TWO DIANAS IN SOMALILAND 213 
death’s door if he has merely a pain somewhere. They 
cannot be called cowards by any means, and will bear 
pain well enough when it comes, but in minor illnesses 
they cave in sooner than any other nation I have come 
across, and get so terribly alarmed about themselves. 
Theirs is not the stoicism of the American Indian, in 
matters large and small, the delightful sangfroid of 
the Chinaman is absent, and the calm of the English- 
man unknown. We had really, up to now, been 
singularly fortunate in the health of the caravan, and 
most of the minor ills from which the men had suffered 
could fairly have been ascribed to gorging. This 
gluttony over meat occasionally landed them into 
double-distilled bilious attacks. 
I was in a frightful tantrum with some one — of 
course nobody would own to being the delinquent — 
who had dropped, or somehow made away with, the 
very best oryx shield we had. Going over the trophies, 
which we knew individually, I missed the treasure. 
The immortal one counselled “ Give thy thoughts no 
tongue.” But, after all, he was giving directions to 
a young man just about to go out into the world, and 
had not dreamed of the conditions that would govern 
the loss of an oryx shield most hardly come by. I 
gave all the thoughts I had by me vehement voice, 
and, more than that, I borrowed a few from Cecily. 
We had camped where there had once been a lake 
as large as at Sinnadogho. It was now a mere hole, 
and all the one-time springs were dry. Some Midgan 
hunters here gave us news of having seen a lion an hour 
or so ago. No wonder they reported such a find. 
