Pan-Islam Part 6

We will now turn to Africa, the main theatre of war between Moslem and missionary, who battle with each other for pagan souls and each other's proselytes.

We will first visit Morocco, the most westerly of Moslem countries.

Here there is not much missionary activity, either Protestant or Catholic, but the French have been doing some excellent secular work there, and under their tutelage the country is developing on lines of moderate progress.

There is little antipathy shown to missionaries here, at any rate on the coast, and medical missionaries have been welcomed inland. Education does not flourish, but the country might be described by an unbia.s.sed observer as enlightened at least as far south as a line joining Mogador and Morocco City (Marrakesh). In this northern area you will find an industrious agricultural population of small farmers scattered about the countryside, which consists of wide, open tracts of arable land under millet, maize, and other cereals, dotted here and there with groves of olive and orange and interspersed with large forests of _argan_ and other small trees. Desert country encroaches more and more toward the south, and in spite of several large streams draining into the Atlantic from the snowcapped Atlas range, the country becomes very wild and sterile the farther south you go from Mogador until it merges in the Sahara, across which lies the great, bone-whitened highway that leads to Timbuctoo.

Whatever the indigenous Berber of the Atlas may be, the northern Moor has never been a mere barbarian, and Spain owes much to his culture and industry. He certainly used to have a bizarre conception of international amenities, and got himself very much disliked in the Mediterranean and even northern waters in consequence. That phase, however, has long since pa.s.sed; the last corsair has rotted at its moorings in Sallee harbour, and I am told that to put a wealthy Jew in a thing like a giant trouser-press and extort money under pressure is considered now an anachronism.

When I first knew the country, a quarter of a century ago, it was just emerging from a revolutionary war, and local relations with foreigners or even neighbours were capricious. They murdered a German bagman up the coast in an _argan_ forest, and the "Gefion" landed a flag-flaunting armed party to impress Mogador, which dropped water-pitchers on them from upper windows and wondered what on earth the fuss was about.

On the other hand, I was well received by one of the revolted tribes, which had chased its lawful Kaid into Mogador until checked by old sc.r.a.p-iron and bits of bottle-gla.s.s from the ancient cannon mounted over the northern gate of the town.

I was treated with far more hospitality than my absurd and rather rash enterprise deserved. Imagine a callow youth just out of his teens dropping in haphazard on a rebel tribe accompanied by a mission-taught Moor and a large liver-coloured pointer who had far more sense than his master. My tame Moor was an excellent fellow, who, beside keeping my tent tidy and cooking, helped me to grapple with the derived forms of the Arabic verb and the subtleties of Moorish etiquette. I learnt to drink green tea, syrup-sweet and flavoured with mint, out of ornate little tumblers of a size and shape usually a.s.sociated with champagne, and, after a.s.siduous practice, I could tackle a dish of boiled millet, meat, and olives with the fingers of my right hand without mishap.

Beyond occasional brushes with adjacent sections of the neighbouring tribe which had declared for the Fez central Government, I had very little trouble, except that a peaceful boar-hunt would occasionally degenerate into an intertribal skirmish if I and my party got too near the loyalist border. As all concerned had, thanks to Western enterprise, discarded their picturesque flint-locks in favour of Winchester or Marlin repeaters, the proceedings required wary handling if we were to extricate ourselves successfully, but my long-range sporting Martini usually gave me the weather-gauge.

I dressed as a Moor, and looked the part, but made no attempt to pa.s.s for anything but a Christian, nor did any unpopularity attach thereto; I was merely expected--as a natural corollary--to have a little medical knowledge (and it _was_ a little).

I found the att.i.tude of Moors generally towards Christians curiously inconsistent. In the towns there was a certain amount of formal fanaticism which found vent in donkey-drivers addressing their beasts as "_Nasara_" to the accompaniment of whacks and yells, but public behaviour was tolerant enough, and the att.i.tude of Moorish officialdom was almost courtly.

