Rambles in Lion Land

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Our caravan?Wages?Rations?Somali luxuries?That wonderful bath ?An awkward currency?An Indian church collection? Gentlemanly camels?Somali methods of loading?Hdrios? We start. Let me now give some details as to the composition of our caravan. On arrival at Berbera, we found ourselves possessed...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Our caravan?Wages?Rations?Somali luxuries?That wonderful bath ?An awkward currency?An Indian church collection? Gentlemanly camels?Somali methods of loading?Hdrios? We start. Let me now give some details as to the composition of our caravan. On arrival at Berbera, we found ourselves possessed of twenty-five camels, and in excellent condition; two ponies, a grey and a bay, and two donkeys. These constituted all our live stock at the start. To tend them we had engaged twelve camel men, a syce or groom for each pony, and one donkey boy. Our personal following consisted of the head-man Abdi, whose duty was to superintend the whole of the native establishment, to issue the daily rations to the men, and to arrange the internal economy of the caravan, such as the posting of sentries, etc. Besides this manthere was our cook, and a personal servant each. Then each of us had two shikarris or gun- bearers.1 The daily ration for each man consisted of i Ib. rice, J Ib. dates, Ib. ghi (clarified butter). Of these items the Somali regards the dates as the greatest luxury. It is said that when the wounded are sought for after an inter-tribal fray, and it becomes necessary to find out those likely to recover and worth removing, the searchers offer dates to the doubtful cases, and those who cannot eat are considered past recovery, for there never was a Somali, except at his last gasp, who would refuse dates To provide rations on the above scale for twenty- three mouths for three months, and to allow a certain surplus for stray visitors and wastage, meant a good heavy load for our transport. The worst of it was that all provisions had to be taken from Berbera, asOUR BATH 23 1 As regards the men's wages, besides rations they received? Head-man ... Rs. 40 per m...