34 MY SOMALI BOOK 



Coward ! " rises to something very like a scream for 

 help. It seemed about time for Master to interfere, 

 so I threw a cartridge at the little bounder and shook 

 my rifle at him as he looked up. This caught his eye 

 and he sheered off. 



I am afraid the jackal is a "bounder," and a sneak- 

 ing, cowardly one. The leopard and hysena are bounders 

 too. But the former, while a true cat and therefore 

 of necessit}^ a sneak, combines with caimy caution a 

 cool audacity that is unrivalled, and a brilliant, if 

 ferocious, courage in fight. The hyaena, though he can, 

 on occasion, be wonderfully silent in his movements, 

 has not the habitual stealthiness of the leopard nor 

 even of the jackal ; he is therefore, in that sense only, 

 less of a sneak, and when he does attack is usually 

 fairly open in his methods. But he is a black coward — 

 fortunately, for his immense power of jaw is such as to 

 make him, if he only realised it, a most formidable foe 

 to both man and beast. 



Calling the jackal names seems to have led me into 

 a dissertation on hyaenas which I had not intended just 

 here. However, these beasts are ubiquitous in Somali- 

 land and may just as well be dealt with now as later, 

 premising that mj^ remarks refer more especially to 

 the waraba of the Somalis, the Spotted Hysena. Coward 

 though he ordinarily is, this animal is by no means 

 lacking in audacity on occasion ; and the estimates of 

 his character by some writers which put him down as 

 too cowardly to be in any way dangerous, and con- 

 demned to live entirely on offal because he dare not 

 attack a living prey, are singularly wide of the mark, 

 at any rate in Somaliland 