Jews had rather a bad time, if local subjects, as their black slippers and furtive bearing outside their own quarter made them a mark for naughty little boys, who flung their canary-coloured slippers at them with curses and imprecations deserving a more direct and personal application of their footgear. Most of the wealthier Jews had acquired European or American protection, and were safe enough. They lived in the Frankish quarter and dressed in ultra-European style. They made rather a depressing spectacle on Sat.u.r.days, when, garbed in black broadcloth, with bowler hats, they drifted through the sunlit streets on their Sabbath const.i.tutional from one town gate to the next and back. They were keen trade compet.i.tors, and gained or lost fortunes by gambling in the almond export-market or catching a grain-famine at the psychological moment. One of them had retired to a leisured affluence on the proceeds that a big cargo of almonds had yielded him at a startling turn in the market. He was a hospitable soul who met me once entering the landward gate in a travel-stained burnoose and insisted on dragging me into his gorgeously-carpeted house to drink _aquardiente_ and look at his "curios." These consisted chiefly of modern firearms, some of first-cla.s.s London make, which hung on his walls as ornaments, having been bought haphazard without ammunition or sporting intent. I nearly had a fit when he showed me a double .577 Express hopelessly rusted by the damp sea-air and offered to lend it me if I could find "shots" for it. The reverse of the s.h.i.+eld was ill.u.s.trated by another acquaintance of mine who had made a large fortune by importing Russian wheat to Morocco in famine time and had lost it in a short but striking career in England, during which he was said to have entertained Royalty, astonished the racing world and married a well-known actress in light comedy. He, too, was of hospitable intent, but had generally left his purse at home when the reckoning came. On the other hand, he always carried the "stub" of the cheque-book which had seen him to the apogee of his meteoric career, and a glance at its counterfoils (by his express invitation) was well worth the price of a drink or two.

The local Islamic att.i.tude toward Moorish Jews was one of contemptuous tolerance. They could certainly travel, in native dress, where no Christian could. Once, in the _patio_ or go-down of a European merchant, I met a greasy, unkempt Jew in a tattered gaberdine watching my commercial friend as he weighed what I took to be a double handful of crude bra.s.s curtain rings such as traders used to sell by the gross along the West African coast. They were solid gold and represented the venture of a Jewish syndicate which had collected it in pinches of gold-dust from the river beds of southern Soos and hit on this form of transport. A troop of horse could never have brought it, as gold, a day's journey through the lawless tribes of the south, but that tatterdemalion Jew had done it at the price of a few contemptuous buffets. He had, indeed, offered one truculent gang of highwaymen a few of the tawdry-looking rings to let him pa.s.s, but they had waved such obvious trash aside in their eager search for actual cash, which they had taken to the last _rial_.

The only other occasion on which I have known a Moor to be hoisted with the petard of his own contemptuous fanaticism was an experience of my own.

I was moving quietly through a belt of timber just before dawn in the hopes of getting a shot at a boar who was in the habit of feeding till daybreak among some barley that grew near a caravan route. Before the light was quite strong enough to shoot by I was more than a little annoyed and astonished to hear c.o.c.ks crowing all over the place; presuming an early caravan with poultry for market, I pushed on to the track, meaning to pa.s.s the time of day and ask if they had glimpsed my quarry or heard him. I almost ran into a town-bred Moor who was trying to round up some scattered poultry in the gloom and cursing volubly. He explained that he was riding his donkey along the track perched between two light reed cages containing fowls when the donkey baulked as a boar snorted in the thickets just off the road. He whacked the donkey and cursed the boar as a pig and a Christian. Thereupon came a rush like cavalry, the donkey was knocked from under him and he was lying amid the wreckage of his flimsy crates with his poultry scattered abroad. The boar, already angry and suspicious, as anyone but a townsman would have known by the noise he made, had charged like a thunderbolt at the sound of a human voice so close to him and galloped off with all the honours of war.

The donkey was badly hurt and the man only escaped because he was sitting high and just above the point of impact. I helped him secure his poultry and started back to my village to send him another donkey. He thanked me in brotherly style as one Moor to another. "I'm a Christian myself," I remarked at parting, and added in my best beginner's Arabic as I turned to go, "It is inc.u.mbent on me to a.s.sist you after the aggression of my co-religionist."

