A great cause of sickness is a sore back, brought on by the chafing of a load. The worst place is in front of the hump. A camel when let out to browse is likely to bite such a sore until it festers and becomes full of maggots. There is a fly which is on the look-out for these sores, and instead of laying eggs deposits lively maggots, which crawl about briskly directly they leave the body of the fly. A red-beaked bird, very common in Ogádén,[10] then attacks the sore, plunging its sharp beak again and again into the hole, picking out the maggots and decayed mass, and even the good flesh, until there is a cavity into which a man’s clenched fist may be thrust. When in this condition it should always have a strip of calico, steeped in carbolic solution, tied over the wound when sent out to graze, to protect it from the birds, a dozen of which can be often seen clinging flat to its shoulders, giving out at intervals their long-drawn, discordant, shrill note.
The Somáli camel does not require grain, but thrives entirely on whatever it can pick up by the way. Except at certain seasons in Guban, the coast country, there is always an abundance of food for them everywhere, in the unlimited expanse of grass and acacia forest, as they feed and thrive on many grasses that ponies will not touch. When grazing, or browsing on the leaves of the mimosa jungles, they roam about in enormous droves, attended by a few men and women. In Ogádén and the Dolbahanta country I have seen driven past a succession of herds, each containing over a thousand camels, as they were taken to pasture in the mornings or back to the karias at night. They often have to graze at a distance of six miles or so from home, for, as the food near the karias is eaten up, they are driven farther out daily, and after a month or two the mat huts themselves are packed up and the tribe marches on, perhaps ten miles, to a fresh pasturage. Horsemen are constantly scouring the surrounding country to watch the next tribe, or to bring early news of a pasture having received heavy rain.
Camels can be much more quickly rounded up and driven to the home karia than cattle or flocks, so they are trusted much farther afield, and the number of camels sometimes seen is astonishing, the whole horizon being covered with them. When camped at Gagáb by the Milmil river-bed we daily saw between ten thousand and thirty thousand driven to water past our tents, belonging chiefly to the Rer Ali tribe. In Ogádén even an outcaste Midgán will sometimes own three or four hundred, and the only limit to their numbers is the capability of their owners to water and protect them. When a tribe becomes rich every man’s eye is covetously turned to this accumulation of camels, and it is not long before attempts are made to raid them in a mass. We were told of instances in the Dolbahanta country where ten thousand had been looted at one swoop. When unladen they can be driven at great speed, and as the raiders are nearly always on horseback, the attack is very sudden.