During the first trip to the Webbe we had been four and a half months in the interior, travelling over more than eleven hundred miles of camel track. I found at Aden that an extension of leave had been granted, and at once prepared a second caravan, intending to go back to Imé, and taking Gabba Oboho at his word, to explore Gállaland and the Juba under his guidance.
On 30th July ’93 we landed again at Berbera with thirty-four men armed with Snider carbines and forty-five fresh camels. The coast men were very much afraid of Gállaland, and insisted that we ought to have at least a hundred rifles; but fighting not being my object, I considered our party strong enough, and after explaining that I would only cross the Gálla border if the Gállas should prove peaceful, the men took a more cheerful view of the prospects of my journey.
We marched from Berbera on 31st July, and on the second day we passed Lord Delamere and his shooting party on their way to the coast. Captain Abud was at that time encamped at Hargeisa, carrying on political business with Eidegalla chiefs. Sheikh Mattar of Hargeisa, whom I met here, advised me not to go to Imé, but to try Karanleh, three marches farther down the Webbe; and he gave me an Arabic letter to Seyyid Mahomed, a mullah whose permanent town lay in our front. By visiting the Seyyid I should cross Ogádén by a route several days to the west of my former one through Dagaha-Madóba.
I crossed the Haud by the Warda Gumaréd, the route we had taken on our first crossing, when I had gone to Milmil with my brother the year before; this time I carried water for five and a half days only. About three marches out from Hargeisa I crossed the fresh tracks of seventy-five horsemen of the Abdalla Saad, Habr Awal, who had gone to loot the Eidegalla a few hours before my caravan passed over the ground.
Crossing the Rer Ali and Rer Harún tribes, always friendly, on the 16th I arrived at Seyyid Mahomed’s town. It is a permanent village of three or four hundred huts, about the size of Hargeisa, its site being near the Tug Fáfan, in the Malingúr tribe. The banks of the stream, which we found dry, were dotted with thriving and very extensive patches of jowári cultivation. The inhabitants are mainly widads and mullahs from different Somáli tribes.
Pitching camp under some shady trees near the river, on the Fáfan banks, I went with the elders, through a dense crowd, to the Seyyid’s hut. He was too old and feeble to walk over to camp, and had sent his son to ask me if I would mind coming to him, to make his acquaintance and give him medicine. The Seyyid is known far and wide as a holy man, even my Dolbahanta headman, Adan Yusuf, having heard of him. Adan was glad to meet such a holy man, who was said to be invulnerable. He added that the Abyssinians lately tied the Seyyid up and fired at him point blank with Remingtons, but the bullets melted; they then bound him to a gudá thorn-tree, and collecting all the dry branches about, they lit a roaring fire at his feet, but he obstinately refused to burn; so then they gave up interfering with him!
If he were a fighting man the Seyyid would probably have developed into a first-class Mahdi, and long ere this he could have made a combined movement against Abyssinia; but his influence, like that of other Somáli sheikhs and mullahs, is almost entirely social and religious. He lives a quiet life, cultivating jowári, reading the Koran, and educating youths. Among the nomad tribes the fighting elders abound, but they have not the wide influence of these cosmopolitan Mahomedan priests, and, moreover, there is no element of cohesion among them, each working for the good of his own clan and ignoring the general interests of the community. The Seyyid was cordial, and I gave him medicine at the door of his hut in the presence of his wives and children, who squatted on their heels in a semicircle around us, whilst the townspeople collected in a dense mass to gaze at us through the palisades of the courtyard which separated the hut from the main street of the village. He had only seen one English party, that of Colonel Paget and Lord Wolverton, two months before, and they had left a very good impression; not so the caravan under Prince Ruspoli, for he, less fortunate, had had a good deal of trouble with the natives in Gállaland, on the Webbe, and even in Somáliland. I mention this because the troubles of this Italian caravan had an adverse influence over the success of my trip.
Before we left the hut of the sick man he had written for me an Arabic letter to Hussein-bin-Khalaf and Núr Róbleh, the two Mahomedan chiefs of Karanleh. While we were halted at the Fáfan, crowds of sick people and cripples from the village constantly loitered in and about camp, begging for medical treatment from ninki frinji wein (the great foreigner).[47] Every European being believed to be a doctor, they rushed to me for treatment, presenting the most complicated diseases, such as cataract in the eye and cancer. My medicine bag containing only chlorodyne, pills, vaseline, quinine, and the simplest medicines, I treated what cases I could, and sent the worst away with a small present of meat or calico and a few comforting words, which were listened to in dead silence by the crowd of relations.
At the Seyyid’s village I heard that Ugáz Umr, the Malingúr chief, had returned from Harar, after laying complaints against frontier Abyssinians before Rás Makunan. Eight men, who had either deserted from Prince Ruspoli or had been dismissed by him, said that some of their comrades and all the guns had been seized by Ugáz Umr, and were to be sent to Harar. They asked me to interfere; but for political reasons I declined.