This conventional att.i.tude of arrogance toward Christendom is perhaps traceable to Moorish predominance in the Middle Ages and the importation of Christian slaves by the pirates of the Barbary coast. In any case, it has been much toned down of late years owing to contact with capable and well-intentioned Franks as administrators and technical experts.

Morocco should never become a forcing-bed of religious or racial antipathy, and will not so long as France continues to develop the country by methods which the natives can a.s.similate, and is not lured into over-exploitation of her mineral resources or unwarrantable interference with her spiritual affairs.

A perfectly justifiable missionary policy would be the inauguration of industrial schools on the coast and at one or two big inland centres, also medical missions (with consent of the local authorities) wherever feasible. Moorish craftsmans.h.i.+p is worth stimulating, and doctors are welcomed for their science. Both schemes would redound to the credit of Christendom and be in accordance with the best traditions of the Early Church.

In the other Barbary states (Algeria, Tunis and Tripoli) a few Catholic missions have been established, and the North African Protestant Mission has an advanced post at Kairwan in Tunis. Here many routes converge, for Kairwan is a great centre of pilgrimage and taps the religious thought of all the Saharan tribes. Under such conditions, Islam gets ahead every time, as every caravan traveller is a potential missionary, while Christian missions are anch.o.r.ed to the spot or have to rely on native colporteurs, who labour under the initial disadvantage of being proselytes and seldom have the combination of tact and staunchness which evangelists require.

It is in Egypt that we first find Moslem and missionary at close grips arrayed against each other. Cairo is a perfect c.o.c.kpit of creeds.

Christianity is represented by Catholics, Copts, Orthodox Greeks and Protestants, these last being subdivided into Anglicans, Presbyterians, Wesleyans and American Presbyterians and Congregationalists. The main body of Islam--some of my more fervent missionary friends allude to it as "the hosts of Midian"--presents a fairly solid front of orthodoxy, the bulk being Hanifis, Shafeis, Maliki or Hanbalis (chiefly the two former); but the irregular forces of s.h.i.+ah are well represented among non-indigenous Moslems from Yamen, Persia and India, while scattered groups of Wahabi ascetics, Sufi mystics and esoterics of Bahaism skirmish on debatable ground between the opposing lines, where range such free-lance companies as Theosophists, Christian Scientists, Salvationists, etc., all with local headquarters in Cairo and propaganda of their own.

It must not be supposed that all this warlike metaphor indicates actual strife or even severe friction, any more than "the hosts of Midian"

represents the att.i.tude of missionaries to Moslems here. On the contrary, relations are for the most part excellent, and the prevailing animosity is political, not religious, being directed against us British much as normal schoolboys dislike their form-master until they get a harsher one.

The Catholic Church confines most of her energies to teaching her own people, who are very numerous and well looked after; she does not do much alien mission work in this part of the world. The most formidable band of gladiators in the Christian ranks is the American Protestant Mission, and next to them the Anglican C.M.S. (chiefly distinguished in Egypt for its medical work, which is excellent and has an extraordinarily wide range). The Americans are great on education and have done more for the English language in Cairo than any Government inst.i.tution. I use the term "gladiators" advisedly, for their most trenchant work is done on their own side--they concentrate their chief efforts on the Copts, and make a fairly good bag of proselytes from them, apart from the great number to whom they teach sound ideals of duty as well as English and the three "R's." One of their leading missionaries has left it on record that no one stands more in need of salvation than the Copts, and as there is a Coptic Reform Society the Copts must think there is room for improvement too.

It has been found in practice that to convert a _bona-fide_ Moslem involves segregating him, and that means finding him a living in a new environment, otherwise he is almost bound to "revert" under local pressure. Apart from the strain on mission resources which such procedure would cause if extensively followed, most missionaries rightly condemn such a system as encouraging conversion for material motives.

