Henry A. Rayne

“ On this occasion I said to myself, "If I had a machine gun and turned it on to these canaille, no matter how guilty I might appear in the eyes of man, God, Who understands human nature as He meant it to be, and Who knows, would forgive and understand the act." At other times I say to myself, "I know these people are devils, but they are fascinating devils. I like them, and shall make allowances for their devilries."
Then, there is always Mahomed Fara, and he is not quite an uncommon type in Somaliland. To have met and known him makes one look for the good side in his tribal brethren. ”

“ Shoals of fish dash through the shallow waters with a noise like the splashing of cattle crossing a ford. I lie down at last on my camp bed, placed for coolness on the veranda, and dose off. I am awakened by the maddening throbbing of a drum, beaten to warn the faithful to pray and prepare the last meal of the night. I look at the time; it is only one o'clock and people may eat up to four. ”

“ I carried the strips to this woman's house and I said, 'There's your mat.' I threw the pieces in her face like this—I wish they had been stones. I said to her: 'Take your mat; when my husband wants a praying mat I'll make him a better one than you can. When he wants good food I'll prepare it for him better than you can. When he wants——'"
"Buralli! Stop her!"
"No, Sahib, who can stop a Somal woman? Drown her. Murder her—yes, but as long as she has breath in her body she'll talk." ”

“ He is branded for ever, child as he is, as a sneak thief. Had he waited until he was older, and held up an old woman on the road with his spear, threatening to take her life unless she handed over her one and only camel on which was packed all her worldly possessions, he would have been regarded as a hero, and might lord it with the best of his brigand friends in the mosque or in the town. But now he is only a thief who stole two rupees, and was arrested by the police. Decent people will hound him from their doors. ”

“ The change of life from the single to the blessed state affects not only the European dweller in Africa, but also his servant. Where a wipe here and a flick there with a duster, in the old days, constituted tidying up the house, everything now must be cleaned and polished with scrupulous care. There are also ever so many things that were never done in the old times more than twice a year—and that a record year—that now call for attention every day. A bachelor's servants rarely remain long with him after he marries. But Mahomed was one of the exceptions. ”

“ Since then I have been to England and seen running water—if I except the Thames—only from the windows of a railway carriage. What a joy is running water, and how many people know it? How many people living by streams take them for granted, and so miss more than the man who rarely sees them. ”

“ As I expected the Bantu simply smothered the Somal. Although we barred sticks, knives, or stone-throwing (don't smile, Africans use those things in preference to bare fists) there were many foul blows given and received—more often received by Mahomed—until at last the weaker man was in dire straits. Again and again he staggered to his feet only to hit the ground immediately afterwards.
"Stop. Give in, Mahomed. He's a better man physically, and he'll kill you!"
"I shall never give in," replied Mahomed. "He is a slave and I am his master!" ”

“ The thick mats, used as camel pads, when spread over the tent canes, packed away so neatly on the camel's loads, keep out the hot sun better than any canvas or cotton that has ever been produced by the looms of Europe.
Everything the Somal carries is made for utility's sake, but man's nature, be he civilised or savage, ever craves for a little comfort over and above the bare necessities of life. God knows these people meet with little enough of the former. Good shade from the hot sun should be properly classed as a necessity. In any case, Somal mats are the last word for the purpose. ”

“ Zeila sky reminds me, this morning, of a Sheffield sky, covered at dawn with a pall of yesterday's foul smoke. The atmosphere is such as that near a huge furnace whose fires have burned out during the night. One can still feel the dead heat that will, later, take on a new, fierce life, as old Sol, then tipping the eastern horizon with a dull glow, rises higher into the heavens. ”

“ As we listened we heard the Djibouti gun booming away, and what else was to be done but to allow the salute to be fired. It could not be heard as many hundreds of yards away as the French gun could be heard miles. But at last I insisted on Haji putting away his firearm for keeps, and thanked the party for the nice things their spokesman had said about our nation. I told them how proud I was to find men of five creeds, as far apart as five equal points of the circle, able to meet under one flag, in friendship and unity, and to pay it such a tribute. ”

