208 
TWO DIANAS IN SOMALILAND 
deserting his charge, and as he seemed so very keen 
about it, and Clarence said he could do with another 
man, we assented. It is the dream with some of these 
jungle people to taste the sweets of civilisation, make 
money, and then return to his tribe, acquiring many 
camels and wealth of goats and sheep, and it is very 
strange that in no time he becomes a jungly person 
again, casting off the trammels of civilisation with ease 
after having lived perhaps for two or three years in the 
service of a white man. A very good thing it is so 
too. For the savage who lives in the wild is far more 
to be admired, and is altogether a more estimable 
creature than the savage who drives you about Aden, 
or hauls your boxes about at Berbera. Like many 
other wanderers, he learns the white man’s follies and 
faults and none of his better attributes. 
And so it comes about, once in a while, you enter a 
karia , with every evidence of native domesticity about 
it, and are greeted by the village head-man without the 
usual “ Nabad,” or “ Salaam aleikum,” and in great 
amaze, you hear an English salutation. 
We camped for the night at a place of deep stone 
wells. If game seemed scarce, water was plentiful. 
Next day we came on a Somali encampment where 
lions were provided against and so must occasionally 
come to call. All manner of scare-lions were set about 
the zareba, torn herios arranged flag-like on broken 
spears, and an ingenious scheme for making a scratching 
noise in a wind amused us very much. It was a rough 
piece of iron, strung on a bit of leather rope, and its 
duty was to scrape against a flint set in a contrivance 
