244 THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSSINIA CHAP. 
of the river. On first arriving at the landing-stage I had been 
met by a rival of Nur Rébleh, who undertook to take my 
caravan across on rafts made of dried tree-trunks. But Nur 
Robleh, arriving on the scene while I was away hunting, 
arrested the other chief and his partisans, and tied them all 
up at the foot of a tree, placing one of my escort on guard 
over them with a loaded rifle. However, when I walked into 
camp, much to Nur Robleh’s disgust, I set them free. 
The Amaden and Gilimiss told me it would take seven days 
to cross ; but before leaving Aden I had bought sixty fathoms 
of three-inch rope. This we made fast to bollards driven deep 
into the mud on both sides of the river, and pulling the rope 
taut we attached two of the native rafts to it by running loops, 
so that they could be easily hauled backwards and forwards ; 
this was a great improvement on the primitive way of punting 
and paddling the rafts across the swift current and landing 
four hundred yards below the shoving-off point. By this 
method, instead of seven, it took us only one day for the 
baggage and one day for the animals, the latter swimming 
over. The more timid of the camels were bound and towed 
over by a crowd of swimming men, shouting and splashing to 
keep off the crocodiles, while I fired a blank cartridge now and 
then from the bank. I also shot two crocodiles, one a very 
large one. It lay dead on an island, and four boys jumped 
into the river, and swimming to the island, towed the carcase 
to the bank. The natives are in the habit of swimming their 
horses and cattle across when moving to better pasture. We 
saw one negro family, including women, children, mats, cooking 
pots, and all their effects, moving across on a raft so overloaded 
that half of them were sitting in six inches of water. Where 
cows drink, the natives construct brushwood semicircular fences 
to enclose the shallows and so deter the crocodiles from attacking 
the animals; yet, despite all precautions, the loss caused by 
crocodiles is very great. 
By the evening of 29th August our camp was properly 
established on the southern bank, and we were on the Galla 
side of the border. At night Nur Robleh returned to me. 
I had sent him out to look for Dubbi Harré and Gudan 
Abatteri, two Arussi Galla chiefs of great influence, to whom 
Seyyid Mahomed had written a letter on my behalf. He now 
came with news of one of these. He had given the letter to 
Dubbi Harré, who was now staying in a village five miles to 
