44 A SPOR TING TRIP THR OUGH AB YSSINIA chap. 



down for that purpose, and also to wash their clothes, 

 llie country round is thickly populated, and, before we 

 left, a big chief arrived for a course of baths with a 

 following of two or three hundred. The overflow from 

 the pool forms a small stream, which runs into the Hawash 

 some four or five miles off. Our camp was pitched 

 among trees a couple of hundred yards from the hot 

 spring, and on rather higher ground. As we looked 

 across the valley from our camp, the first thing that 

 caught the eye was the vivid green of a reed-brake, 

 which commenced close to the hot spring and was shaped 

 like an isosceles triangle, with the base lying across the 

 valley and the apex up-stream. Beyond the reeds the 

 country was fairly wooded, and further off a thick belt of 

 larger trees marked the course of the Hawash, as it 

 flowed on the further side of the valley, close under the 

 cliff 



When we parted with Captain Harrington at Zeila, he 

 had impressed us with the desire to decide the question 

 whether buffalo existed in the region between the rivers 

 Herrer and Hawash, as reported by French travellers, 

 and if so, whether they differed from those found on the 

 White Nile. Once or twice we thought we had got 

 news of them. The natives said they would show us 

 gessi (the Somali name for buffalo) but they only 

 took us to the tracks of waterbuck, which it seems are 

 here called gessi. Finally we showed the natives the 

 picture of buffalo in Rowland Ward's book, and learned 

 that the native name for these animals was giis/i, 

 and that they were to be found among the reeds at 

 Bilen. 



