DESCRIPTION OF THE SOMALIS. II 
tering up and down the length of the caravan upon strong, 
spirited ponies. How often we thought of those ponies 
months afterwards, and of our gallops along clear stretches 
of road in friendly Somaliland. 
Early in the morning we ascended to Dere-godle, a 
spot on the first plateau where there are some water-holes. 
The country was absolutely barren, hilly, and uninhabited, — . 
nothing but stones and rocks to be seen on all sides; and, 
excepting the numerous foxes and hyenas and a few bot- 
tle-nosed gazelles, there were no signs of life about. Here 
one fellow sent for me in great haste, saying he had been 
bitten by some venomous snake on his toe. I found the 
man groaning, and acting as if he were in his last agonies, 
but there was not the slightest inflammation in his toe. He 
had merely been pricked by a thorn; so I gave him a good 
punching to get him on his feet, and proved to him that he 
was all right. This is a characteristic of the race, — to 
make much of small injuries. The Somalis are of a com- 
paratively recent origin. They are a mixture of the negro 
and Arab: light in color, with wavy or curly hair and in- 
telligent, bright features, slight and graceful in stature, 
but with poor muscular development. They are unaccus- 
tomed to work of any kind, but they are unexcelled as 
camel-men, causing one to gaze with astonishment at the 
rapidity and dexterity with which they fasten the most 
difficult loads imaginable to the camels. They will 
work amazingly well in spurts, when their enthusiasm is 
aroused, but they are not steady at manual labor of any 
kind. They are described by Gobat as “constant in 
nothing but inconstancy; soft, merry, affectionate souls, 
they pass, without any apparent transition, into a state 
of fury, when they are capable of terrible atrocities.” 
To this statement I make one exception: I would never 
apply the term ferocious to a Somali. In all my experi- 
