96 
THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSS/NLA chap. 
reached Hargeisa. This town is built some five hundred yards 
from the right bank of the Aleyadera nala, and at an elevation 
of thirty or forty feet above it. Round the place is a patch of 
jowari cultivation, two and a half miles long and a quarter of a 
mile broad. Quantities of live stock of all kinds graze on the 
low undulating hills for half a mile from the Aleyadera nala on 
either bank. Hargeisa is situated on two important caravan 
routes, one from Ogaden and the other from Harar. There are 
good direct camel-roads to Berbera and Bulh^r. Supplies of 
rice, tobacco, and dates can sometimes be bought here in the 
trading season. Some four hundred people are employed look- 
ing after the jowari fields, and may be seen sitting on platforms, 
shouting and throwing stones to scare birds from the crops. 
There is abundance of good water in the bed of the river, and a 
masonry well has been built, and is kept in order by an Arab 
from Aden. The town is full of blind and lame people, who are 
under the protection of Sheikh Mattar and his mullahs. The 
soil is red alluvial earth with a thin layer of fine sand on the top, 
and is no better than what we had seen in the Tug Der valley, 
at Ber, and in the Haud. Jowari crops flourish here as they 
would in most of the higher tracts of Somaliland, if the people 
were not in a chronic state of petty warfare, and cared to cultivate. 
At the time of our visit great anxiety was felt because the 
Abyssinian s occupying Harar had threatened to attack Hargeisa, 
and had already exacted tribute of cattle from some clans of 
the Jibril Abokr, Habr Awal. Sheikh Mattar told us that he 
thought if the Abyssinians came down they would choose the 
time of the harvest, six weeks later. 
From Hargeisa we continued our journey westwards, camping 
at AbMrso. Our tents were pitched five yards apart at this 
camp, and as I was sitting outside in the balmy air, enjoying 
the quiet moonlight scene, I observed a panther crouching under 
the outer fly of E ’s tent, evidently stalking something in 
the centre of the camp. Diving quickly into my own tent for 
a loaded rifle, I came out again, only to find the panther had 
sprung into the centre of the camp and seized a milk-goat. 
There had been a crowd of men sleeping round the goat, and 
to get at it he had leaped over them, placing his paw upon the 
face of my brother’s cook, without, however, injuring him. On 
the sentry running towards him with the butt of his Snider rifle 
raised to strike, the brute dropped the goat and discreetly 
sprang over some men and out of the zeriba, and then sneaked 
