At dawn the next morning the caravan marched on for Subbul Odli, while I went back on foot with Géli and Hassan to look for the oryx wounded the night before. I found one, a large cow, still standing, and gave her a finishing shot; and two or three hundred yards farther I found the other, a bull, already killed and eaten by hyænas; but the skull, carrying a very fine pair of horns, I took away, and as much of the meat of the cow as we could carry.
Soon after overtaking the caravan I started a large herd, followed by what is perhaps the greatest meat delicacy, a young calf oryx; and as the meat of the cow was scarcely enough for my followers, I shot him. At noon we reached Subbul Odli and camped half a mile from the hill, in open park-like country. There was at the foot of Subbul Odli a beautiful forest of the _wádi_, a thorn-tree with an upright light gray or lemon-yellow stem, bare to about ten feet from the ground, and then spreading out flat at the top into small stems in the form of an inverted cone. It is a tree of great beauty, and is covered with thorns two or three inches long. This tree gives out a gum which the Somális eat. It was now the _Kalíl_, or great heat before the monsoon, and we experienced the first thunder-storms while at this camp.
Continuing our journey towards Jig-Jiga, I saw immense quantities of hartebeests on the open plains, one herd containing quite a thousand individuals, and three herds of about five hundred each; and plenty of smaller herds and solitary bulls were scattered about near the horizon. All the game was rather wild, but I shot two buck Sœmmering’s gazelles by a right and left, as a long line of these animals galloped past me extended at full speed, the setting sun glancing on their sleek hides; and we camped where they had fallen, on the short grass of the open plains, my tent being within half a mile of Gumbur Dug, a small rounded hillock which takes its name from the _Dúg_, or large gadfly. Four Ayyal Yunis traders came to me here, to lay before me, as a representative of the English, complaints against the Abyssinians; and some of the Jibril Abokr tribe joined us, with their flocks, for protection while passing the frontier.