Collecting -Tour in Somaliland. 57 



The day after we arrived a Gadabursi brought news that 

 he had seen the tracks of a large lion, and he had followed 

 them to Jifa Medir. We collected the men and went off to 

 the hill and started to beat it, and eventually killed a fine 

 lion. 



On New Yearns eve Cheetham started early to look for 

 Greater Koodoo^ while I went off later to hunt Oryx for 

 meat. 



Shortly afterwards, hearing that lions were roaring near 

 Makanis, we decided to take a fewinen over there, and to leave 

 the main camp at Jifa Medir in charge of Harwood; so we 

 started off on January 3rd. We marched about twenty miles 

 along the edge of the Bund, and camped at the base of a hill 

 called Libahphul, about three miles from Makanis. There 

 was abundance of grass here, about two feet and a half high, 

 and there were many herds of Oryx, Soemmerring's Gazelle, 

 and Hartebeest close to the camp. 



The Hartebeests went in herds of several hundreds, and 

 were so tame that the herd would open out to let us pass 

 through, and stand within 150 yards watching us. We heard 

 the lions roaring one night, but it was several days before we 

 found a newly-killed Hartebeest. There were tracks of two 

 lions near the remains, and we followed these for several 

 miles, when we found the tracks of two other lions which 

 had joined them. As we were following we saw a lion get 

 up from under a solitary thorn-tree and then lie down again. 

 We went up to the tree and found four lions asleep under it. 

 We had a very exciting time for about a minute, as after we 

 had killed two the other two charged us ; but we managed to 

 stop them before they did any harm. We moved our camp 

 afterwards to Subul Nirik, and hunted in the vicinity of the 

 Abyssinian fort Jig-Jiga. Our Somalis were much afraid 

 of the Abyssinians, and purposely used up the water, so 

 that we had to march back to the main camp. At Subul 

 Nirik we saw several Midgans hunting Ostriches by stalking 

 them from behind camels. Another way of getting the 

 cock birds is by finding the nests and placing poisoned arrow- 

 heads up in the ground among the eggs, so that when 



