154 
THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSSINIA chap. 
very much afraid of our bullets ! He was badly clawed about the 
arms, but having caught the leopard by the throat in the first rush, 
and never let go his hold, he got off without feeling her teeth, 
although he had several abrasions from falling among the rocks. 
We took the leopard to my tent and skinned it by firelight, 
while by the same fire I dressed Esman Abdi’s wounds with 
carbolic oil. The first shot fired at the leopard as she charged 
the goat had taken her in the centre of the belly, and torn quite 
half of the intestines away, and with this wound she had waited 
quietly for us, and died game ! 
On the 3rd of March we left Gebili, and at the end of an 
afternoon march of three and a half hours halted at noon on the 
northern edge of the great Marar Prairie, at Ujawhji, near the 
spot where I had been mauled by a lion a few months before. 
A glorious view lay before us, the row of conical hills called 
Subbul rising out of the plain some twenty-five miles away ; and 
another twenty-five miles beyond could be seen the long blue 
line of the Harar highlands, at the edge of which lay Jig-Jiga, 
the Abyssinian post by which I must pass before marching to 
the city of Harar. By the evening of the 4th of March we 
reached Juk, a grassy bottom in the undulating bush-covered 
country leading up to Subbul Odli, which is a dome-shaped hill, 
the top being two or three hundred feet above the surrounding 
ground and some six thousand feet above the level of the sea. 
Between Bulh&r and Juk the whole country passed over had 
been under the influence of a very severe Jilal , or dry season, 
but at Juk we found that recent rain had fallen, and young 
grass was just shooting up all over the plain, the thorn-bushes 
being already a mass of green. 
On the evening of our arrival at Juk I left the three trotting 
camels in camp and strolled out on foot ; I found beisa abundant, 
and after a careful crawl through old high grass, hit two 
mortally with a right and left, but night closed in while I was 
following, and I had to leave them to die in the bush. 
At dawn the next morning the caravan marched on for 
Subbul Odli, while I went back on foot with Oeli and Hassan 
to look for the beisa wounded the night before. I found one, a 
large cow, still standing, and gave her a finishing shot ; and 
two or three hundred yards farther I found the other, a bull, 
already killed and eaten by hyaenas ; but the skull, carrying a 
very fine pair of horns, I took away, and as much of the meat 
of the cow as we could carry. 
