to take Harar, let them send me five
hundred soldiers; if not, I can give all information."
The Abban, who engaged only to go
a certain distance, gave warning also of
disaster. The cold, he said—for it was then
late in the year—had driven the wandering
tribes down from the hills into the warm
plains they were to traverse; and, as Abdy
Abokr, the End of Time, remarked, in comment
hereupon, " Man eats you up; the
desert does not." Just then, too, the Ayyal
Nuh Ismail, a wild tribe of troopers armed
with assegai, dagger, and shield, was out, and
having overcome the Eesa, scoured the plains
in search of men to kill that they might earn
their ostrich plumes. The dangers of the
desert were increased, therefore, though
always great enough. " In the desert," says
the proverb, " all men are enemies." Whenever
a fellow-creature is seen from afar, the
right arm is waved violently up and down—
there is a shouting of War loga! War loga!
(Stand still! Stand still!) Does the stranger
halt, there is a cautious parley; does he
advance, he is attacked instantly.

Yet, neither among the Somali nor among
the Bedouins did the English pilgrim find
that by such a picture of life in the desert of
East Africa, a whole truth, or even a half
truth, was expressed. The Somali are indeed
a race living in no enviable way. It is their
pleasure to pick among their wiry locks with
a stick, separate each hair from its tuft, and
crown their heads, when they are not rich
enough to shave and wear the turban, with a
crop like that on our old coachmen's wigs;
they get rid of its natural black colour with
a wash of ashes, or a mixture of quicklime
and water; they have good heads, except the
mouth, which has African lips, discoloured
by the use of ashes as a sharpener of the
tobacco quid, and which contains gums
mottled and teeth discoloured by the same habit
of chewing. Except for this, they look well
with their light straw-coloured hair decked
with a waving feather, and their coal-black
complexions set off by the graceful drapery
of the white tobe. But they live not very
happily: merry abroad, they are at home a
melancholy race of shepherds, who will sit
for hours with their eyes on the moon, or
crooning their old ditties under trees. The
land is full of poets, and, without a written
character, has yet a literature of some
thousands of known songs. The people are perhaps
sad because danger is ever present: ever the
nearer and more constant; ever the more
dreaded, because they are all more wily
than valorous. The Bedouins, too, were
found to be a simple and not very happy
race; the Arabs have called their country
Bilad-wa-Issi, the Land of Give me
Something; but they are, nevertheless, ready to
give out of their poverty. They pressed
upon the traveller milk, mutton, and wives;
not seldom one of them would say to our
pilgrim in a pitying voice, "What hath
brought thee, delicate as thou art, to sit
with us on the cow-hide, in this cold, under
a tree?"

The Somali women are soft-spoken and
laborious; they do more work than the men.
They are bought in marriage of their fathers,
and after marriage, when the husband first
enters the nuptial hut, he draws forth a
whip, and therewith chastises his bride, that
any tendency to shrewishness may be at once
extracted from her temper. About four
wives are the usual allowance, but there is
free use of the power of divorce. Among
these people kissing is unknown.

It was nearly the end of November, in the
year before last, when Captain Burton, with
his little caravan of five camels, mules, and
so forth, carrying all necessaries, set out
from Zayla to unveil, if possible, the mysteries
of Harar.

The first trace of unfriendly greeting on
the road was effaced by the shooting of a
vulture before people by whom swan-shot
never had been seen. The women exclaimed,
"Lo! he bringeth down the birds from
heaven! " and one old man, putting his
fingers in his mouth, praised Allah. Of this
old man a friend was made; he spat on the
whole party for good luck; and eventually
extricated them from some slight diificulty
with his tribe.

Beautiful in the desert are the wells, among
the tamarisks shining with vivid green
against an amethyst blue sky. The banks of
these sweet perlets are wooded with acacias
of many kinds, festooned with creepers and
parasites that sometimes form natural bowers
carpeted inside with juicy grass. From the
thinner thorns, pendulous birds'-nests hang,
and birds of bright plumage make the wood
ring with their notes. Beautiful in the Somali
desert are the wells, but no man lingers by
their side, where he may meet the fellow-man
whose face he dreads; no traveller
pitches his tent where snake-trails are upon
the sand, and where at night the leopard,
and the lion, and the elephant, come down to
drink.

Serpents are common in the wilds of
Eastern Africa; to kill one is counted by the
Somali almost as meritorious as to destroy
an infidel. They are the subject of many
superstitions. One horn of the Cerastes, it
is said, contains a deadly poison; the other,
pounded and drawn across the eye, makes
man a seer, and reveals to him the treasures
of the earth. There is a flying snake which
hoards jewels, and is attended by a hundred
guards. A Somali horseman once carried
away a jewel, and was pursued by a reptile
army. He escaped to his tribe, upon which
there then came so much trouble through
serpents that the treasure was restored.

In the course of his march Captain Burton
proved the feebleness of the Somali race.
They are intolerant of thirst; on a sustained
journey they are scarcely able to carry their