122 THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSSINIA  CHapr. 
Rer Ali, always a warlike tribe. The chief of the clan was 
called Mahomed Liba. 
We marched through patches of burnt jungle, with the trees 
still smouldering, and pits left in the ground full of white ashes, 
where the roots had been burnt out. 
Near Yoaleh we came to stony ground, the first since leav- 
ing Aror. On 25th July we left the Haud and descended into 
the valley of the Tug Milmil, a sandy nala wooded with gob} 
trees about eighty feet high, fringing the river-bed and growing 
on islands in the centre of the expanse of sand, some seventy 
yards wide at this point. We found ponies, sheep, and camels 
of the Rer Hartn and Rer Ali, Ogadén, watering at Milmil 
wells. One continuous stream of camels marched up and down 
the river-bed, and we must have seen some twenty thousand in all. 
There had been a quarrel just before our arrival between the 
Rer Hartn here and Mahomed Liba’s clan we had met at 
Kheidub-Ayéyu, in which two men had been killed and two 
hundred camels had changed owners. 
On the day of our arrival at Milmil, at the end of the Haud 
crossing of one hundred and five miles, I had still seven full 
hdns in my portion of the caravan, nine having been expended, 
say forty gallons of water for fifteen men for five days. About 
fifteen gallons of this had been spilt from various causes, so that 
fifteen men, one Arab fast camel, and two goats drank only 
twenty-seven gallons, or a little over five gallons a day, including 
cooking water. I attribute this moderation partly to the coolness 
of the weather in the elevated Haud. We had crossed in five 
days, thus doing twenty-one miles a day ; this fact will indicate 
the good state of the caravan track over the red stoneless soil. 
Indeed, as I have stated before, a bicycle might have been 
ridden at speed over nine-tenths of the distance. 
The Haud ends at Milmil in a succession of bluffs a hundred 
feet high, and as one descends between these to the Milmil nala, 
one emerges on to the general level of Ogddén, and farther on 
at the wells the country opens up, disclosing several hills; two 
of these, called Firk-Firk, resemble the remarkable twin hills at 
Hargeisa called “‘ Naso Hablod,” or the ‘“‘ Maiden’s Breasts.” 
Soon after we had pitched camp at the part of Milmil called 
Gagab an important travelling sheikh arrived. The Somali so- 
called sheikh is a mullah who has gained a great and widespread 
1 A large rounded tree producing quantities of edible red berries, They 
look like cherries, and have a stone inside, but taste like half-dried apples, 
