XX THE LAND OF THE LION 
Italian Somaliland is a country surely not worth fighting 
for, not worth the blood of one honest patient Italian 
soldier or officer, and yet since her flag has been raised 
over its barren waterless wilderness, Italy seems unwilling 
to haul it down. But if she will not take this course, 
then most surely she will shortly have to send from her 
shores expeditions of another sort, than that one which 
the Gertrude landed. Our friends were so hastily dispatched 
that they had not even sun helmets, but had to search Port 
Said, after midnight too (for the steamer made a late 
landing), for such poor substitutes for headgear as its 
shoddy shop could supply. 
Mogadicio was under the Muskat Arabs an important 
town; but it has sunk into insignificance. The squalid 
little place, with its apology for a port, is a mere huddle 
of whitewashed mud houses, crowding close down to the 
sea. It has no safe anchorage, soon as the monsoon 
begins to blow, and no good water. 
A high sand-dune back of the town is crowned by a small 
lighthouse. Here some earthworks have been thrown 
up, and the Italians have placed small shell guns, taken 
from one of their gunboats on the coast, in position. 
The thorn scrub which covers the country at a short 
distance from the sea, has been cleared away for a couple 
of thousand yards from the muzzles of the guns; and for 
just that distance, and no more, life is pretty safe round the 
place. Beyond it patrols were cut up. 
We drank to our friends’ health and success at dinner, 
and bade them good-bye with sincere regret. Far away 
from home and friends and support, they took up the 
thankless work assigned them, with that light-hearted 
courage that has so well served their fatherland during 
the long dark days, now we hope forever over. 
But as I saw the last of them go down the ship’s side, 
I couldn’t but feel that someone had blundered. ‘That 
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