Therefore they adopt a policy of "peaceful penetration" against Islam, encouraging young men to come to them unostentatiously (I call them the Nicodemus-squad) in order to discuss religious questions, which is usually done in a temperate and intelligent manner on both sides. Even if they get no "forrader," it tends to toleration and a better knowledge of each other's language and ideals. A good deal of teaching is done too with no expectation of making proselytes, and solid friends.h.i.+ps are formed. I have myself known a convalescing lady missionary of the C.M.S.

to receive repeated calls of friendly inquiry from former pupils; when I first saw two veiled young girls swing past with a palpably British terrier and the crisp, vigorous step of occidental emanc.i.p.ation, it puzzled my ethnological faculties until I was told the object of their visit.

All this is to the good, and it would be very good indeed if they let well alone. Unfortunately, there is another cogent factor in the mission field, and that is the sinews of war in hard cash. Most people, even those who support missions to Moslem countries, are human enough to like a fight put up for their money. It is not enough for them that a great deal of quiet, patient work is being done by missionaries among Moslems in the name of Christianity and the service of mankind. They want to hear about storming citadels of sin and campaigning against the devil in the dark places of the earth; especially is this so in America, where Moslem prejudice does not have to be considered and religious organisation, like most other concerns, is on a big scale.

As a natural consequence, missionaries have to play up to this combatant instinct, and so we read in their books and reports remarks calculated to engender religious intolerance on both sides, and which do not conform with the shrewd and kindly work in the field of those devoted and often scholarly men. I shall have occasion to allude to some of these statements as we proceed, so think it only fair to mention their justification here.

Cairo is described as a "strategic centre" in mission parlance, and so it is, being situated on a great waterway with rail connection far south into the heart of Africa and converging caravan routes from every quarter. Along these arteries of traffic many tons of tracts and propaganda are hurled annually by train, felucca and colporteur. Those who cannot read accept such matter gladly to wrap things up in and to show to their literate friends, who read what resembles a bit of the Koran and find it carries a sting in its tail, like a scorpion, aimed at Islam. A great deal of this literature consists of the Psalms of David, the Talmud or the Gospel, all reverenced by Moslems if dished up without tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. Not wis.h.i.+ng to impose on that hard-worked word "camouflage,"

I would merely ask, as a naturalist, if such protective mimicry is worth the irritation it causes. In any case, the system reminds me of an old Highlander's opening comment on a sword dance by a rock scorpion in a Tangier saloon. "There is a sairtain elegance aboot yourr grace-steps, but _get in between the swords_."

No vicarious efforts by propaganda will ever take the place of personal precept and example. In hunting proselytes among the followers of Islam it is not advisable to rely too much on the Scriptures, as Moslems doubt the authenticity of our version and point to our own divergent copies in proof thereof. Nor is it any use asking them to believe as an act of faith; if they did they would need no proselytising: an appeal must be made to their reason, and there is no better appeal than the life, works, and conduct of one who professes and practises Christianity. Even if he makes no single convert he has leavened the population around him with the dignity and prestige of his creed which has produced such a type. Unfortunately such results cannot be scheduled in mission reports, though they are real enough and well worth living for, whether a man be a missionary or not; only they cannot be produced by brilliant wide-sweeping feats of organisation and enterprise, but by persevering, consistent lives, which are not easy or spectacular.

