MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 207 



animal which from his youth up he has been taught to look upon as fair 

 game for the hog-spear only. The second cause is that the Somali is a most 

 bigoted Mahommedan who will not lay a finger on the unclean beast for 

 love or money, so that if you are bent on preserving a good head you must 

 be prepared to carry -.what you want of your boar home and do all the 

 skinning and cleaning yourself. Even when you have got off the mask 

 and cleaned the skull to your satisfaction, your labours are by no means 

 ended, for not one of your dainty retainers will touch the skull or turn the 

 skin, and if marching you must with your own hands load them up day after 

 day until the objectionable items have been forgotten by your men or are 

 dry enough to be packed away out of sight. 



Many parties, when starting from the Coast, make a point of enlisting 

 among their followers a man of the Midgan tribe (one of the Pariah castes of 

 Somali Landj on purpose for this kind of work, and there is never any 

 dearth of applicants for the appointment, who, in return for the Sahebs' 

 plentiful bawbees, are willing, according to their own account, to take any 

 liberties with a Wart Hog alive or dead ; and so they would, no doubt, 

 among their own people, but it is a very different matter when you get them 

 into a caravan among a lot of well-bred Somalis, strict followers of the 

 prophet at any time, and specially so when members of a sportsman's 

 caravan, where there is no concealment and where a man's every act is known 

 to his fellows. 



Never shall I forget the life led bj' an unfortunate Midgan whom I once 

 had with me for such purposes on the first hunting trip that carried me far 

 into the interior. I was primarily on duty, my mission being to try and win 

 over an important tribal Chief whose country was on the confines of the 

 Protectorate and who though owing allegiance to us was credited with play- 

 ing into the hands of the emissaries of " the King of Kings " and, with a 

 lively sense of favours to come, conniving at the passage through his country 

 of raiding parties of Abyssinian soldiery from their outpost at Jigjiga. To 

 these he gave secret information of the whereabouts of rich nomad encamp- 

 ments of his fellow countrymen, and their marauding parties were thus en- 

 abled to nip across the border as opportunity offered. Armed as they were 

 with rifles, they had no difficulty in overawing the tribesmen whom they 

 encountered, and after taking their pick of the fat kine of some rich nomad 

 village, they would make tracks for Jigjiga with their spoil. Such at any 

 rate were the current reports. The route from Zaila to this Chief's summer 

 habitation lay through some good country from a sportsman's point of view 

 and a brother officer from Aden joined me in the hope of getting some shooting 

 by the way. I was anxious, among other things, to get a good specimen or 

 two of the "Wart Hog, and, to this end, before leaving the coast, took much 

 trouble to select a Midgan of the most unsophisticated type who confessed 

 to have no scruples whatever as regards handling Wart Hog or any other 



