74 
SOMALILAND 
hour, he blandly confessed that ^ dunno whar ’e are !’ At 
length we met some natives, who directed us to a village, 
near which we encamped for the night. On the way we 
saw a number of zebra tracks for the first time. Next 
day we passed several large villages, with thousands of 
camels. I dismissed my guide here, and took another man. 
A very grand sheikh appeared to expostulate with my man 
for having taken away his camel. He followed us all the 
morning. My shikari told me that my man, the supposed 
rightful owner of the camel, although now a fairly old man, 
was once upon a time a bit of a blood. He was a very 
strong fighting-man, and had in his time killed eighteen 
men, of which accomplishment he seemed vastly proud ; 
but to look at him now, you would have thought him 
incapable of killing a flea, much less a man. The skinny, 
scraggy, wizened old reprobate ! 
Two of my men had now a chronic sore throat with 
continual shouting. In fact, they cannot speak quietly, or 
you could not hear a word they said, so they are obliged to 
shout. Confound their noise ! 
About 3 p.m. we found the fresh tracks of a lioness, 
dragging something along the ground. We followed, and 
for the second time whilst out tracking lions, my head- 
shikari said he was taken violently ill, so I left him in 
disgust, as I knew he was shamming, and he had to find 
his way back to camp alone I followed the spoor with a 
few men, when, on entering some very thick bush, we saw 
some vultures hovering above us, and a minute after we 
discovered the remains of a baby camel. The lioness 
had evidently heard us and made off I ordered a small 
zareba to be built 2 or 3 feet off the dead camel, hoping 
the lioness would come back during the night, and rejoined 
the caravan, which had just now unloaded for the night. 
I found that my man-killing follower had at length made 
peace with the villager from whom he had taken his camel, 
by presenting him with his wife, who happened to be in a 
neighbouring village at that time. The wife turned up, 
