208 TWO DIANAS IN SOMALILAND 



deserting his charge, and as he seemed so very keen 

 about it, and Clarence said he could do with another 

 man, we assented. It is the dream with some of thest 

 jungle people to taste the sweets of civilisation, make 

 money, and then return to his tribe, acquiring many 

 camels and wealth of goats and sheep, and it is very 

 strange that in no time he becomes a jungly person 

 again, casting off the trammels of civilisation with ease 

 after having lived perhaps for two or three years in the 

 service of a white man. A very good thing it is so 

 too. For the savage who lives in the wild is far more 

 to be admired, and is altogether a more estimable 

 creature than the savage who drives you about Aden, 

 or hauls your boxes about at Berbera. Like many 

 other wanderers, he learns the white man's follies and 

 faults and none of his better attributes. 



And so it comes about, once in a while, you enter a 

 karia, with every evidence of native domesticity about 

 it, and are greeted by the village head-man without the 

 usual " Nabad," or " Salaam aleikum," and in great 

 amaze, you hear an English salutation. 



We camped for the night at a place of deep stone 

 wells. If game seemed scarce, water was plentiful. 

 Next day we came on a Somali encampment where 

 lions were provided against and so must occasionally 

 come to call. All manner of scare-lions were set about 

 the zareba, torn herios arranged flag-like on broken 

 spears, and an ingenious scheme for making a scratching 

 noise in a wind amused us very much. It was a rough 

 piece of iron, strung on a bit of leather rope, and its 

 duty was to scrape against a flint set in a contrivance 



