This neighbourhood is being grazed, and on all the hillsides we see as we pass young girls herding the sheep and goats, and hear them calling to each other. And now we come to the spot where we leave Dur-dur-'ad for good and here we shall loiter for an hour. The baggage camels arrive and halt just long enough to fill the water-tanks, then, on they go, leaving us alone.
Mahomed Gaileh, Akil of the Gadabursi Mahadasan, appears; he is accompanied by a Mullah, who carries a yellow flag on which is embroidered a crescent and five stars in crimson. We exchange greetings and news. Will I accept the sheep the Akil has brought as a present? "No," I answer, I regret to say I shall not, but thank Mahomed just the same. I most highly appreciate his kindness in thinking of our commissariat. Indeed, I convey to him the fact that I shall for ever after look upon him as a man who gave me a sheep that I was unfortunately unable to take away. The Mullah sits cross-legged, telling his beads, with his eyes ever on my face. He desists once to give me an interesting piece of information. Three hours' away from here, but off our road, is a ruined town. The walls of the houses are still standing, and the mortar used to bind the stones together, he says, has set very hard. He does not know what it is made of, but it looks like cement. Probably a town like Harrar. No one knows who built it.
"Good-bye! Thanks so much for the sheep," I call as I ride off, knowing quite well that Mahomed Gaileh is saying to himself, "And thank Allah you did not take it."
From now on we pass through rougher, wilder country, but there is more vegetation. Now the easily graded track drops precipitously into a dark ravine, up which we turn and climb. There are steep rocky walls on our right and left. The floor of the ravine rises higher and higher; the walls come lower and lower, until we stand on the summit of a narrow ridge. Bearing to the left we follow the ridge for five minutes and come into camp. It is half-past six o'clock, and as the sun goes down the evening turns chilly. I sit wrapped up in a trench coat and order a fire. Mahomed, the interpreter, comes to say that as the lions are very bad, it will not be safe to leave camp before daybreak; to which, remembering how many lions came last night, I reply, "Bow-wow." The true reason, and one with which I am entirely in sympathy, is that, after the hot plains, they find the early morning air up here bitterly cold.
And why can't they tell me that is the reason? Because they like to pose as hardy fellows. Because, perhaps, they fear I might like to pose as a hardy fellow, too, and turn them all out to shiver whilst I walk round in my warm clothes. So it is arranged to the satisfaction of all parties that we march at daylight.
"Two easy hours' riding from here there's a camp; and in that camp are four Sahibs, Wallah."
This to me at nine o'clock last night from Mahomed, the interpreter. Somals have no idea of distance or time, and my experience has been that statements from them concerning the movements or whereabouts of other people are invariably unreliable. A simple statement like the foregoing could not be accepted without careful examination. Yet, should there really be four Sahibs ahead, they are undoubtedly the officers I am travelling to meet at Hargeisa, and I should go to their camp.
"You say there are four Sahibs?"