RECONNAISSANCE OF ABYSS/ NIAN BORDER 117 
account of our daily sport, but I may mention that in feeding 
our thirty men we shot many beisa and Soemmerring’s gazelles 
in the bush country, and hartebeests when crossing the open ban. 
On the 20th of July we marched to the level of the plateau 
behind Hargeisa village, over thorn-covered rolling ground, the 
soil being red earth. We did eleven miles and halted at Bombos, 
in a splendidly grassed hollow, just beyond some Habr Awal 
karias. Hearing from the karia people that there had been rain 
at Garabiss, near here, at about 9 p.m. we sent a camel with four 
bans, and the men returned with the water at 1 a.m. 
The next day we made a morning march of twelve miles 
to Dobbya, over rolling ground, which is stony on the elevations 
and has good grass in the depressions, the whole country being 
covered with Hat-topped thorn-jungle about twenty feet high. 
Near our mid-day camp some Midg&ns were skinning a beisa 
which had been killed by a lion the night before, and at Garabiss 
we crossed the tracks of a number of Eidegalla horsemen, who 
had come north to loot the karias we had passed through the 
day before. 
In the evening march, after going a little over five miles, we 
came to the end of the thorn-trees, and emerged on to an open 
plain of short grass called Ban-ki-Aror, about five miles across, 
