PART I.

CHAPTER I.

THE SOMALI EXPEDITION.

SPEKE'S PLANS OF EXPLORATION-HE IS APPOINTED TO ASSIST LIEUTENANT BURTON ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE SOMALI COUNTRY WITH LIEUTENANTS HERNE AND STROYAN-HE CROSSES THE MOUNTAINS INTO THE INTERIOR, WHILE BURTON GOES TO HARAR, AND THE OTHERS COLLECT CATTLE AT BERBERA -HE RETURNS TO ADEN, AND SAILS AGAIN TO THE SOMALI, LANDING AT KURRUM-HIS MARCH TO BERBERA-NIGHT-ATTACK ON THE BRITISH CAMPSTROYAN KILLED-BURTON, HERNE, AND SPEKE WOUNDED-MIRACULOUS ESCAPE OF THE LATTER.

It was in the year 1849 that Lieutenant Speke first formed the idea of exploring Equatorial Africa. His only object at first was to complete a museum of natural history that he had formed at his father's house, principally from specimens collected on the slopes of the Himalayas, and in Tibet, during service in India. He was obliged to wait for the three years' furlough, granted to Indian officers after ten years' service, before he would be able to carry his plan into execution; and then he proposed, by landing on the east coast of Africa, to strike the Nile at its sources, and travel down its course to Egypt, expecting

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PLAN OF EXPEDITION.

to find the Mountains of the Moon stretching in a vast chain across the African continent, and the Nile rising in perpetual snows at some point in the chain, as the Ganges rises in the high region of the Himalayas. On the very day following that on which his ten years' term of service had expired—namely, the 4th of September 1854-he sailed from the Indian shore for Aden, having bought various articles to the amount of £390 for distribution as presents among the natives of Africa. His intention was to begin by endeavouring to pass through the Somali country opposite Aden; but Colonel, afterwards Sir James, Outram, the British Political Resident, refused at first to countenance any such proceeding, not wishing to risk the life of a countryman among the impracticable savages of that region.

But as the Bombay Government, contrary to the advice of Colonel Outram-which the event proved to be sound. -was at this time organising an expedition for the exploration of the Somali Land under the command of Lieutenant Burton, who, having succeeded in reaching Mecca, was thought most fit to be trusted with the conduct of an almost desperate enterprise, Colonel Outram suggested to Speke, that if he was determined to go at all hazards, he had better procure his appointment as an officer of this expedition, with which Lieutenants Stroyan and Herne had already been associated in an assistant capacity. This plan suited Speke admirably, as it would save him his furlough for another occasion; and so he immediately obtained the consent of Burton, while Colonel Outram procured his appointment to the service.

The character of the inhabitants of the Somali country appears to be well, and not very favourably, known at Aden. With a thousand vices they seem to combine the solitary virtue of being expert donkey-drivers. They are

CHARACTER OF THE SOMALI.

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notorious for cheating and lying, boasting of their exploits of this kind, and so boisterous and quarrelsome that it is found necessary to deprive them of arms. When first arrived, it was the habit of the different tribes to fight out their feuds with spear and shield on the hill-sides of the crater of Aden, and the same battles were afterwards carried on by means of sticks and stones. There were, in consequence, few of the men who did not bear scars, some of them so deep that it was a miracle how they could have recovered from the hurts inflicted on these occasions.

The simple costume of the men consists of a single sheet of long cloth, eight cubits long, thrown over the shoulder in the manner of a plaid. Some shave the head entirely, others wear the mane of a lion as a wig, which is supposed to add ferocity to the aspect of the wearer; while those who affect the exquisite let their hair grow, and adorn it with sticks resembling Chinese joss-sticks, which they also use as a comb to dress it. Their arms in their own country are a spear and shield, a club and a long two-edged knife. The women dress in a cloth which they fasten tightly round the body just under the arms, allowing it to fall evenly to the ground so as entirely to cover the legs. The married women encase their hair in blue cloth, gathering it up at the back of the head in a sort of chignon, while the virgins wear theirs loose, plaited in small plaits of three, which being parted in the centre, the hair falls evenly round the head like a wellarranged mop. They have a coquettish trick, when observed, of canting their heads backwards, which parts the locks in front, and discloses a pretty smiling face with white teeth and red lips. Their beauty soon fades after they have borne children, and their figures swell about the waist, as is common with the negro race, and acquire behind the development known as steatopyga. Though

B

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SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT.

of the Mussulman religion, the women do not wear the yachmac, or veil. In Aden the men are ashamed of their comparative nakedness, and assume the Arab garb, which they immediately put off on landing in their own country.

Almost all the Somali, in consequence of the nature of the land they inhabit, are pastoral nomads. Their government is patriarchal, and the chieftainship generally hereditary. The head of each clan is called the Gerad or sultan, who would have but little power were he not supported by the joint influence of all the royal family. On weighty occasions the sultan assembles his elders in parliament, and through them consults the people. Wars generally arise from cases of homicide, when a member of one clan kills one of another, and will neither pay the assessed valuation of the victim's life, nor give himself up to the avenger of blood. The whole tribe then marches out to enforce an execution in cattle supposed to correspond to the injury inflicted, and this being resisted, and new lives lost, the balance of blood-money remains unsettled, and the feud is kept open for generations. The sultans would be unable to command the co-operation of the clans in these wars, were it not that each individual hopes to enrich himself by plunder in the course of them; and, as a general rule, they only come to an end through the exhaustion of both sides. It is a point of honour to steal as many cattle with as little personal risk as possible, and those who expose themselves unnecessarily are only accounted foolhardy. The principles observed in their administration of justice, as far as they have any, are those of the Mosaic law, founded on strict retaliation. The northern Somali have no villages in the interior of the country, but move about with their flocks and herds wherever water is to be found, erecting temporary huts covered with grass mats, or throwing up loose stone walls