46 THROUGH UNKNOWN AFRICAN COUNTRIES. 
also very good earthenware, and wooden pots and jars, 
prettily shaped and usually having two handles to them. 
The men wore a loin-cloth, while the women’s only clothing 
consisted of a short skirt made of sheepskin. 
The natives, finding we were not Abyssinians, implored 
our protection against these marauders. They showed 
me ovens in their villages, in which they formerly used to 
make bread, buying their grain from the natives living in 
the agricultural districts about Sheikh Husein. Now, 
they said, they were too poor to buy anything, the 
Abyssinians having left them scarcely enough sheep and 
goats for them to keep body and soul together. Their 
rulers demanded as taxes more than half the increase 
of .their flocks yearly. 
Hari Berrois now left us, delighted with the many 
fancy brass ornaments I gave him. He was the first, but 
not the last, man that came to us as a captive and a beggar, 
and went away great and rich, according to native ideas. 
Our next march was a very short one, as I wished to 
interview a Galla chief, who was the first man of impor- 
tance that had yet appeared. The old man welcomed us 
most heartily, and brought us a present of some milk and 
a fat sheep. He was a tall, handsome man, and conducted 
himself in a very dignified fashion; the only thing that 
marred his stately bearing being the fact that he insisted 
upon tying about his neck an empty chutney bottle and 
the lid of a biscuit tin I gave him. He told me that 
neither he nor any of his people believed we had crossed 
the flooded webi, but that we must have dropped from the 
clouds, to rid the country of the Abyssinians. 
We crossed, on September 9, the little river Darde, 
and camped at Berbadeh, where the river forms a small 
waterfall. The country of the Gallas we had gone 
through so far was very thinly populated, though, from 
