sportsmen is unending; hustled about all the following morning from sunrise, arranging loads, and by ten o'clock were on the move for the interior.

At this point it would not be out of place to give some slight description of the personnel of our expedition, as well as the manner in which a large 'kafala,' or caravan, progresses through the country. First in importance came Hadj Achmed Warsama, our interpreter and head man, a tall, slight fellow of about thirty-five years of age with close-shaven head and immense mouth disclosing a row of gleaming white teeth; a great man in the estimation of all the others, having three times made the journey to Mecca and having a fourth trip in prospect. He had been fifteen years in the English Navy as interpreter, and had accompanied Admiral Hewitt on his mission to Abyssinia. His long spell of British service gave him, of course, an excellent command of the English tongue, though perhaps his expressions sometimes savoured rather of the fo'csle. His authority over the camel men was complete, and those who have had to deal with coloured races well know how greatly a powerful lieutenant adds to the pleasure of an expedition of this kind. To any one who may undertake a journey of similar character to ours I would say: spare no expense to get a good head man; they are hard to find and require high wages; but, for our part, we never had reason to regret one single anna of the large wages and 'backsheesh' we paid to Hadj Achmed. Next perhaps in importance comes Deria Ali, our swarthy chef; a little wizened-up old fellow, much given to complaining of, and quarrelling with, the other members of the outfit, but, on the other hand, a first-class jungle cook. He had seen a good deal of the world, having visited Melbourne and other places in Australia; not finding them to his liking, however, he had returned to his native jungle. His wardrobe was, like Sam Weller's knowledge of London, extensive and peculiar;' one day he would appear wearing a tarboosh, two yards of calico, and a spear; the next day very tight trousers and an old military overcoat; another day an ancient and porous mackintosh, of which he said, 'Him cost me five pounds at Melbourne.' On the march his duty was to drive the sheep; poor, white, fat-tailed things, they got so used to marching that after a few days they needed no driving, and would follow like dogs, getting gradually killed off day by day till they were all gone, and a fresh lot had to be bought to fill their place. It was necessary to take sheep with us in order to keep the pot supplied when our time was devoted exclusively to the pursuit of lions. On such occasions it would have been fatal to sport to discharge a rifle in order to supply ourselves with food. One sheep marched with us for about two hundred and forty miles, his day of execution having been postponed to the very last because we had become so mutually attached: when he was killed he was barely eatable!

V. and I had each our two shikaris, who always accompanied us. We were very fortunate in securing some of the best in the country, Nur Farah, who was with V., and Aden Ateya, who was my head. shikari, being particularly well known. The latter was a little bullet-headed fellow of about five feet four in height, broadshouldered and sturdy, with a remarkable faculty for going up hill at a steady run with no apparent inconvenience to himself. Brave as the lion it is his profession to pursue, he often erred on the side of impetuosity and rashness, but withal he was a wonderful tracker and stalker and fully conversant with the habits of all game. His chief drawback was his religious mania, for I can call it nothing else, which sometimes drove him into fits similar to those of the howling dervishes at Cairo; of this, however, we managed to cure him in a short time; we told him that he would have to pay for any damage done to or by the camels if they stampeded in consequence of his antics, and finally threatened him with immediate discharge if he had another fit. He did not. Geleh Hared, my second shikari, was almost as good a hunter as his superior-a tall slight boy of about nineteen, quite indefatigable and most willing. He had had some experience of Europeans when travelling with Captain Swayne, R.E., and I think I am right in saying that in his company he had visited Harar. He could not speak ten words of English, but had a slight knowledge of the Harari language.