Egypt should be a great field of religious warfare by personal influence, as Christians and Moslems live side by side in daily contact and reasonable accord, yet few of us take advantage of the fact to uphold the prestige of our creed or even of our race. We Europeans are busy with our multifarious interests and duties, while Egyptian Moslems are either entangled in the web of their environment, as are the _fellahin_, or eager s.n.a.t.c.hers at the gifts of civilisation, as are the more or less cultured effendis, or mere hair-splitters in futile religious controversy, as are too many of the _ulema_ or sages at the great collegiate mosque of al-Azhar. In each case, spiritual matters are apt to get crowded out. The fault lies chiefly with our cosmopolitan ingredients, which engender feverish living, if not actual vice, and the over-strained effort on the one side to impart and on the other side to a.s.similate a Western system of education which has induced intellectual dyspepsia. So we hear of students mugging parrot-like to pa.s.s half-yearly examinations, in the hopes of getting Government appointments for which there are far too many applicants; these young men besiege the Press with complaints of unfair treatment if they fail, or even go to the length of attempting suicide with carbolic acid (fortunately with sufficient caution to ensure it usually being but an attempt); this latter petulant protest at the temporary thwarting of their material hopes is dead against all the teaching and tradition of Islam, but it has become so frequent that a leading educational authority suggests that no student who attempts suicide shall be allowed to sit again for a Government examination. Among their seniors up at al-Azhar are men of real learning and remarkably persevering scholars.h.i.+p (their theological course makes the average brain reel to contemplate), but some sheikh started a controversy as to whether Adam was a prophet or not, which fell among those sages with the disrupting force of a grenade, causing much litigation in the Islamic courts and culminating in the divorce of the originator by his wife for _kufr_, or heresy as ordained by Moslem law. Beneath these troubled waters the _fellah's_ life flows placidly, bounded on the one hand by his crops and on the other by the market; his spiritual stimulus being supplied by an occasional religious fair or a visit to the shrine of some local saint.

He toils as patiently as his water-wheel buffalo, and on that toil depends the wealth of Egypt which supports saints and sinners, schools and shops, with all our European schemes and enterprises thrown in.

As for us British, if our object is to enhance the prestige of our race or creed, we fall very short of achievement. We have not even that reputation for integrity which usually attaches to us in other parts of the Moslem world. This may be partly due to our anomalous position in the country, which was thrust upon us, but the pleasure-seeking tourist of pre-War days has a lot to answer for. Some of them seemed to think that so far from home their conduct was of no account (at least, that is the only charitable explanation), and British personal prestige suffered in consequence. Anglo-Egyptian officials, especially the subordinate grades, which come into more direct contact with the people, tried to counteract this by increased dignity of demeanour, but the natives now knew them _en deshabille_, or thought they did, and declined to keep them on their pedestals. The result is, familiarity without intimacy and detachment without dignity, while the pre-War official habit of going Home every year for some months has prevented even subordinates from studying their district or department consecutively.

Hence it is that a widespread Nationalist movement gathered force and perfected its plans for a detailed campaign which blended peaceful demonstration with sabotage, murder and violence, and took the Anglo-Egyptian Government completely by surprise, paralysing communications and intimidating the general public until the weight of Imperial troops, luckily still quartered in the country, was allowed to make itself felt and restored order.

This is not the time or the place to discuss these affairs, which are still _sub judice_, but one salient feature of the movement is pertinent to our subject, and that is the marked _rapprochement_ between Moslems and Copts, who fraternised in each other's mosques and churches, carried flags bearing the device of Cross and Crescent and used American mission buildings to further their new-found brotherhood. These relations were somewhat marred by the wholesale devastation of Coptic property up-country, but the Copts took it very well and paraded the streets with their Moslem friends, if they could not hide away from them. The local Jew came in too, and the climax of this religious _entente_ was reached when an Egyptian Jewess preached in the mosque of al-Azhar on the ancient relations between Jews and Arabs.

But we must not merely consider Egypt as a sort of religious and racial clearing house; it is also the main gate of Africa.

Southward, up the Nile valley and across grim deserts, lies Khartoum, the capital of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, only four days from Cairo by rail. This is a very tempting theatre for missionary enterprise, which is, however, held in check by the authorities, who decline to have their Sudan spiritually exploited and materially disturbed by futile efforts to evangelise the country. Missionaries say that this part of the Sudan, as well as Egypt, was once Christian; that discrimination is being shown in favour of Islam even to the extent of making pagans become Moslem on joining the Egyptian Army; that Gordon College is being run on non-Christian lines and that Islam is getting ahead of them in the race to convert pagans in this part of the world.

