To keep order in the coast towns there is a force of native Civil Police, under a European officer: here are some of 24 the havildars, and here the whole body in review order; 25 but we see that, unlike our own police, they are armed with rifles. Somaliland is not a peaceful country, and police alone are not enough; so a military force is necessary. This consisted formerly of a battalion of the King’s African Rifles, recruited partly from the natives and partly from India. Here are the drummers and buglers, all natives, with a native 26 officer; and here is a whole company of Rifles on parade. 27 They are mounted on mules, and the European officer alone is on horseback. This native force has been disbanded and replaced by a contingent of Indian troops. We have also, in the past, been compelled to employ British and Indian troops for expeditions up country, to deal with the followers of a Mohammedan Mullah who proclaimed a _jihad_, or holy war, a few years ago, and raided first the Christians of Abyssinia and then the natives in our own territory. The Mullah was only copying on a larger scale the usual methods of the tribes of the interior; since the chief amusement of the Somali consists in annexing the property of his neighbours, whenever and wherever he can find the opportunity. The geography of the country is all in favour of the native raider and against the civilized troops which attempt to catch him. In the dry season, when the Somali is for a time a fixture in the neighbourhood of the wells, it is almost impossible to move a considerable force up country, owing to the want of food and water for men and animals on the march. When the rains come, the whole country is open for the game of hide-and-seek, and in this the white man is no match for the quick-moving native, who is troubled by no problem of transport and is a nomad born and bred. The land itself fights for the Somali; so that effective European control is limited to the coast, except where the French have pushed inland with the railway from Jibouti to the neighbourhood of Harrar. None the less, the occupation of the coast towns, Berbera, Bulhar and Zeila, is not entirely useless, since these are the ends of the caravan routes from Abyssinia and the interior. Here the animals, skins, gums and other wild products of the country are exchanged for the rice of India, the dates of Arabia, and the cottons of Europe and America which form the sole dress of the native. For the rest, the Somali is likely to be left in the undisturbed enjoyment of his native customs; his chief visitor will be the sportsman and the naturalist, as the land abounds in wild game and is the home of many strange plants and animals which are not to be met with elsewhere in Africa.