PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION 
Since the first edition was published the wave of exploration, 
which reached its greatest intensity about the years 1892-94, 
has swept over parts of Somaliland in common with other 
countries. When the writer first visited the interior in 1885 
there were no Europeans; the whole region, except where Sir 
Richard Burton had left a single thread of exploration, was one 
great blank on the map. To the east, near the Horn of Africa, 
Georges Revoil had made extended explorations and done valu- 
able work near the coast ; and the caravan of Mr. F. L. James 
-was in the beginning of 1885 just returning from the adventurous 
journey to the Shabéleh River. Behind the Maritime Hills some 
twenty miles inland lay nothing but the unknown tribes. 
The same was the case with the Mombasa Hinterland farther 
south. Mombasa itself was merely a primitive village with a 
Mission station at Rabai; and the wilds of Ukambani were left 
untouched except where the caravans for Uganda hurried over 
the dreaded Nyika to the uplands of the interior. The word 
“Masai” bore a terrible significance to the Wa-Kamba. The 
Tana and Ozi Rivers and Belezoni Canal, which the writer 
visited in 1888, had been explored by about half a dozen white 
men, and his cance was followed in broad daylight by schools 
of hippopotami, swimming quietly alongside. All this is changed 
now. Turning to the Somali frontier, in 1885 the little Arab state 
of Harar seemed far more important than distant Abyssinia, 
which had not then begun to import modern breechloaders by 
thousands from French merchants at Obok and Jibuti, to be 
turned later against the gallant soldiers of Italy. Abyssinia 
has awakened since; has absorbed Harar and become a factor 
in Somali politics ; has further, with the help of these weapons 
in the hands of tireless mountaineers, gained successes over 
Italy which have spurred Abyssinian ambition and turned this 
