W. Barker, I. N., Whose Services Were Imperatively Required By Sir Robert Oliver, To Return From Abyssinia _Via_ Harar, "Over A Road Hitherto Untrodden By Europeans." As His Majesty Sahalah Selassie Had Offered Friendly Letters To The Moslem Amir, Capt.

Harris had "no doubt of the success of the enterprise." Although the adventurous explorer was prevented by the idle fears of the Bedouin Somal and the rapacity of his guides from visiting the city, his pages, as a narrative of travel, will amply reward perusal.

They have been introduced into this volume mainly with the view of putting the reader in possession of all that has hitherto been written and not published, upon the subject of Harar. [11] For the same reason the author has not hesitated to enrich his pages with observations drawn from Lieutenants Cruttenden and Rigby. The former printed in the Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society two excellent papers: one headed a "Report on the Mijjertheyn Tribe of Somallies inhabiting the district forming the North East Point of Africa;" secondly, a "Memoir on the Western or Edoor Tribes, inhabiting the Somali coast of North East Africa; with the Southern Branches of the family of Darood, resident on the banks of the Webbe Shebayli, commonly called the River Webbe." Lieut. C. P. Rigby, 16th Regiment Bombay N. I., published, also in the Transactions of the Geographical Society of Bombay, an "Outline of the Somali Language, with Vocabulary," which supplied a great lacuna in the dialects of Eastern Africa.

A perusal of the following pages will convince the reader that the extensive country of the Somal is by no means destitute of capabilities. Though partially desert, and thinly populated, it possesses valuable articles of traffic, and its harbours export the produce of the Gurague, Abyssinian, Galla, and other inland races. The natives of the country are essentially commercial: they have lapsed into barbarism by reason of their political condition--the rude equality of the Hottentots,--but they appear to contain material for a moral regeneration. As subjects they offer a favourable contrast to their kindred, the Arabs of El Yemen, a race untameable as the wolf, and which, subjugated in turn by Abyssinian, Persian, Egyptian, and Turk, has ever preserved an indomitable spirit of freedom, and eventually succeeded in skaking off the yoke of foreign dominion. For half a generation we have been masters of Aden, filling Southern Arabia with our calicos and rupees--what is the present state of affairs there? We are dared by the Bedouins to come forth from behind our stone walls and fight like men in the plain,--British _proteges_ are slaughtered within the range of our guns,--our allies' villages have been burned in sight of Aden,--our deserters are welcomed and our fugitive felons protected,--our supplies are cut off, and the garrison is reduced to extreme distress, at the word of a half-naked bandit,--the miscreant Bhagi who murdered Capt. Mylne in cold blood still roams the hills unpunished,--gross insults are the sole acknowledgments of our peaceful overtures,--the British flag has been fired upon without return, our cruizers being ordered to act only on the defensive,--and our forbearance to attack is universally asserted and believed to arise from mere cowardice.

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