina camp, and arrived in the afternoon, very thirsty. Géli, while taking care of my water-bottle, smashed it against a projecting rock, losing the day’s supply.
This march home was twice as long as it need have been; for, anxious to visit the higher parts of Banyéro, I had ascended a thousand feet to the Mirso ledge, and walking for several miles between splendid specimens of the mountain cedar, I had again descended into the Henweina Valley near the main camp, by a sheep track which we hit upon, hitherto unknown to the guides. I continued unsuccessful during the next few days, going many a “wild-goose chase” after some bull which some one had seen, and when away after this, a splendid chance in another direction would be lost through my being out of camp. What sometimes occurred was that three shepherds would see a koodoo while out in the early morning tending sheep, and leaving one of their number to mind the sheep and to watch the koodoo at the same time, the other two would run down to camp, over four miles of mountain and valley, to bring me the news. By the time I had arrived at the spot, perhaps some hours afterwards, the man who had been left to watch would either be asleep or would have moved with his sheep to another pasture; and while we looked for the koodoo in the absence of a guide, it would catch sight of us and steal away. I think I never worked harder than at this period in the search for koodoo, but was continually disappointed, often going three expeditions during the day, and climbing many thousands of feet.
One day we heard a fine leopard coughing, as leopards do, among the hills, and I spent the day looking for his cave. Arriving home after dark, the first object which I saw on approaching the camp fire was the spotted body, with a framing of natives, who had just brought him over from the Esa Musa karia quite close to us. The elders, having lost a goat the night before, had on this evening tied one up as a bait, and had prepared a running noose of camel-rope in the brushwood of the zeríba through which he must pass to get to the goat. Having sauntered boldly down from the hills in the evening for another goat, as had been his custom, he charged recklessly and got himself noosed, when the Somális, who had been waiting in ambush, closed round and speared him. The body was scarcely cold when I bought it of old Waiss Mahomed, the patriarch of the karia, for twelve rupees.
The koodoos seemed to have left this neighbourhood. I had heard a good deal in Henweina about a mysterious bull koodoo living in the high Massleh Wein gully, overlooking Garbadir, fifteen miles to the east along the foot of Gólis, if one went round by the camel path, or nine miles up and down, if one took a short cut over the mountains. He was known to have remained in Massleh Wein, drinking nightly at the spring below, for three years. He was reported to be very old and cunning, to carry enormous horns, and to be lame in one foot. He had been seen by a great many shepherds in the same place, but had always at once disappeared in the mists which filled these gorges in the early morning; and the clump of cedar-trees, amongst which he was always found, being on the spur between the bifurcation of two branches of the Massleh gully, he had from his lair a view in every direction.