116 THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSSINIA CHAD. 
Ordinary feuds with our neighbours we think fair-play, but 
these Bertiri raids are a losing business for us all round. We 
are not allowed to import firearms, the only effective weapons 
against the Abyssinians; and we ask the British, who have 
occupied our ports, either to. protect us, or to allow us to import 
guns with which we can protect ourselves.” 
Owing, I believe, to action from Aden, the trouble was 
stopped, to the lasting satisfaction of the tribes on the northern 
side. On the east, however, in Ogddén, the Abyssinians 
became more active than ever; and on another journey, in 
1890, this time through Milmil, we again had to listen to 
complaints against them. 
We arrived at Berbera for the Milmil trip, which was the 
first exploration of the eastern Abyssinian border by Europeans, 
on Ist July 1892. The Haga wind was at its height, and as 
nothing could be done during the first half of each day, owing 
to the storms, it was fully a week before we got our caravan 
under way. The day before we left Berbera an enormous column 
of black smoke, which we estimated to be over two thousand 
feet high, was seen to rise from the sea-level in the west, over 
the site of Bulhar, forty miles away. Soon the news arrived that 
Bulhar had been burnt to the ground. It has been burnt three 
times since the British occupation, and in 1892 was depopulated 
by cholera ; and three years before that it was raided by the Esa 
in a dust-storm, and sixty-seven of the people killed. 
We marched by easy stages to Hargeisa, by following the 
Aleyadéra nala, the home of the beautiful lesser koodoo, of which 
I managed to bag a couple of bucks the day before we reached 
Hargeisa, which we entered on 17th July and found deserted. 
Sheikh Mattar had gone to Haraf, four miles up the river, 
according to his custom at the Haga season, because of the 
better pasture there; he, however, came with a number of 
mullahs to meet us, and was very pleasant, giving us letters 
of introduction to the chiefs of the Rer Ali and Abbasgul, 
Ogadén tribes to whose country we were bound. 
For the first time we had to face the crossing of the waterless 
Hand plateau, there being a hundred miles between Hargeisa 
and Milmil without a drop of water. To accomplish this we 
took up two hundred and fifty gallons in the hdns of plaited 
bark we had brought for the purpose. I have traversed it many 
times since, and the description of our first crossing will give an 
idea of the peculiar nature of the country. I will not give an 
