ured "minerals" in bottles, with a
small lump of ice thrown in. His establishment was patronised almost
entirely by Somalis and largely by the _ghari-walas_ themselves. At the
same time, he was obliging enough to spare the servant of a neighbouring
sahib like myself a pound or two of ice from his "cold box" on
occasional application to meet an emergency.

He had a good deal of property in flocks and herds over in British
Somaliland, which he visited from time to time. In the late 'nineties he
got involved in some suit or other and the local authorities mulcted him
of many camels. He very much resented this decision and raised some
friends and sympathisers to resist its execution by the police. An
inadequate force was sent and sustained a reverse, after which his
following grew enormously. Early in this century, when I again had news
of him, he had craftily cut in between the Italian, Abyssinian and
British converging columns and annihilated Colonel Plunkett's gallant
little band at Gumburu, but sustained a severe defeat at Jidballi,
where his red flannel dressing-gown was sighted in early and headlong
retirement as his dervishes recoiled from the embattled square.

All the same, he was still going strong long after the South African War
was over, and we had more leisure to attend to him. When the British
frontier was drawn in to enable the statement to be made in Parliament
that "the Mullah's troops were no longer within protectorate limits," he
took advantage of it to deal ruthlessly with those tribes which had
refused to join him on the solemn and definite promise that Government
would protect them from his vengeance. The unhappy Dolbahuntas were
almost wiped out as a tribal unit; their zarebas and flimsy villages
were surrounded by the Mullah's men and fired, leaving the
occupants--men, women and children--the choice of a dreadful end among
blazing thorns or red death on the spears of their fellow-countrymen and
co-religionists. A prominent Nationalist has alluded to the Mullah and
his dervishes as "brave men striving to be free."

In 1910 British prestige had shed its last rag in Somaliland: we had
withdrawn to the coast and the Mullah's horsemen actually rode through
Berbera bazar on one of their raids and withdrew unscathed. In 1912 it
was found necessary to form a company of Somali police on camels to keep
the peace between "friendlies" who, to allay a certain amount of
indignation at home, had been armed with