24 
THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSSINIA chai>. 
built by a power holding the coast, to close the pass on the 
Harar side. 
Within half a mile of the Samawe tomb, on the sloping 
ground to the south, we found, a curious stone enclosure, half 
buried in jungle. It was in the form of a rectangle measuring 
fifty-seven by fifty-eight yards, marked by long rows of dressed 
stones, each about nine inches by a foot, lying loosely on the 
ground. Some of these were blocks of limestone, and others 
apparently basalt. 
Near Hug, in the mountainous Jibril Abokr country, my 
brother found many signs of old u GMla ” habitations and graves, 
and some well-made pathways down the hillsides. His followers 
told him that the hills having in the olden time been used as 
places of refuge by the Gallas, these roads were made to enable 
the cattle to be quickly driven up in case of alarm — the custom 
being for a part of the clan to camp on the top of a hill, in order 
to hold it, while the rest looked after the flocks and herds grazing 
below. He was told that the GMlas on the Abyssinian border, 
and the Abyssinians themselves, still do this. 
All over the territory of the Ish^k tribes, and in the Dolbahanta 
country, we found many old G&lla graves and cairns. At Kirrit 
there is a well in which a very ancient cross has been carved in 
the face of the rock. Crowning nearly every prominent hill in 
the countries named is a cairn or pile of stones, each stone 
being, roughly speaking, about the size of a man’s head. They 
are made up of many hundreds of such stones, and are generally 
about twelve or fifteen feet high and eight yards in diameter. 
Each one is circular, having in the centre a depression, suggest- 
ing that there may have been a tomb beneath, which has fallen 
in. I never cared to dig one up, not wishing to offend the 
susceptibilities of the natives. Some of them are of immense 
size, and are called Taalla GMla or GMla cairns. 
There is a curious legend accounting for the origin of these 
cairns, which was told me by one of the Esa Musa tribe, while 
I was camped on the Golis Kange, and by others of the Habr 
Awal at different times. 
The drift of the story was that when the GMlas were in the 
country there once lived a great and powerful queen, called 
Arroweilo. She was very wicked, and was the origin of all evil 
in women at the present day. For some reason she conceived a 
ferocious prejudice against all male children, and a mother, to 
escape from her tyrannies, fled into a far country with her baby 
