The Somal's life consists of one continual move from spot to spot in search of grazing and water. If good rains come they bring better grazing, more water, more milk, and less work—for the wife at least.
Words cannot be strung together to describe the, apparently, utter barrenness and sterility—to the European mind—of the hundred odd miles of country I have ridden across during the last four days. The soil is too poor and dry to produce anything in the nature of food for man, but Nature has provided—not too plentifully—shrubs with deep wide-spreading roots which store up the moisture in bulb-like receptacles and so tide the plant over the worst and hottest days of the year. Thus there are green nourishing leaves for the hardy cattle to eat when all else is dead. Even the deep roots of the grass are provided with nodules to store up moisture that the plants may live. And all these plants know the secret of extracting from this apparently sterile earth the richest ingredient necessary for the sustenance of cattle and camels. Further, centuries of training and natural selection have evolved a beast, be it camel, cow, horse, sheep, or goat, that is capable of living through drought and conditions that would soon prove fatal to animals from fatter lands. These Somal-bred animals can pass over stretches necessitating several days' journey without water, carrying on their backs the water to drink, in their udders the rich milk—food as well as drink—for man, their master, and his children. In such country as this, it would be plagiarism to attempt to describe what has so often been described before. The rainy season, compared with that of more favoured parts of the world, appears as little short of a drought; and a drought here, similarly compared, might well be classed as "hell let loose."
To-day we are to commence a further ascent into a more favoured land. Why these plain-dwellers and low-hill men have not done the same, and stayed on the cool high plateaux, blessed with a comparatively fair soil and better watered, is one of those puzzles in life it is impossible to solve.
The camel sowars are packed, and ready to move on the afternoon's trek. The road is stony as we walk between the hills. Since that time recorded in the Book of Genesis God has not laid His hand here. The earth's crust has been burst through and over-run by a molten mass spewed forth from her bowels. Here one walks over rough sharp stones that play havoc with the boots; there on a concrete-like conglomerate of white or pinkish stone. The hills have been scoured in past ages by water-courses until their very vitals, masses of grey rock strata tilted on edge from which great lumps have been torn and tossed in broken fragments to the valley below, have been shamelessly exposed. Time has been pitilessly and steadily crumbling away these sharp, skeleton-like protrusions into a mantle of powder and small stones, now falling over, and gradually hiding, the gaping wounds. And, as the channels of the torrents that have worked this chaos fell lower and lower, the water, baulked of its prey, turned to vent its spite on the poor stones torn from the heights above. Over and over it has rolled them, ground them together, rubbed them with sand, worked around them until worn into smooth boulders. They are now barely recognisable as being of the mother rock above.
Then suddenly, from out of all this we come to a stream, Dur-dur-'ad, "the White Running Water." Exactly one year ago I sat on the banks of a stream that ran down the slopes of Mount Elgon. Since then I have been to England and seen running water—if I except the Thames—only from the windows of a railway carriage. What a joy is running water, and how many people know it? How many people living by streams take them for granted, and so miss more than the man who rarely sees them. For, believe me, it is to the latter that the babbling waters talk and tell most.
And the waters of Dur-dur-'ad, to-day, found a ready and willing listener, who drank with pleasure of their prattling music. Does it matter, excepting to me, what they said? Not long ago I read that a man should mark out his life's course with posts, keeping in sight only one at a time. And I, reading this, promised myself that the last goal-post on my course should be a spring. A spring shaded with cool willow trees; the waters to be not so clouded but that a man, or a little child, leaning over might see his image within.
III
Last night they told me that it was unsafe to march before daylight, as the camp vicinity was infested with lions, "bad lions." That meant that the men were tired and wanted rest, so we arranged to march at daylight. And we marched at nine a.m. Dur-dur-'ad came down in spate during the night, and as the road crosses and recrosses beyond the camping place, we waited for the torrent to fall, which it did as suddenly as it had come.
We made up river for five miles; the road has certainly been constructed ages ago by a people possessing some degree of civilisation. Though rough and stony it is well graded. The scenery is wild and rugged but grand in its way. Once we passed a man and woman sitting on the rocks. The woman was unmarried, unusual at her age, which looked to be every second of twenty-seven years. She consented to stand for her photograph. I was, she said, the first European she had set eyes upon. I should have been better pleased had she made less fuss about it; for she covered her face with her hands, called out "Oo-oo-oo-ooh!" and shook with laughter at my appearance.