TWO DIANAS IN SOMALILAND 
143 
or write, can give you the names of his grandfathers, 
great-grandfathers, and all the other greats, until you 
know you must be going back to grope in the mists of 
centuries. 
When we were tracking one morning about this 
time, on the spoor of a very small-footed lion, we 
came on a bit of ridge country, and for some hundred 
yards or so a small thorn fence had been erected, 
chevaux-de-frise like, the thorn having been cut and 
brought there. At intervals tiny gaps were left, and 
inset, right on the sand of the ridge, stood the most 
primitive gins to catch — Clarence said — dik-dik. The 
Midgans set them. It would need to be a very un- 
sophisticated little antelope indeed to run its head into 
so palpable a noose. They were like the ones you set 
at home for rabbits, but made of string instead of wire 
held up in an apology for a circle by plainly-to-be-seen 
props of thorn twigs. On the sides of the thorn walls 
forming the passages, bits of uninviting scraps of dik- 
dik heads and tails were impaled — to attract and 
allure their kind, our shikari said. I should have 
thought the evidence of what awaited them would 
have had a deterring effect on any roaming dik-dik, 
and serve merely to attract jackals and foxes. But 
Clarence said the small antelope are often caught in 
this way for the pot. 
That night a vast bat visited our tent, flying round 
the candle lamp and dashing itself against it. We 
called to Clarence to come and evict it, not meaning 
him to kill it, but he flew at the creature forthwith, a 
hangol in his hand, smashing the winged thing in a 
