CHAP. IV GOVERNMENT EXPLORATIONS 75 
Soon after I had joined the Aden garrison in 1884, two 
English officers returned from a shooting trip to the Gdlis Range 
south of Berbera; this was, I believe, the first journey to the 
Somali interior undertaken by any Englishmen since the attack 
on Sir Richard Burton’s expedition thirty years before. Ac- 
companied by a friend, I was the next to make a short but 
unimportant shooting trip to Gélis—in January 1885. 
The first exploring party—that of Mr. F. L. James—had 
preceded us by about a month, and was already at Gerlogubi 
in distant Ogidén. The Egyptians had a few months before 
evacuated the coast, the Pasha leaving with about half a 
battalion of soldiers and a few field-pieces, and Mr. L. P. 
Walsh, one of the assistant Residents at Aden, had taken over 
charge of Berbera and Bulhdr with a few Aden policemen. At 
the same time Zeila was, so far as I remember, handed over 
by the Egyptians to a British Consul, with a French Consul 
also living in the town. My next visit to Somaliland occurred 
two months after my return from the shooting trip to the 
Golis. 
The Egyptian military quarters at Bulhdér had been reported 
flooded by a freshet from the Issutugan river, and I was sent 
over from Aden to meet Mr. Walsh and go with him to Bulhar, 
in order to choose a site for hut barracks, to be put up by 
the Indian sappers under my command. I chose the site for 
the huts and returned to Aden. I arrived again at Bulhdr 
on 27th September 1885, with thirty sappers and all the 
Sir Richard Burton’s expedition was attacked at Berbera, and the blockade 
which followed was raised on the signing of another treaty. In 1866 treaties 
were made with the Habr Gerhajis, Habr Toljaala, and Midjerten ; and since 
1884, when the Egyptians handed over the coast to Great Britain, treaties 
have been made with all the northern tribes. By an agreement signed in 1888, 
the boundary separating the British and French Protectorates begins near 
Loyi-ada, on the coast between Jibuti and Zeila, and runs by Abbaswein, 
Biyo-Kaboba, Gildessa, towards Harar. 
On 5th May 1894 a protocol was signed, fixing the boundaries of the 
Italian and British spheres of influence. The boundary-line starts from 
Gildessa, and, following the eighth parallel of north latitude, skirts the 
north-eastern border of the territories inhabited by the Géri, Bertiri, and Rer 
Ali tribes, leaving Gildessa, Jig-Jiga, and Milmil within the Italian sphere 
of influence. The line then follows latitude 8° north as far as its intersection 
with the forty-eighth meridian of east longitude, and thence to the inter- 
section of latitude 9° north, with longitude 49° east, along which it pro- 
ceeds, terminating at the coast. This line has, however, been since modified 
by the treaty of 1897, concluded between Her Majesty's Government and 
King Menelik, 
