Two Dianas in Somaliland: the Record of a Shooting Trip

Chapter I--We Set Out for Somaliland

```This weaves itself perforce into my business

`````King Lear=

|It is not that I imagine the world is panting for another tale about a shoot. I am aware that of the making of sporting books there is no end. Simply--I want to write. And in this unassuming record of a big shoot, engineered and successfully carried through by two women, there may be something of interest; it is surely worth more than a slight endeavour to engage the even passing interest of one person of average intelligence in these days of universal boredom.

I don’t know whether the idea of our big shoot first emanated from my cousin or myself. I was not exactly a tenderfoot, neither was she. We had both been an expedition to the Rockies at a time when big game there was not so hard to find, but yet less easy to get at. We did not go to the Rockies with the idea of shooting, our sole raison d’être being to show the heathen Chinee how not to cook; but incidentally the charm of the chase captured us, and we exchanged the gridiron for the gun. So at the end of March 190-we planned a sporting trip to Somaliland--very secretly and to ourselves, for women hate being laughed at quite as much as men do, and that is very much indeed.

My cousin is a wonderful shot, and I am by no means a duffer with a rifle. As to our courage--well, we could only trust we had sufficient to carry us through. We felt we had, and with a woman intuition is everything. If she feels she is not going to fail, you may take it from me she won’t. Certainly it is one thing to look a lion in the face from England to gazing at him in Somaliland. But we meant to meet him somehow.

Gradually and very carefully we amassed our stores, and arranged for their meeting us in due course. We collected our kit, medicines, and a thousand and one needful things, and at last felt we had almost everything, and yet as little as possible. Even the little seemed too much as we reflected on the transport difficulty. We sorted our things most carefully--I longed for the floor-space of a cathedral to use as a spreading-out ground--and glued a list of the contents of each packing-case into each lid.

To real sportsmen I shall seem to be leaving the most important point to the last--the rifles, guns, and ammunition. But, you see, I am only a sportswoman by chance, not habit. I know it is the custom with your born sportsman to place his weapons first, minor details last. “Nice customs curtsey to great kings,” they say, and so it must be here. For King Circumstance has made us the possessors of such wondrous modern rifles, &c., as to leave us no reason to think of endeavouring to supply ourselves with better. We, fortunately, have an uncle who is one of the greatest shikaris of his day, and his day has only just passed, his sun but newly set. A terribly bad mauling from a lion set up troubles in his thigh, and blood poisoning finally ended his active career. He will never hunt again, but he placed at our disposal every beautiful and costly weapon he owned, together with his boundless knowledge. He insisted on our taking many things that would otherwise have been left behind, and his great trust in our powers inspired us with confidence. It is to his help we owe the entire success of our expedition.

It would be an impertinence for a tyro like myself to offer any remarks on the merits or demerits of any rifle. Not only do the fashions change almost as quickly as in millinery, not only do great shikaris advise, advertise, and adventure with any weapon that could possibly be of service to anyone, but my knowledge, even after the experience gained in our long shoot, is confined to the very few firearms we had with us. They might not have met with unqualified approval from all men; they certainly served us well. After all, that is the main point.

Our battery consisted of:

Three 12-bore rifles.

Two double-barrelled hammerless ejecting .500 Expresses.

One .35 Winchester.

Two small .22 Winchesters.

One single-barrel .350.

One 410 bore collector’s gun.

A regular olla podrida in rifles.

My uncle selected these from his armoury as being the ones of all others he would feel safest in sending us out with. There may, in the opinion of many, be much more suitable ones for women to use, but, speaking as one who had the using of them, I must say I think the old shikari did the right thing, and if I went again the same rifles would accompany me.

My uncle is a small man, with a shortish arm, and therefore his reach about equalled ours, and his rifles might have been made for us.

We also towed about with us two immensely heavy shot guns. They were a great nuisance, merely adding to the baggage, and we never used them as far as I remember.

As we meant frequently to go about unescorted, a revolver or pistol seemed indispensable in the belt, and under any conditions such a weapon would be handy and give one a sense of security. On the advice of another great sportsman we equipped ourselves with a good shikar pistol apiece, 12-bore; and I used mine on one occasion very effectively at close quarters with an ard-wolf, so can speak to the usefulness and efficiency of the weapon.

It was the “cutting the ivy” season in Suburbia when we drove through it early one afternoon, and in front of every pill-box villa the suburban husband stood on a swaying ladder as he snipped away, all ora ora unmindful of the rampant domesticity of the sparrows. The fourteenth of February had long passed, and the fourteenth is to the birds what Easter Monday is to the lower orders, a general day for getting married.

A few days in town amid the guilty splendour of one of the caravan-serais in Northumberland Avenue were mostly spent in imbibing knowledge. My uncle never wearied of his subject, and it was to our interest to listen carefully. Occasionally he would wax pessimist, and express his doubts of our ability to see the trip through; but he was kind enough to say he knows no safer shot than myself. “Praise from Cæsar.” Though I draw attention to it that shouldn’t! The fragility of my physique bothered him no end. I assured him over and over that my appearance is nothing to go by, and that I am, as a matter of fact, a most wiry person.

This shoot of ours was no hurried affair. We had been meditating it for months, and had, to some extent, arranged all the difficult parts a long time before we got to the actual purchases of stores, and simple things of the kind. We had to obtain special permits to penetrate the Ogaden country and beyond to the Marehan and the Haweea, if we desired to go so far. Since the Treaty with King Menelik in 1897 the Ogaden and onwards is out of the British sphere of influence.

How our permits were obtained I am not at liberty to say; but without them we should have been forced to prance about on the outskirts of every part where game is abundant. By the fairy aid of these open sesames we were enabled to traverse the country in almost any part, and would have been passed from Mullah to Sheik, from Sheik to Mullah, had we not taken excellent care to avoid, as far as we could, the settled districts where these gentry reside. At one time all the parts we shot over were free areas, and open to any sportsman who cared to take on the possible dangers of penetrating the far interior of Somaliland, but now the hunting is very limited and prescribed. We were singularly fortunate, and owe our surprising good luck to that much maligned, useful, impossible to do without passport to everything worth having known as “influence.”

The tents we meant to use on the shoot were made for us to a pattern supplied. They were fitted with poles of bamboo, of which we had one to spare in case of emergencies. The ropes, by particular request, were of cotton, in contradistinction to hemp, which stretches so abominably.

Two skinning knives were provided, and some little whet-stones, an axe, a bill-hook, two hammers, a screwdriver--my vade mecum--nails, and many other needful articles. We trusted to getting a good many things at Berbera, but did not like to leave everything to the last. Our “canned goods” and all necessaries in the food line we got at the Army and Navy Stores. Field-glasses, compasses, and a good telescope our generous relative contributed.

They say that the best leather never leaves London, that there only can the best boots be had. This is as may be. Anyway the shooting boots made for us did us well, and withstood prodigious wear and tear.

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