258 
THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSSINIA chap. 
the centre of its back, and it rolled over stone-dead, with its 
four paws in the air, beside its victim. We raised a cheer, and 
all the men coming from camp, we carried it to the door of my 
tent and skinned it by the light of torches. 
Next morning, as I had had good sport with the leopard, 
before marching I gave the women at the karias a large present 
of beads. Directly they knew that I had given the beads to 
Adan Yusuf to be distributed, they rushed at him like tigresses, 
and in a fright he dropped the lot and fled. The women fought 
and wrangled till we had loaded and marched away. Several of 
the old men said that now I had given them the beads the women 
would be quarrelling with each other for days, and would neglect 
the cattle, and require to be well beaten before things settled 
down again. As we marched off through the bush I shot a 
prowling hyaena. 
On the 28th, while I was marching ahead of the caravan 
with the two hunters, I saw a herd of seven Waller’s gazelles 
and began stalking them. While we were still two hundred 
yards away, three leopards charged into the middle of the herd 
and killed a young doe before our eyes, scattering the others in 
every direction. We ran up to where the leopards were 
squatting over the carcase, in the middle of a broad open glade, 
but while still some distance away they saw us and made off at a 
canter. I think they were ordinary leopards, and not the long- 
legged, pale -skinned hunting -leopard (the chita of India). I 
fired at one of them and missed, and then we sat by the side of 
the dead walleri till the caravan came up, hoping to see the 
brutes, but they never returned. 
The following day we arrived at a deep well called Garbo. 
As we approached this well we saw vultures swooping towards 
two or three dead trees which overtopped the jungle, and on 
searching found the bodies of a leopard and seven spotted 
hyaenas, which had been poisoned during the night by a 
Midgdn. He had drawn up water from the deep well and 
exposed it for the night in a shallow wooden bowl, 1 mixed with 
poison he had concocted from various herbs. The leopard had 
been half eaten by the hyaenas, but I preserved the skull. 
The natives whom w r e found encamped here were suspicious 
1 The various kinds of game, although unable to get at the water lying at 
the bottom of the deep wells, visit them at night on the chance of finding 
water standing at the surface, left in the excavated clay A troughs after flocks 
have been watered. 
