46 
THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSSINIA ch. iii 
The next day one of the three horsemen came back to tell 
me that he had marked down the herd of elephants, and that it 
was being watched by his companions. He carried in his hand 
pieces of half-chewed aloes 1 with the saliva still damp upon 
them, which the elephants had torn up a few hours ago. Leav- 
ing most of the baggage behind in the camp at Lower Sheikh, 
and posting Nur Osman and another of the men in charge, 
I mounted the Sheikh Pass the next morning at sunrise, 
accompanied by two camels and five men. At the top of the 
pass I shot a spotted hyaena, to the delight of the mullahs 
living at the village of Guldu Hamed close by, as it had stolen 
several of their sheep. 
Half an hour before sunset two horsemen came racing over 
the plain from the Wagar direction, and poising their spears 
circled round us at full speed. They pulled up shouting “ Mot! ” 
(Hail !) and reported the latest tidings about the herd. I 
learned the melancholy news that it had got away in the night. 
My men, however, tried to comfort me by saying, “ lush ’ Allah 
bukera ” (Please God, to-morrow). We camped at an empty 
zeriba in a strip of bush near Soksodi, where there was firewood 
and water, intending to search for the elephants next day. We 
lit a roaring fire and threw ourselves down on the sand to sleep. 
At dawn, while my men were preparing coffee, I took a stroll 
round camp, and saw by several broad footprints in the sand 
that a large lion had been prowling round our bivouac all night. 
Later on my men pointed out old tracks of elephants, broken 
branches, and aloe clumps, indicating the course of a herd which 
must have passed two or three days before. I sent all the men 
into the covert to look for fresh tracks, but at noon they 
returned unsuccessful. 
At two in the afternoon some shepherds came to water a 
flock of sheep on their way to the Berbera market, and said 
that they had passed a herd of elephants only an hour ago in a 
valley to the south. On my asking for a guide they refused, 
hoping to get me to pay heavily for their information, so I 
shouldered my double four-bore rifle and started with the two 
Midg^n trackers on the back trail of the sheep, hoping to find 
the elephants without a guide. The path led past two small 
sandstone hills, and we then entered a sloping valley, down the 
centre of which ran a sand-river bordered by dense jungle. 
Heavy masses of armo creeper draped the branches of the trees, 
1 The “Hig” is not really an aloe, the true name being Sanseveira. 
