From now on we pass through rougher, wilder country, but there is more vegetation. Now the easily graded track drops precipitously into a dark ravine, up which we turn and climb. There are steep rocky walls on our right and left. The floor of the ravine rises higher and higher; the walls come lower and lower, until we stand on the summit of a narrow ridge. Bearing to the left we follow the ridge for five minutes and come into camp. It is half-past six o'clock, and as the sun goes down the evening turns chilly. I sit wrapped up in a trench coat and order a fire. Mahomed, the interpreter, comes to say that as the lions are _very_ bad, it will not be safe to leave camp before daybreak; to which, remembering how many lions came last night, I reply, "Bow-wow." The true reason, and one with which I am entirely in sympathy, is that, after the hot plains, they find the early morning air up here bitterly cold. And why can't they tell me that is the reason? Because they like to pose as hardy fellows. Because, perhaps, they fear I might like to pose as a hardy fellow, too, and turn them all out to shiver whilst I walk round in my warm clothes. So it is arranged to the satisfaction of all parties that we march at daylight. * * * * * "Two easy hours' riding from here there's a camp; and in that camp are four Sahibs, Wallah." This to me at nine o'clock last night from Mahomed, the interpreter. Somals have no idea of distance or time, and my experience has been that statements from them concerning the movements or whereabouts of other people are invariably unreliable. A simple statement like the foregoing could not be accepted without careful examination. Yet, should there really be four Sahibs ahead, they are undoubtedly the officers I am travelling to meet at Hargeisa, and I should go to their camp. "You say there are four Sahibs?" "Yes; people have arrived from their camp who saw them to-day." "And are they on the Hargeisa road?" "Yes." At six a.m. this morning after a cup of hot tea we rode for two solid, steady hours till we came to the Hargeisa plateau. Turning sharp right we rode away from the Hargeisa track. I was suspicious, but said nothing until we met a Bedouin Somal. To my question he replied that he had come from a police camp about three hours' away; that with trotting camels we should arrive there in two hours, but the road was rough. And had he seen anything of four Sahibs? No! He saw one, an officer with a troop of M.I., who went away yesterday morning. And is this the Hargeisa road? No, it is not; we have left it, but there is another road from the police camp.