292 TWO DIANAS IN SOMALILAND 



arrangement, and not very far from our camp was 

 an immense cemetery where many thousands of 

 people are buried. Clarence took us also to the ruins 

 of a one-time city, now covered with grass and aloe 

 growth. How ancient the place is I cannot say with 

 accuracy, but it looked very ancient indeed. Not far 

 away at the Upper Sheik is a large Somali village, a 

 Mullah settlement, and [the Sheik there, a very en- 

 lightened person indeed, told us that the remains of 

 the city are not really very antediluvian, and is the 

 site of the homes of the early settlers from the Yemen. 

 As we neither of us knew anything about such influx 

 we kept silent, to conceal our ignorance. Quite a lot 

 of the tracery on the stones which satisfied un- 

 archaeological people like ourselves is nothing but 

 decorative work carved by the shepherds trying to 

 kill time ! 



Being comparatively near Berbera and " civilisa- 

 tion," the pass being a kind of high road to Brighton, 

 this Mullah saw a good deal of Europeans, and spoke 

 a little English. We presented him with a Koran, a 

 tusba, and a couple of tobes — the last of the Mohicans 

 — and so our reception was exceedingly cordial. The 

 Mullah was an elderly man, but it is exceedingly 

 hard to guess ages " out there," and his face was 

 deeply lined, his eyes were very jaded. When the 

 conversation, engineered by Clarence as usual, began 

 to flag I cast about in my mind for a suitable remark, 

 which I placed carefully. He would just wait for me 

 to make another, and seemed to have no inventive 

 faculty of his own. At last I said I hoped all his 