The case against them is that the fact of these regions being once Christian and now Moslem shows, if anything, that the latter religion is more suited to local requirements and conditions; Islam is naturally favoured in a Moslem country, though many Christian missions have been given facilities too, and have mostly failed owing to climatic conditions: the Egyptian Army is Moslem and under a Moslem Government; the conversion of pagan recruits to Islam is encouraged for the sake of discipline and soldierly conduct; missionaries themselves admit that even in civil life a Christian convert from Islam must be segregated or he will lapse under surrounding pressure--perhaps they will explain how that is to be done in a barrack-room or native infantry lines, or would they prefer such recruits to remain pagan? Presumably they would, as one of their complaints is that "it is a thousand times harder to convert a Moslem to Christianity than a pagan." Comment is superfluous; nothing could portray their att.i.tude more clearly. As for Islam getting ahead of them in the race for pagan souls, it is so and will be so always among the black races unless Christian missions are bolstered up by all the resources of local authority; the reason is that Islam offers equal privileges and no colour-line, imposes easy spiritual obligations and is propagated fervently by its followers without the enc.u.mbrance of an organised priesthood. Just as commercial travellers consider a district neglected where a rival firm has got ahead of them, so missionaries are piqued at conditions in the Sudan; but even that does not excuse such statements as that women in the Sudan are free and not badly treated as pagans, but slaves and oppressed under Islam. Every student of the Islamic code knows that the status of women has been enormously improved thereby as compared with any pagan system. Missionaries must know this, for they are much better educated about Islam than they were a quarter of a century ago, yet they do not scruple to raise the partisan cry of a debased womanhood under Islam wherever local conditions involve domestic hards.h.i.+p. Such tactics are unworthy of them; an intellectual Moslem does not reproach Christianity because he has visited districts in the poorer quarters of our big towns and seen women lead lives of drudgery or being sometimes knocked about by their husbands.

Outside the Sudan and Nigeria we must keep to the eastern side of Africa in order to maintain touch with Islam. The negroid people of Italian Erythrea are Moslems, as are also the Somalis; but their racial cousins, the Abyssinians, are Christians of the Ethiopian Church, with the Negus as their temporal and spiritual ruler, who claims descent from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

Abyssinia has been Christian ever since the fourth century, but the missionaries are not happy about the country at all. Here nothing impedes the entrance of the missionary as an individual, but the people will not have him as an evangelist at any price. The "fanatical and debased" priests of the Abyssinian Church and the drastic punishments inflicted by the local authorities on those suspected of favouring other forms of Christianity are described as grave hindrances. There is a large population of "black Jews," who will have no dealings with Christianity in any form. Meanwhile Islam gains ground steadily, especially in the south along the trade routes. A German missionary, writing from Strasburg in 1910, describes the situation as alarming, because "whole tribes of Abyssinians who still bear Christian names have become Muhammedans in the last twenty years." There is one Protestant mission up at Addis Abeba, but it confines its attentions to the semi-pagan Gallas, having given up Christian Abyssinia as a bad job.

Somaliland is a poor field for missionary enterprise, owing to the spa.r.s.e, semi-nomadic population and the difficulties of getting about.

In the French sphere there is connection by rail between Jibuti on the coast and Dera Dowa near the Abyssinian border; travelling musicians of the _cafe chantant_ type used to use it a good deal before the War, but there was not much doing in the missionary line. Italian Somaliland, east of the British sphere to Cape Guardafui, is left to look after itself, except for the occasional visit of an Italian man-of-war; but south of that great headland there are Italian settlements.

In British Somaliland missionary enterprise has. .h.i.therto been Catholic, and even that ceased some years before the War when the authorities had to tell the mission that it must leave, as they could no longer protect it from the Mullah's people. It was a pity, as the mission was doing good work and was much respected in the country. There was a Brotherhood which taught and doctored, and a teaching Sisterhood. They were Franciscans and had their local headquarters and a tastefully designed little chapel in the native town of Berbera, but the Brothers had also an agricultural settlement up-country, where they tilled the soil and did their best to teach the natives to do so too. The Somali is much easier to convert than the Arab, as his versatile and superficial temperament induces him to imitate, if not to a.s.similate, alien forms and ceremonies from the correct procedure at the "Angelus" to the singing, with appropriate gestures, of "a bicycle made for two."