“ Like all gates in Zeila it is latched on the inside, and every time a youngster comes to it from the outside he bangs it with a stick, until someone from the inside opens. Now, as bad luck will have it, the gate is in front of the Arab's half of the house that is in Adan's compound, and very near to the old man's head. So that with the everlasting procession of kiddies—sheitans he calls them, which means devils—passing to and fro, plus the banging of the gate, an afternoon siesta is out of the question. ”

“ The man will do all the praying to God—it is his pastime—but for it the woman has no time—and all the fighting, should there be any. He and his wife will wrest more than a living from this barren country I look across, provided always that he has the cattle. He can find everything else needed, from the means to make fire—two sticks—to medicine for his tummy—the leaves from a wild plant—where the European could find nothing but the acme of desolation and despair.
The Somal's life consists of one continual move from spot to spot in search of grazing and water. ”

“ If you could sit with me and watch the endless procession of men, women, children, animals, and birds, coming and going, crossing and re-crossing, from apparently nowhere at all, you would realise how precious water really is, be it even as filthy and evil-smelling as from the wells here.
The police corporal has taken down our camel tanks, each holding twelve gallons, and is having them filled. To-morrow we camp at a waterless [179] spot. Our allowance of water will be one gallon each. Though not really important on this journey, woe betide the man who tries to wangle more. ”

“ Words cannot be strung together to describe the, apparently, utter barrenness and sterility—to the European mind—of the hundred odd miles of country I have ridden across during the last four days. The soil is too poor and dry to produce anything in the nature of food for man, but Nature has provided—not too plentifully—shrubs with deep wide-spreading roots which store up the moisture [187] in bulb-like receptacles and so tide the plant over the worst and hottest days of the year. Thus there are green nourishing leaves for the hardy cattle to eat when all else is dead. ”

“ Their very colour, if one looks closely, is suggestive of snakes and death, not brightness and life. The grass will soon die, and the yellow ground is but a crust of harsh sand that has no substance. The agriculturists who would wrest a living from out it have a hard row to hoe to procure even the bare wherewithal to live. Beautiful it is, yet withal a thin, harsh, cruel land.
We cover the sixty miles to Hargeisa in two clear days, and ride into the usual African up-country town. Here is the D.C.'s Court, the police lines, the prison and the D.C.'s house. ”

“ Mahomed is the court interpreter, a personage of considerable importance and would-be dignity. In spite of a decidedly perverse sense of proportion, leading him at times to confuse the duties of interpreter with those of magistrate, he is not a bad fellow. He has certain peculiarities and some aggravating ways, all of which I readily condone by admitting that Mahomed means well. But though meaning well a man may still do badly, and I suspect that our Mahomed is not the tremendous success he imagines himself to be. ”

“ To Syyed Khudar, the Arab, who remonstrated with him on his folly, he replied, "Never mind, I shall go back and dive for another pearl."
"Just," Syyed remarked, "as if he owned the sea and all the pearls that are in it."
The divers are fearless, stout-hearted fellows, and be there, to their certain knowledge, ever so many sharks in the vicinity, once they have located shell down they go. For their temerity they may have to pay with their lives, but no such thought deters them. ”

“ Shortly after the camel incident a dirty old Akil walked into my office, and, with an abrupt "salaam," held out a grimy paw for me to shake. I shook.
The old gentleman had come in from the bush to draw his salary, which I was prepared to pay him as condescendingly as I had lent camels to the clerk. It is hard to explain what a pleasant sensation of exaltation even the most modest of men may feel when seated on a dais behind a desk, with an inspector of police—who bows every time he is looked at—on his left; an interpreter on his right, who would lick his boots for a rise of pay ”

