178 THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSSINIA  CHar. 
was more important, in hunting-grounds hitherto untouched by 
Europeans. 
We should have started early on the 26th, but had great 
difficulty in getting guides to the Rer Ali tribe, because the 
Bertiri at Jig-Jiga were afraid that if they assisted us they 
would be made to regret it by the Abyssinians. But on my 
showing Makunan’s passport to the Shim in charge of the 
stockade, he promised the people that they would receive no 
harm on my account, and I marched with two Bertiri guides 
at 9 A.M. 
We threaded our way through grass-plains and jungle to 
Kuredelli in the Jerer Valley, which runs south-east towards the 
Webbe Shabéleh ; and on reaching this place in the evening, I 
was delighted to find a pool of water in the rocky bed of the 
river, the edges of which were literally covered with tracks of 
large game. Among other animals a lion and a rhinoceros 
had come to drink on the preceding night. 
The river-bed was very rocky, and sunk some fifteen feet 
below the level of the surrounding plain, which was covered 
with dense mimosa jungle. Half a mile up the channel, to the 
west of the pool, was my camp, pitched under shady trees in 
a glade of good but rather dry grass. There had been, as usual, 
a drought during the /ild/ season, but the drought this year 
had been particularly severe because the previous Dazr or light 
winter rains had failed, so that Kuredelli was one of the few 
pools of surface water left in the whole of this elevated country, 
and there was not a drop to be got for many miles round. The 
water was covered with duckweed, and was of a bright emerald 
green colour throughout, and had almost the consistency of 
pea-soup ; but, curiously enough, it was perfectly sweet and 
good, and we drank it for a week without harm. 
The pool was not more that fifteen yards long by five wide, 
its longer axis pointing up and down the river-bed ; and on the 
northern side it was overhung by a steep scarp of rock some 
five feet high, where the limestone had been undermined by the 
swirl of the river when in flood. Above the rocky scarp were 
thick thorn-trees, whose branches overhung the river-bed, and 
under these branches, on the edge of the scarp and overlooking 
the pool, I constructed a small bower, bearing a rugged resem- 
blance to a box in a European theatre. Nothing could spring 
on us from behind because of the interlaced branches of the 
trees which made our roof, while the floor was a smooth slab 