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to teach him to think, or to do a day's honest work; he will pull a punkah while you are awake to keep him at it, or row a boat if allowed to sing, and sometimes he will fish if hungry and quite near the sea; but agriculture involves the hard work of digging, and that is too much for him. The object of the mission was to give Somali boys and girls the rudiments of Catholic Christianity and habits of industry. The boys were well grounded in English and the three "R's" in their simplest form, while the girls were taught chiefly sewing and cooking. The idea was for boys and girls to marry each other in the fulness of time and beget Christian children, but, as one of the good Fathers used regretfully to say, it did not work out in practice. The boys learnt enough to become interpreters or obtain small clerks.h.i.+ps in the post and telegraph offices of Aden and adjacent ports, whereupon they felt marriage with a "black woman" to be derogatory, and looked higher, to the less swarthy charms of some half-caste maiden met at Ma.s.s (for they usually remained Catholic, at least in outward form). The girls, on the other hand, with all their domestic training, were much sought after by local chiefs, who were prepared to give them a good allowance in beads, bangles and cloth, plenty of food and a fairly easy life. In such surroundings they naturally readopted Islam.

Somaliland is not as barren as most people suppose. Of course the littoral plain is comparatively sterile, as is the case on the Arabian side, owing to the scanty rainfall, and the maritime scarp of the hills that back it is not much better, but the country improves as you go inland; there is good grazing on the intra-montane plateau, and the watersheds of such ma.s.sifs as Wagr, Sheikh and Golis (7,000 ft. or so) are thickly wooded, chiefly with the gigantic cactus tree, which averages forty feet; timber trees are scarce, being mostly tall _Coniferae_ in sheltered glens at the higher alt.i.tudes. Inland of these ranges the ground slopes gradually toward the almost waterless Haud--a vast plateau spa.r.s.ely covered with tall mimosa bush or actual trees attaining some thirty feet in height and striking deep to subterranean moisture, which keeps them remarkably fresh and green. Giraffe feed eagerly on the tender upper foliage and herds of camel graze there too, going six months without water, for there is no known supply locally except in the occasional mud-pans or _ballis_ after a rainburst, which may happen once a year. These camels are kept for meat and milk only, and are no use for transport, as they are too "soft" to carry a sack of flour. They are rounded up and brought in to wells twice a year, where they water for a week or so. Herdsmen moving with them live on their milk, which is most sustaining. They must be watered after a maximum interval of half a year, or they get "poor" and will not put on flesh.

Needless to say, no transport camel could be treated like that. A caravan camel can go five days without water, but that is about his limit while working, and he should be allowed to rest and graze for some days afterwards if he is to regain working condition. The giraffe, as also antelope of various kinds, can support life without water at all, though they trek greedily to the _ballis_ after rain. Here lion lie in wait for them occasionally, and it is a frequent subject of discussion among naturalists and sportsmen how such heavy, thirsty animals can subsist in the Haud. The most probable supposition is that they only enter this region with the rains and trek from one _balli_ to another. I have met a lioness a long way out of lion country presumably trekking from one water-hole to the next. What is still more remarkable is that heavy game sometimes will do so too. Heavy firing was once heard far south of Burao, and a mounted force pushed out thinking it was the Mullah's people going for our "friendlies" out grazing. A rhinoceros on trek for water and nearly mad with thirst had winded the waterskins in a Somali grazing camp and charged through the zareba to get at them. He was mobbed to death by the herdsmen with the rifles which a benevolent Government had given them for protection against the dervishes.

To do them justice, the Somalis fear their fauna very little and have more than once, when in attendance on a European sportsman, driven off a lion with spears and a resolute front after the white man had failed to stop the beast with both barrels.

Even a woman will face a leopard with a torch of dry gra.s.s to contest the owners.h.i.+p of a fat-tailed sheep which he has tried to filch from the zareba by night, fearing his snarling menace far less than the wrath of her lord and master if the marauder secures his prey.