The camel men, fourteen of whom we armed with Snider carbines, were all engaged for us by Captain Abud at Berberah, and a better set of fellows I never wish to see; willing and cheerful to a degree, they took all the hardships they had to undergo as part of the day's work. Occasional discontent, arising out of nothing, was invariably suppressed as easily as it arose; we always followed the plan of carefully investigating every matter of the kind that was brought before us and doing justice to the utmost of our power. Many people, in dealing with a Somali, take it for granted that he is not telling the truth; true, the chances are against it, but he is such a child that he will convict himself of untruth in the first moment and be the first to laugh at it himself. Burton, in his First Footsteps in East Africa, well describes the rapid flight of the Somali temper from one extreme to the other, and it is indeed astonishing to see the man at whose childishness you have smiled one day capable of the most horrible cruelties the next. The Somalis are a peculiar race, in that they have no written language, no musical instruments, little or no filial affection, and rarely any gratitude. Their insensibility to pain is remarkable. I have seen Aden smiling and chewing tobacco, whilst Geleh burnt little holes in his back with a red-hot stick. Fear of death is an unknown quantity among them.

I must not omit to mention Aden Muhammid, V.'s syce; he was a great character and an excellent boy; he never seemed to tire, and

One

was always ready to do every one else's work besides his own. feat of his deserves especial remark. We had found a lioness in an open plain about six miles wide, and fearing we should lose her in the bushes, we sent Aden off for a pony to 'round her up' till we could get there. He got the pony and galloped off, armed only with a little throwing spear, over ground honeycombed with holes (one of which gave him a heavy fall), and headed off the lioness; time after time he brought her to bay under a bush, and time after time she charged, and he was obliged to gallop for his life till he had distanced her; at last we got up to where he was, and the lioness was secured. This appears to me to be an act of as high courage as one can look for in any one, white or black. Only once did we have to reprimand him, and then his offence tended towards the ludicrous. It was as follows:-As V. and I were walking along some distance behind the kafala we saw an old man, near a village, crying and raising a great commotion: off we went to inquire what was the matter, and found that Master Aden and Bulaleh, my own syce, had stolen the old man's sword from him and gone off with it. Of course restitution was made, and the two syces were put on guard for a whole night as punishment, regardless of their protests. it very good-humouredly, but paid us out by waking us every or two through the night to tell us they had heard a lion in the neighbourhood. Which they had not.

They took hour

To return to our kafala. The camel loads were of a very varied nature, nothing being procurable in the interior but a little meat and milk, and that only during the rains; so we had to carry with us everything that we were likely to need. The men were rationed with a pound of rice, half that amount of dates, and two ounces of ghee per man per diem. As they numbered twenty-five and we carried rations for a hundred days, it will be seen that this item alone represented a considerable amount of transport. A Somali camel carries a load of about two hundred pounds, but that amount varies greatly with the size, condition, and age of the animal, and with the work he has lately done and is expected to do. It is a good rough computation to say that one camel carries rations sufficient for twenty-five men for eight days. Seven camels were devoted to the transport of water; some carried casks containing twenty-six gallons each, one on each side, the very best possible way of carrying water on camel-back; while others were loaded with 'harns,' as the native water vessels are called. They are woven of the inner bark of a tree and grass, and are saturated in ghee to make them watertight. They are of the shape of a short fat cigar, one end being removable and forming a cup. The whole is enclosed in a cage of strong twigs, to which the ropes are made fast, which lash it on to the back of the camel. Our own private stores were packed in 50-lb. boxes, a selection of goods being put in each, so that only one, or two at most,

were in use at a time. This plan I can strongly recommend to other travellers, as the trouble and annoyance of having to open box after box to find some necessary article is very great, besides which damage is done to the boxes by constant opening and nailing up, and in the hurry articles are not properly repacked, thus getting broken or spoilt. One camel carried our tent (in two packages) and our clothes and books (in two kit bags). Ammunition, spare rifles, calico for presents and barter, tobacco for the same purpose, together with a few tools and spare rope, pretty well complete the list of our matériel.

