X 
JOURNEY TO WEBBE SHABELEH RIVER 
249 
Geli and a Gilimiss guide then poled themselves across the 
river, and after three hours returned with the head. I was so 
anxious to measure it that I shouted to Geli to place the horn 
against his Snider rifle, while 1 marked another Snider which my 
men handed to me, and found that the buck’s horns could not 
measure much less than twenty -four inches, a large pair for 
the Webbe, where waterbuck-horns are comparatively short. I 
anxiously watched the men come over with my specimen, and 
then I carried it to my tent. At night we had several alarms, 
caused by hysenas and lions, the camels rising suddenly together, 
running about camp, and stumbling over tent-ropes in the dark. 
I remained several days hunting waterbuck with great success. 
While we were encamped here Adan Yusufs horse met with 
his death in a rather melancholy way. At noon the men were 
lying under shady trees round camp, sleeping like hogs, and I sat 
in my tent writing up my journal. The camels were a mile 
away, browsing under the care of one man, and the horse and 
R4s Makunan’s mule were hobbled by tying the near fore and 
near hind leg together, according to Somali custom. The three 
milch-goats and the horse and mule were allowed to wander about 
near camp, the man who usually looked after them, thinking I 
had gone to sleep, having retired to the shade of a tree to do 
likewise. About an hour afterwards I heard a loud whinny from 
the mule, and looking out of the tent saw her swimming in the 
middle of the stream, her head bobbing up and down in the water. 
She was being carried down fast, so I fired a gun into the air to 
wake the men, and we all jumped up and ran to the edge of the 
water. There was a perpendicular scarp just below the site of 
the camp, where the swift current had undermined the bank, 
and towards this she was being carried. We ran to the beginning 
of the steep place, and two of the men, plunging into the river, 
caught her head as she came on with the current, and bringing 
her to the bank, after a hard struggle, with all hands helping, 
we landed her high and dry. Examining the bank, we found 
several long streaks in the mud showing where the mule, while 
drinking, had slid in ; and then we went to look for Adan’s horse, 
and a search up and down the river only disclosed similar marks 
in the mud farther down stream ; we never saw the horse again, 
and no doubt the crocodiles got him. Indeed, hobbled as she 
was, it was wonderful how the mule kept above water ; and it 
was lucky she had the sense to whinny, and so attract attention 
to her accident. 
