4 THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSSINIA CH.1 
With reference to the class engaged in brokerage, they are 
people settled permanently at the ports of the North Somali 
coast. Until a short time ago the office of abddn or broker was 
considered to be important. When a trader arrived off the 
coast in a dhow, or with a caravan from the interior, he was 
obliged to engage an abbdn to transact his business, to protect 
his interests, to act as general agent, paying in return for such 
services a sinall commission on all purchases and sales. 
Of the outcaste races the most important are the Tomal, 
Yebir, and Midgan. They are not organised in tribes, but live 
in scattered families all over Somaliland. The Tomal are 
the blacksmiths, who fashion all kinds of arms, axes, and 
general ironwork. The Yebir are workers in leather, such as 
saddlery, scabbards, and so forth. The Midgdns are probably 
the most numerous of the outcaste people. They are armed 
with the mindz (a small dagger), bow, and poisoned arrows, 
carrying the latter in a large quiver. They keep wild and 
savage pariah dogs, which they train to hunting, their chief 
quarry being the beisa (Oryx beisa), the large antelope with 
rapier-like horns. 
I have often been out beisa-hunting on foot in the Bulhar 
Plain with Midgans and dogs. When a bull beisa is killed a 
disc from fifteen to eighteen inches in diameter is cut from the 
thick skin of his withers and sometimes from the rump: these 
are worth from one to four rupees at the coast, and are used 
by the Midgdns for shields. The Midgdns are a hardy race, 
used to living away from karias, stealthy and perfect trackers, 
and are sometimes, in inter-tribal warfare, engaged to act as 
messengers, scouts, and light skirmishers. There appears to be 
no physical difference between them and other Somalis, except 
that the average stature of the Midgans may be slightly shorter. 
I have on more than one occasion come upon a party of Midgans 
pegging out the fresh skin of a lion which they had just killed ; 
many of these animals are brought to bag every year with no 
other weapons than their tiny arrows. The lions are found 
asleep under the Ahansa bushes at mid-day, or are shot from an 
ambush at night over a living bait, or when returning to a “kill.” 
In the interior of Northern Somaliland there are no 
permanent settlements except those founded and occupied by 
religious Mahomedans, called sheikhs, mullahs, or widads. 
These settlements occur, on an average, about seventy miles 
apart. The two largest which I have seen are Seyyid Mahomed’s 
