IV GOVERNMENT EXPLORATIONS 89 
already had one sharp skirmish with Bur Dab robbers, being 
obliged, we heard, to use their rifles freely in self-defence. 
We reached Kirrit well, near Wadama-go, on 3rd March. 
There were numbers of old graves here, and the well, supposed 
to have been dug out of the gypsum rock by ancient Gillas, is 
very curious. At the mouth it is a hole twenty feet in 
diameter, narrowing as it descends, with a rude cross quarried 
out of the face. To get water, one has to descend twenty feet, 
and then crawl along a narrow rocky passage for thirty feet to a 
very deep pool, six feet wide and thirty feet long. It is quite 
dark, and there is a strong smell of sulphuretted hydrogen, with 
which the water is impregnated from the gypsum rock. The 
water is disagreeable to drink, and causes diarrhcea. Robbers 
from Bur Dab often use this well when on their raids. The 
gypsum rock is very smooth and white, and in some places 
presents the appearance of the flagstone flooring of a cathedral, 
being split up into squares. The graves, which are made of 
these rocks, are generally plastered over with powdered gypsum. 
Next day we marched across a broad tributary valley of 
the Nogal to a flat-topped hill called Daba Daldl, eight miles to 
the east. We crossed the tracks of Colonel Paget’s caravan, 
and the next day received a note from him concerning some 
robbers he had taken prisoners. 
Near Daba Dalél was a mullahs’ village named Kob-Farddd, 
with a little cultivation. These people told us that the 
Mahamud Gerad were out against the Arasama, another sub- 
tribe of the Dolbahanta, and that there had been a fight, two 
days’ march ahead on our route. 
Here we had a scare among the camelmen. At noon, 
while the camels and horses were watering at the well, two 
miles from camp, under a weak guard of three riflemen, one of 
them ran in to say they had been attacked and the camels 
looted. E went out with a portion of our escort to search 
for the missing camels; but they had only gone half a mile 
when fifteen horsemen, the supposed enemy, cantered up and 
shouted that they were Arasama, and that they had come three 
days’ march to welcome us into the Dolbahanta country. They 
told us that more than a dozen caravans were in their country, 
afraid to go to Berbera on account of the Mahamud Gerad. 
One caravan had even gone round to Berbera by way of the 
Haud, preferring to go through waterless country and carry ten 
days’ water on the camels, rather than run the risk of being 
