Speke did a good deal to increase our knowledge of the remarkable fauna of Somaliland, but the Burton-Speke expedition into that country got no great distance inland, and ended in disaster, owing to the suspicions of the Somali. The expedition was attacked close to the seashore at Berbera. One of the party, Lieutenant Stroyan, was killed. Speke was severely, and Burton slightly wounded. Speke is of opinion that much of this disaster was due to the mismanagement of Burton. He considers that if, when the expedition was first organised, instead of fussing about mysterious visits to Harrar and waiting for this thing and that thing, the whole expedition had started off boldly for the interior, the Somali would have had no time to cultivate suspicion, and would have opposed no resistance. It is quite conceivable that Speke was right, and that if the expedition had started with promptitude it might have reached the confines of Shoa or the Gala country in the direction of modern British East Africa. As it was, the attack on Burton’s expedition closed for some thirty years any attempt at penetrating the mysterious country of the Somali, with its remarkable mammalian fauna and its as yet unexplained ruins.[49] [Illustration: A SWAHILI ARAB TRADER.] Burton’s attention was now drawn to the stories of the Mombasa missionaries. With some difficulty he obtained from the Foreign Office, the East India Company, and the Royal Geographical Society funds to equip an expedition which should start from the Zanzibar coast in search of the great lake. As Speke had lost over five hundred pounds worth of private property in the disaster which fell on the Somali expedition, Burton invited him to join this new expedition as his lieutenant. Burton had been distracted for a time from this idea by the Crimean War, but when peace was declared, he obtained the sanction of the Geographical Society to his plans, and started with Speke for India to smooth the difficulties placed in his way by the Indian government. At the very end of 1856 the explorers reached Zanzibar. While the expedition was being organised at Zanzibar, Burton and Speke visited Pemba, Mombasa, and the mission station ten miles in the interior. Fired by the stories of the snow-mountains and the rumour of the great lake of Ukerewe,[50] Speke proposed that they should bring their expedition to Mombasa and start for the lake by way of Kilimanjaro. The Masai, however, were raiding the country right up to within ten miles of Mombasa, and in consequence Burton was afraid to take this route. The explorers visited the mountainous country of Usambara, which is close to the coast, and then returned to Zanzibar. The original instructions, however, of the Royal Geographical Society (which had found the bulk of the funds) had been: “The great object of the expedition is to penetrate inland, from Kilwa or some other place on the East Coast of Africa, and make the best of its way to