II 
THE NOMADIC LIFE 
41 
been exposed, speaks well for the value of Berbera as a port, and 
for the trading enterprise of the Somalis. The British system of 
furnishing armed “ biladiers ” 1 for the protection and at the 
expense of caravans has given great encouragement to trade. 
Men of two caravans meeting in the jungle will halt to ex- 
change the news, and with one’s own caravan it is difficult to 
make a guide pass his own karia. I have often been led five or 
six miles out of my way because the guide’s karia lay in that 
direction. His ambition is to bring the caravan to his home, to 
show off his own importance to his relations, and be able to play 
the host with a liberal distribution of his master’s presents. On 
the march our men have constantly shared their allowance of 
food wfith strangers going our way, and we have sometimes been 
astonished, when loading up at dawn, to see half a dozen natives 
warming their spears over the dying embers of our watch-fires, 
who have turned up in the night from no one knows where. In 
many cases these are women, and being industrious, they save 
the men a good deal of work. 
Somehow or other there is nearly always a woman or two in 
camp, generally young, pretty, and respectable, with the hair 
enclosed in the regulation dark blue bag, denoting that she is 
married. When I ask where she has sprung from, I always hear, 
“ Oh, one of Mahomed’s cousins,” or “ J&ma’s sister.” Generally 
“ Jdma’s sister” was going to a karia on ahead, to see about a 
stolen sheep. These relatives are always quiet, cheerful, and 
thrifty, eating little and doing the work of two men, besides 
inducing half a dozen youngsters to work harder at camel-loading 
to show off their muscles. They appear whenever we come to a 
karia, and disappear mysteriously at another. Often my men 
have told me that the new-comers were people who had been 
waiting to make a journey, and had joined us for the sake of 
protection, working for us in return. 
Sometimes I have been standing over a fire in the cold wind 
an hour before dawn, waiting for the cook to bring me my cup 
of coffee, when a youth, wdiom I have never seen before, has put 
down his shield and spears on the grass, and going to my 
bedding, has brought my ulster, saying, “ Oh, Sir cal ! here is 
your coat,” in the most natural way, as if I had paid him for a 
month. 
It is wonderful how quickly these strangers worm themselves 
into one’s service. An unlicked cub of a karia dandy comes up 
1 Biladiers, i.e. country police (derived from the Arabic). 