The manner in which a load is fixed on a camel is not unworthy of description. The Somal has no saddle for his camel, but uses in its place a thick pad of mats, hârus,' which on camping he uses as a roof and walls for his hut, hanging them over curved sticks after the manner of gipsy huts in England. The soft hâru forming the padding next the camel's skin he uses as a couch. The camel having been made to lie down, after much grunting and roaring on his part, he is securely knee-haltered by passing the halter under each knee and over his neck, on the top of which it is tied. The soft hâru is then put on his back, covering all but his head and tail, and the front part folded back to make a double thickness over the withers and hump. (The hump of the Somali camel, by the way, is not nearly such a marked feature as that of the Arabian camel.) On this are placed the remainder of the hârus to the extent of from six to nine thicknesses of mat. The loading rope, a long double-plaited grass rope, is then put on so as to form a complete harness, consisting of breast-plate, double girth, and crupper, but never passing over the back, the harness being lifted up as much as possible so as to leave the spine clear after the manner of an ordinary English saddle. The load having first been carefully balanced, it is then secured by lashing it to the loading rope. This adjustment of loads is a most important consideration in the marching of a kafala; for, if it is not properly attended to, loads will roll off, or shift backwards and forwards, or, worse still, the camel will get a sore back and be rendered unfit for work, necessitating the division of his load amongst other camels.

Our loads being all properly divided and adjusted, we will march off. As each camel man gets his two camels loaded up he ties the halter of one of them to the tail of the other, whose halter he in turn ties to any unoccupied tail he can see; a fairly fast, steady camel is chosen to lead, and, as soon as the whole of the kafala is strung together, the order is given to march off. For the first mile or so the camel men stay by their respective charges to see that the loads are travelling all right; when satisfied that this is the case they gather into knots in front, in rear, or on the flanks and indulge in chaff, songs of sorts and occasional prayer, the latter entailing a run

of a mile or so to catch the caravan up again. If in a district whose friendliness is doubted, a careful watch is of course kept while on the march, and no straggling allowed. The shikaris, as a rule, formed the advanced guard, while the ponies and syces brought up the rear. If the ponies are allowed to get in front the whole rate of marching will be retarded, as a Somali pony only walks two miles an hour when loose, a camel's ordinary pace being half a mile per hour more.

The usual day's work when on the march was as follows:-Réveil at three, a cup of coffee and biscuit, camp struck, loaded up and off at four, steady marching till ten or thereabouts, when we would find the shadiest spot we could, and halt for from four to five hours, during which time we had breakfast, wrote up diaries, took any necessary astronomical observations. About two and a half hours' more marching in the afternoon brought us to the night's camping ground towards five o'clock. Then there was a thorn zareba to be made, dinner to be prepared, beds put out, perhaps a little doctoring to be done, and sometimes time to read a book for a few minutes before dark. At sundown Achmed called the faithful to prayers, and such as felt like it attended; during the Ramadân indeed there were very few absentees, but at other times the attendance was smaller. As soon as the men had done their prayers our dinner was served by the 'butler,' Jama Agg' Elli, a capital boy whom we picked up in Aden. I quote the carte du jour from a letter written home: 'Potage tabloide, tournedos de Koodoo a l'oignon. Pain. Confiture. Café.-Vins. Whisky. Eau alkaline.' Very soon after sunset the temperature begins to fall, and at such a rapid rate that by seven o'clock we are generally glad to put on our thickest coats and sometimes to wrap rugs round us.

Some of those evenings in the jungle are among my pleasantest recollections. What greater pleasure than coming in from a successful hunt to find that one's companion has had his share of sport, and, over the post-prandial coffee, to mutually recite one's experiences of the day? The darkness succeeding the fall of day is just giving way to the bright light of the rising moon, whose rapidly widening silver edge we see through the tops of the mimosa jungle. The circle of fires in the zareba throws a ruddy glow on the picturesque figures of the men grouped about them at their meal or preparing for rest. In the far distance we hear the howl of the hyena or the gruff bark of the questing lion. His majesty may perhaps be inclined to visit us later in the evening; very well, we will give him a royal reception. 'Achmed, tell Aden to put the ten-bore and half-a-dozen cartridges by my bed!' Eight o'clock-time to turn in. 'Where's my

revolver? Ah! here it is. I will put it under the pillow as usual for fear of accidents.' 'Good-night!' 'Night!' and we are soon asleep to a brief lullaby from the sentry, who never ceases singing throughout his watch; asleep, but not a heavy slumber; any unusual noise