Ebook Sun, Sand and Somals

Africa is gradually becoming so civilised that there are few places left where the adventurer (the man who holds a human life as cheaply as the sportsman holds that of a wild pheasant) may hope to flourish. But for such an individual there remains on the Eastern Abyssinian border a territory, difficult to penetrate, inhabited by wild warlike tribes, through whom can be carried out a policy of murder and rapine against the peaceful native tribes under British protection. And on the Abyssinian borders you may find him, ever ready to organise a wild raid South or East (or West for that matter) into the administered territories of the British, whose sentinel-outposts are ever watching and waiting to turn him from his prey. Of the tribes inhabiting this wild border-land I have selected from many but one to speak - of the Somali of British Somaliland.

The Somali has deeply religious tendencies and is the stoutest of Mussulmans. In addition to the Mahomedan code, which he obeys implicitly, he has a complicated tribal code of his own.