76 THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSSINIA CHAP. 
material for constructing the huts, and camped near the site we 
had chosen, For the first three weeks there was no chance of 
leaving camp even to go aoul-shooting on the plain. Several 
native reports had reached us that the hill tribes, especially the 
Habr Gerhajis, were likely to come down and attack us, and 
not knowing the nature of Somali information at that time I 
was inclined to believe these rumours. 
When the work was fairly under way I took a few strolls 
into the plain. On one occasion, when out, attended only 
by my hunter, Ali Hirsi, we blundered within half a mile of 
a large party of raiding Habr Gerhajis horsemen from the hilis, 
whom the police from Berbera were trying to catch. Not 
knowing anything about the locality of the band, I fired at a 
bustard, with the result that the robbers bolted for the hills, 
thinking the police had come up with them. 
Bulhar was now getting full of people, the clans coming down 
into the plain. Two of these clans had a fend in active opera- 
tion, and a large tree near Elmas Mountain was about this time 
the scene of a ghastly murder. Hight men and as many women 
and children of one of the clans were attacked by their enemies 
when asleep under a tree, and all had their throats cut. My 
hunter, Ali Hirsi, who belonged to the clan which had suffered, 
promptly asked leave to go to the interior and see his father, 
who, he said, had been suddenly taken ill. I afterwards found 
that this was incorrect, and that Ali Hirsi, being the son of an 
dkil, had found it incumbent on him to answer the family call 
to arms. 
Shortly afterwards my friend the late Mr. D. Morrison, Mr. 
Walsh’s assistant, arrived from Berbera to take charge of Bulhar, 
and he at once found his hands full with this feud between the 
two clans of the Shirdone Yunis, Habr Awal, called respectively 
the Boho Shirdone and the Ba-Gadabursi Shirdone. British 
interests suffer sadly by these feuds occurring near our ports, as 
for the time being all trade is liable to be stopped. 
A few days after M ’s arrival a messenger came running 
in at dawn one morning to say that the Boho had taken posses- 
sion of the Bulhar wells, three miles west of the town, and were 
that morning going to be attacked by the Ba-Gadabursi from 
Elmas, each side being about five hundred strong. M 
at once decided to ride out with his interpreter and try to 
dissuade the Ba-Gadabursi from attacking. I accompanied him 
on one of the sapper mules, taking with me Khoda Bux, a 
