PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION v 
over from Aden to cover the Egyptian retirement through the 
Esa country, also returned to Aden. 
For a few years nothing of importance happened. The ad- 
ministration of Berbera, Bulhar, and Zeyla was established on 
a sound basis under Indian political officers from Aden; the 
interior routes were surveyed, and biladiers, or country police, 
were sent up with the trading caravans to prevent their being 
raided by robbers, and so keep trade and revenue going. 
Meanwhile, Abyssinia having been involved in struggles, first 
with the Dervishes, and later with Italy, a demand for arms 
arose, and, as I have pointed out in the chapter about Abyssinia, 
they poured in from Obok and Jibuti through trading houses 
for some fifteen years, till Abyssinia has been so stocked that 
small-arm ammunition is piled in the market-places and used as 
small change. 
This gave Abyssinia a power and impetus which made her 
restless. 
About the year 1887 Ras -Makunan, Menelik’s nephew, 
occupied Harar and deposed Abdillahi, and filled the Harar 
Highlands with Abyssinian soldiers; and his “ Fi-Tauraris,” or 
advanced generals, went eastward among the Somalis, and pushed 
out permanent fortified posts at Jig-Jiga, Gildessa, and Biyo- 
Kaboéba. 
The Abyssinian soldiers in the Harar army of occupation soon 
ran short of food, and then began the Abyssinian foraging expedi- 
tions to the Somali tribes, notably the Abbasgul, Rer Ali, Rer 
Amaden, and river tribes of the upper Webbe Shabeyli. 
I now return to the British occupation of the coast. Murder 
cases were constantly coming in to be tried by our magistrates, 
and our knowledge of the interior being at first a blank, it was 
necessary to help the administration in identifying localities in 
the interior in connection with these cases, to survey the trade- 
routes by rapid reconnaissances. The survey parties, organised 
and led by myself, had, after running traverses of many thousands 
of miles, carried the mapping of caravan routes peacefully to 
Milmil (Gagdéb), two hundred miles inland; and here I may be 
permitted to pick out from the chapters of this book, as having 
an important bearing on the present “Mad Mullah” risings, an 
interesting personal experience. 
At Gagab, on 25th July 1892, a mullah calling himself Sheikh 
Sufi, who was not necessarily a very important man, appeared 
from Eastern Ogddén, from the direction of Mudug, and held a 
