Page:First Footsteps in East Africa, 1894 - Volume 1.djvu/35

Rh the Western or Edoor Tribes, inhabiting the Somali coast of North East Africa; with the Southern Branches of the family of Darood, resident on the banks of the Webbe Shebayli, commonly called the River Webbe." Lieut. C. P. Rigby, 16th Regiment Bombay N. I., published, also in the Transactions of the Geographical Society of Bombay, an "Outline of the Somali Language, with Vocabulary," which supplied a great lacuna in the dialects of Eastern Africa.

A perusal of the following pages will convince the reader that the extensive country of the Somal is by no means destitute of capabilities. Though partially desert, and thinly populated, it possesses valuable articles of traffic, and its harbours export the produce of the Gurague, Abyssinian, Galla, and other inland races. The natives of the country are essentially commercial: they have lapsed into barbarism by reason of their political condition—the rude equality of the Hottentots,—but they appear to contain material for a moral regeneration. As subjects they offer a favourable contrast to their kindred, the Arabs of Al-Yaman, a race untameable as the wolf, and which, subjugated in turn by Abyssinian, Persian, Egyptian, and Turk, has ever preserved an indomitable spirit of freedom, and eventually succeeded in shaking off the yoke of foreign dominion. For half a generation we have been masters of Aden, filling Southern Arabia with our calicoes and rupees—what is the present state of affairs there? We are dared by the Badawin to come forth from behind our stone walls and fight like men in the plain,—British protégés are slaughtered within the range of our guns—our allies' villages have been burned in sight of Aden—our deserters are welcomed and our fugitive felons protected,—our supplies are cut off, and the garrison is reduced to extreme distress, at the word of a half-naked bandit—the miscreant Bhagi who