VI 
A VISIT TO RAS MAKUNAN OF HA RAR, 1893 155 
Soon after overtaking the caravan I started a large herd, 
followed by what is perhaps the greatest meat delicacy, a young 
calf beisa ; and as the meat of the cow was scarcely enough for 
my followers, I shot him. At noon we reached Subbill Odli 
and camped half a mile from the hill, in open park-like country. 
There was at the foot of Subbul Odli a beautiful forest of the 
wadi , a thorn-tree with an upright light gray or lemon-yellow 
stem, bare to about ten feet from the ground, and then spreading 
out flat at the top into small stems in the form of an inverted 
cone. It is a tree of great beauty, and covered with thorns 
two or three inches long. This tree gives out a gum the 
Somalis eat. It was now the Kalil , or great heat before the 
monsoon, and we experienced the first thunderstorm while at 
this camp. 
Continuing our journey towards Jig-Jiga, I saw immense 
numbers of hartebeests on the open plains, one herd contain- 
ing quite a thousand individuals, and three herds about five 
hundred each ; also smaller herds and solitary bulls were 
scattered about near the horizon. All the game was rather 
wild, but I shot two buck Soemmerring’s gazelles by a right 
and left, as a long line of these animals galloped past me 
extended at full speed, the setting sun glancing on their sleek 
hides. We camped where they had fallen, on the short grass 
of the open plains, my tent being within half a mile of Gumbur 
Dug, a small rounded hillock which takes its name from the 
Dug , or large gadfly. Four Ayyal Yunis traders came here to 
lay before me, as a representative of the English, complaints 
against the Abyssinians ; and some of the Jibril Abokr tribe 
joined us, with their flocks, for protection wdiile passing the 
frontier. 
Marching into Jig-Jiga on the side of rising ground, opposite 
the Abyssinian stockaded earthwork, I was promptly visited by 
a Shum , or petty officer, and twenty Abyssinian soldiers, who 
all carried sabres and Remington rifles. Rumours were afloat 
that the Abyssinian leader, Banaguse, having heard that an 
English force was marching up to take Jig-Jiga, was bringing 
an army against me from his place at Gojar in the hills. The 
Bertiri said that the soldiers at Jig-Jiga had been on the point 
of leaving in a fright, but that we had come unexpectedly early 
in the day, and so caught them in the stockade. 
I sat up for a panther in the evening, in a w r retclied shelter, 
when it was pitch dark ; and a spotted hyaena charged my goat 