As for the Midgan, that born hunter and nomadic outcast whom other Somalis look down upon, but who has more woodcraft in his touzled head than any of them, he will deliberately hunt the king of beasts, using some decrepit and almost valueless camel as a stalking-horse. He is armed with a bow having about as much apparent "give" in it as the bottom joint of a fis.h.i.+ng rod, yet able to propel with surprising force a stumpy arrow cunningly poisoned with a wizard brew of viper venom and the root of the tall box tree. His procedure is to drive his camel slowly grazing toward some island of bush in which he has marked down a lion, he himself being perched a-straddle behind the hump and directing the animal's movements with kicks from one or other of his bare heels.

From his lofty observation point he at once spots the crouching approach of the lion and slips off over the camel's rump to cover, whence he speeds one of his venomous little shafts at close range. The outraged monarch attacks the camel and the hunter keeps well aloof from the subsequent confusion until the poison works and the lion is seized with muscular convulsions, like those of teta.n.u.s, when he may safely approach to gloat over his quarry. What is really remarkable is that the camel is not invariably killed. I once met a Midgan on trek who showed me the unmistakable claw-marks of a lion on his camel's neck and shoulders and said he had used the animal on three such occasions; compared with these desperate encounters the exploits of our white s.h.i.+karis armed with powerful modern rifles are insignificant.

One beast of prey, however, is feared and hated by every Somali man, woman or child--hunter, shepherd or townsman--and that is the great, spotted hyaena which slinks up by night to snap at face or breast of sleeping folk and bolts into the gloom at the agonised shriek of his mangled victim. The brute is cowardly enough to refuse encounter with an able-bodied man awake and on the alert unless rendered desperate by hunger, but his jaws are as strong as a lion's, and one snapping bite does the mischief. I once helped the P.M.O. at Berbera to tend some half-dozen poor wretches who had been frightfully mauled during the night on the outskirts of the town itself and probably by the same hyaena. The hot weather had induced many folk to sleep outside their stifling huts and they _will_ not take the trouble to collect and build up a few th.o.r.n.y bushes to keep the brutes off.

The Somali is about as incapable of hard work as his "fat" camel, and the only time he may be seen digging is among the convict gangs who till, or used to till, the Government garden out at Dubar on the inland edge of the littoral plain, where the Berbera water supply bubbles out hot from under the low maritime hills and trickles through ten miles of surface pipe-line to supply the "Fort," which is supposed to protect the British cantonment straggling some distance outside Berbera town. He feels such work dreadfully, not only as an injury to his self-respect (and he has all the puerile pride of the negroid races), but as an irksome tax on his physical powers, which are quite unaccustomed to sustained and strenuous exertion. On the other hand, he will make long journeys on short commons and keep well and happy if allowed to punctuate his hards.h.i.+ps at long intervals with debauches on meat and milk and fat. He excuses himself from tilling the ground on the plea that others might harvest the fruit of his labours, as there is no individual land-tenure or any definite divisions of land indicating owners.h.i.+p, but only tribal grazing rights over ill-defined areas and the parcel of land enclosed by his zareba fence, of which he is but the tenant, as it is free to anybody as soon as he leaves it to trek to other pastures. Therefore, vegetables are unattainable by him, and his cereals (rice, millet and coa.r.s.e flour) reach him by sea and caravan or he does without. He appears immune from scurvy and is seldom sick or sorry unless he over-eats himself. He loves _ghi_ (or clarified b.u.t.ter) and animal fat, which he swallows in large gulps when he can get it, also rubbing it in his frizzy hair and using it to sleek his black, spindly shanks and smear his spear-blades--on s.h.i.+kar he will "gorm" it all over your spare gun if you do not watch him. His favourite beverage is strong tea with lots of sugar in it (when procurable) otherwise he will not touch it, and he will drink water which a thirsty camel would sniff at suspiciously before imbibing. He dresses in a white sheet worn toga-wise and not without a certain dignity, and his head is usually bare except in towns or the partially civilised _entourage_ of a white man, where he will wear anything on his head from a tarboosh to a topi as a mark of distinction, but seems to avoid a turban, which he has not the knack of tying properly.