“ We were paddling down stream, my friend with a couple of Bantu in one canoe, Mahomed, an Arab, and I in another. The canoes were almost side by side, and the Bantus jeeringly called our attention to Mahomed, who, with closed eyes and limp body, was automatically dipping his paddle in-and-out of the water.
I looked at him. When a man has been suffering pure, unadulterated misery for days and nights on [68] end the devils that are in his heart wax strong, and on the slightest excuse take charge. ”

“ The élite of our town is composed almost entirely of Arabs, Indians, and Jews, who mix little with the Somals. Of course, money talks, and Haji Abdi Kheiri, the rich Somal trader, is getting his foot into the higher circles, but as yet he is little at ease amid the gaiety of social gatherings. Yesterday Hayoun the Jew invited all the notabilities, of whom I am one—I must speak up for myself—to a gathering at his house. There were present the Indian customs superintendent, the Hindu assistant-surgeon, the District Clerk, two Parsees, a Goanese clerk, a few Arabs, Haji Abdi Kheiri, and myself. ”

“ Nowadays, thanks to the British Navy, slave-running and gun-running are "industries" of the past, and the dhow captains, whose hearts are still unchanged, confine their activities, in the illegitimate line, to landing a parcel of silk or cloth at night when the coast is clear. A party of conservancy sweepers has even been known to find, hidden in the garbage that strews our beach, a parcel of firearms landed by some fire-eater who is now repenting his venture in Berbera jail. The dhow men unanimously agree that life is becoming decidedly dull. ”

“ The face that nature turns towards the pitilessness of the new-born day is drawn and anxious. She is too tired to plead for mercy; too listless to try anew the thousand wiles that she alone is mistress of. Here is the stokehold of the world, and the devils who control it are lighting the fires. ”

“ Mr Krishna is a fine looking man, and it is whispered that ere Mrs Ibrahim met Ibrahim she was quite a friend of his; therefore what was more [166] natural than that she should resent the other woman entering his house. She knows Mr Krishna better than you or I do. Saleha is reported to be a very beautiful woman—I have not seen her unveiled, so speak from hearsay—and her husband is of a jealous, violent disposition. Once upon a time in Arabia, during the course of an argument with another Arab, he lost his temper so badly that he drew a knife, and snick! ”

“ No more fishing now; we anxiously watch the bamboo as the breeze stiffens, and we fairly fly through the water. At four-fifteen p.m. we are close to the Chinamen's island, just two and a quarter hours since leaving Zeila. It is a low sandy island, so narrow that I could almost throw a stone across it. From it, when the tide is out, it is possible to walk along a narrow winding riband of sand to the mainland.
As we come alongside the beach a dhow passes us a few yards away. It is from Jibouti, and a white man in the stern stands up to doff his cap. ”

“ She is on her feet in a second, weeping and wringing her hands—with chagrin, not pain. The camel is unshipping his load backwards. He goes through the clumsiest of evolutions as mats, sticks, and the weirdest collection of parcels wrapped in skin, slide over his tail. ”

“ Yet the pursuit of our trade is not without adventure; often adventure of the good old-fashioned kind—well spiced with danger. But the main, and practically the only, industry of Somaliland is cattle raising, unless one includes the pursuit of war as an industry. If so it is a dying one. With the proceeds of the sale of his surplus cattle the Somal buys goods from all parts of the world. Cloth from America, Europe, Arabia, and India; bowls and other knick-knacks from Japan; the bulk, or all, of which comes to him through the great clearing house of the near east, Aden. ”

“ To-day we are to commence a further ascent into a more favoured land. Why these plain-dwellers and low-hill men have not done the same, and stayed on the cool high plateaux, blessed with a comparatively [188] fair soil and better watered, is one of those puzzles in life it is impossible to solve.
The camel sowars are packed, and ready to move on the afternoon's trek. The road is stony as we walk between the hills. Since that time recorded in the Book of Genesis God has not laid His hand here. The earth's crust has been burst through and over-run by a molten mass spewed forth from her bowels. ”