11 
THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSSINIA 
— those of civilised European States on the one hand, and more or 
less primitive African races on the other — it is difficult to say 
what could have been done to stave off what may have been 
practically inevitable. 
The main cause of these risings has been simply the sale of 
arms. 
Unless civilised Governments work together in these days, 
one African people will suddenly get a larger share of arms of 
precision than another, which is certain to at once upset any 
equilibrium, however long established, that may have existed. 
Abyssinia has been flooded with modern rifles for the iast 
fifteen years, while for the Somalis the arms are only now begin- 
ning to leak in. I will show the effect of this later on. 
The result of their contact with civilisation, to one who has 
watched the Somalis for nearly twenty years, whether present or 
from a distance, has known them at their camp fires, and had 
their interest at heart, gives rise to melancholy reflections. 
In their primitive state, as I found them in 1885, no people 
could have been, on the whole, more hospitable to the well- 
conducted European traveller than the Somalis. I am aware 
that Sir Richard Burton was attacked in Berbera many years 
ago, but that was an attack by robbers, an accident which might 
happen in civilised countries to-day. 
The British were the favoured race in the interior, and may 
be to-day for aught I know ; and it has been my happy experi- 
ence to have traversed some fifteen thousand miles of the country, 
generally as the first white man, with scarcely any of the ordinary 
hardships of travel. 
The Somalis were so easily disciplined that dismissal was the 
only punishment, and tribe after tribe was traversed without 
real acts of hostility by the natives ; I take no credit for this, for 
it was the common experience of most sportsmen, and English 
ladies have fearlessly visited the distant interior prior to the 
present trouble. 
We may dismiss recent attacks on the reputation for courage 
of the Som&lis by saying that they have no newspaper defence 
to set up ; their courage, such as it is, has been shown in dozens 
of instances with game ; in their attack on our second Zeyla 
(Esa) expedition some seventeen years ago, when about twenty 
of the Esa got into a zerfba containing some two hundred and 
fifty regular troops, and put the officer in command and some 
twenty men out of action before they were themselves disposed 
