[10] Dobo in the Somali tongue signifies mud or clay.
[11] The Loajira (from "Loh," a cow) is a neatherd; the "Geljira" is the man who drives camels.
[12] For these we paid twenty-four oubits of canvass, and two of blue cotton; equivalent to about three shillings.
[13] The natives call them Jana; they are about three-fourths of an inch long, and armed with stings that prick like thorns and burn violently for a few minutes.
[14] Near Berberah, where the descents are more rapid, such panoramas are common.
[15] This is the celebrated Waba, which produces the Somali Wabayo, a poison applied to darts and arrows. It is a round stiff evergreen, not unlike a bay, seldom taller than twenty feet, affecting hill sides and torrent banks, growing in clumps that look black by the side of the Acacias; thornless, with a laurel-coloured leaf, which cattle will not touch, unless forced by famine, pretty bunches of pinkish white flowers, and edible berries black and ripening to red. The bark is thin, the wood yellow, compact, exceedingly tough and hard, the root somewhat like liquorice; the latter is prepared by trituration and other processes, and the produce is a poison in substance and colour resembling pitch.
Travellers have erroneously supposed the arrow poison of Eastern Africa to be the sap of a Euphorbium. The following "observations accompanying a substance procured near Aden, and used by the Somalis to poison their arrows," by F. S. Arnott, Esq., M.D., will be read with interest.
"In February 1853, Dr. Arnott had forwarded to him a watery extract prepared from the root of a tree, described as 'Wabie,' a toxicodendron from the Somali country on the Habr Gerhajis range of the Goolies mountains. The tree grows to the height of twenty feet. The poison is obtained by boiling the root in water, until it attains the consistency of an inspissated juice. When cool the barb of the arrow is anointed with the juice, which, is regarded as a virulent poison, and it renders a wound tainted therewith incurable. Dr. Arnott was informed that death usually took place within an hour; that the hairs and nails dropped off after death, and it was believed that the application of heat assisted its poisonous qualities. He could not, however ascertain the quantity made use of by the Somalis, and doubted if the point of an arrow would convey a sufficient quantity to produce such immediate effects. He had tested its powers in some other experiments, besides the ones detailed, and although it failed in several instances, yet he was led to the conclusion that it was a very powerful narcotic irritant poison. He had not, however, observed the local effect said to be produced upon the point of insertion."
"The following trials were described:—
"1. A little was inserted into the inside of the ear of a sickly sheep, and death occurred in two hours.