NOTES ON SOMALILAND. 89 
local live-stock market to suit his capacious purse, And after all, one cannot 
blame the Somali for gathering rosebuds while he may, and, personally, I 
grudge him his harvest less than any other Oriental within my ken, for he 
has such gentlemanly ideas of disposing of it. Burton calls him “ avaricious ”; 
grasping, he may be, but he has none of the hoarding instincts of the 
miser, He loves money it is true, but he loves it to spend, and for what it 
can give him, and, most of all, for the dignity which it brings him. Dignity 
is everything to a Somali. When he has to a certain extent become sophisti- 
cated, and has sown the usual crop of wild oats, all his feelings seem to centre 
themselves upon this point in his character. His first aim, when he has 
reaped plentifully from one or two successful expeditions to the interior, is 
to fit himself out with a dignified position in his small social world ; to buy 
more camels or perhaps a new wife, so that he may fill his quiver and become 
a power in his cian. When he has improved his status to this extent, and 
probably augmented his little property by raiding his neighbours, he is ready 
again to take a spell of service when it offers, but as he gets older he likes to 
do this in a gentlemanly way and ina suitable position, During this middle 
phase of his career, 7, ¢., while his family and his flocks are increasing, he 
turns his spare attentions to religion, and essays to increase his importance 
by the acquisition of a little odour of sanctity. To this end he picks up a 
smattering of extracts from the Koran, and prays, with absent-minded glib- 
ness, the orthodox five times a day ; believing, I think, that his labours in this 
direction work off any little venial sins that he may have committed during 
the gleaning of his harvest ; and ashe spreads his prayer-mat or tells his 
beads, he strokes his chin with smug complacency, and thanks Allah and 
_ the Prophet that he is what he is. If he has no ultimate chance of becoming 
a registered “ Headman” (in which case there is no limit to his ambitions) 
he retires comparatively early into private life, and reverts to pastoral and 
predatory pursuits. I think if a number of Somalis of the better type were 
asked what was the Ultima Thule of their ambitions, nine out of ten would 
reply that it was to have plenty of live-stock (more especially camels), and a 
sufficiently numerous male progeny to constitute a “ Rer”’ or clan of fighting- 
men, bearing, and so perpetuating, its own distinctive name. But I am get- 
ting off the track and beginning a disquisition on Somalis in general. We 
were speaking of the effect of civilization on the coast Somali : let us now 
take stock of the modified type of sportsman which the same civilization 
attracts. He is a man who does not see why he should not get his sport and 
his pleasure with the maximum amount of comfort and the minimum of 
trouble to himself, and when he finds that by the mere matter of paying 
accordingly he can almost reduce the pastime to a question of “Itouch 
the button, you do the rest,” so much the better; he is willing to 
pay. How far this latter principle has begun to pervade the sport as 
well as the photography of to-day, will be believed when I mention 
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