A YOUNG CARACAL CAUGHT 
265 
now as they stood watching me, but I had already enough 
of these peculiar trophies, and let them run away. The 
Somalis, of course, would not touch him, so I was obliged to 
cut his throat and decapitate him unaided. 
In the evening one of my men brought me in a live 
animal T had not seen before in Somaliland. It was a 
young caracal. It had a dirty reddish-yellow coat of 
coarse hair, a cat’s face and skull, long pointed ears, black 
behind, with long black tufts protruding from the tips of 
each. A short tail was the same colour as the body. 
The natives called it gododema, and said that it grew 
nearly as large as a hysena. I made a cage for it out of an 
empty store-box. It was a savage little beast, but ate raw 
meat ravenously. 
Next moroing I sent the whole caravan down the Sheik 
Pass, a matter of no small difficulty. At the bottom was 
a real running rivulet, the first running water I had seen 
during the whole of my expedition. Off came all my 
clothes, and I wallowed in it like a wart hog. 
After drinking till I nearly burst, I wended my way 
towards camp, turning back to have a look up at the 
precipice I had just come down. The pass now looked 
utterly impossible. On reaching camp, I was surprised to 
hear that not one of the camels had perished on the difficult 
descent. I reckoned that four at least would never reach 
the bottom. I found that my letters had been brought me 
from Berbera. What a various lot they were ! Stamps 
from Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. There was one 
from Hong Kong, whose barren rocks reminded me some- 
what of these ; one from Cejdon, with its beautiful foliage 
unrivalled in the world ; some from England, telling me I 
was reported in the London papers massacred in Somaliland ; 
one from New York and another from Bombay, saying the 
same thing ; one from America’s greatest waterfall, Niagara, 
grand to all except the Irishman. When his guide was 
cracking up the fall, remarking : ‘ Look, gentlemen, at 
the vast volume of water rushing madly down the preci- 
