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The third weapon is a wooden throw-stick, made of a specially hard wood called miet, which grows in the mountains; it is about a yard long, and pointed at both ends; it is called ghatrif. The Gara are wonderfully skilful at hurling it through the air, and use it both in battle and for the chase with admirable precision.
As we passed through the hay, the Gara had gathered up a lot of it in sacks, which they put under the camels' loads by day and used as beds by night, and between times applied to quite a different purpose. One of these sacks was used as a combined dish and strainer when they boiled their rice.
That finished our 1916 campaign against the Senussi the I.C.C. were relieved by a London Yeomanry Company of the I.C.C, and later on some Gyppy Cavalry went out and garrisoned Dakhla Oasis. On 13th November the Regiment started in relays by train for Gara. There we received orders to start infantry training, as we were to be converted into a battalion of infantry.
We found the Bedouin of Mount Haghier fond of dancing and playing their teherane, and also peculiarly lax in their religious observances; and though ostensibly conforming to Mohammedan practice, they observe next to none of their precepts; and it is precisely the same with the Bedouin whom we met in the Gara mountains.
At Gara munitions of war had to be left behind to find room on the truck for his patent washstand.
A moment later, as the hawsers were cast off, the little crowd on the wharf called out "Three cheers for the Gara barquentine," which the Gara's crew acknowledged with three cheers for Pierhead, in the sailor fashion. We were moving slowly under the influence of the oared boats ahead of us, when a seaman at the forward capstan began to sing the solo part of an old capstan chanty.
They only tap the most promising ones, and those that grow farther west in the Mahri country, as they produce an inferior quality, are not now tapped at all. The best is obtained at spots called Hoye and Haski, about four days' journey inland from Merbat, where the Gara mountains slope down into the Nejd desert.
Owing, however, to the illness of some of our party, we were at the last moment obliged to defer the expedition; though we had made all the preparations we could for the great cold we should have to encounter, the change of climate would have been injurious to Imam Sharif and two of his men. We next determined to go by sea to Merbat, and thence explore the Dhofar and Gara mountains.
It is formed of alluvial soil washed down from the Gara mountains; there is abundance of water very near the surface, and frequent streams make their way down to the sea, so that it is green.
At Toashia Gordon had a short interview with Gessi, whom he created a pasha and made governor of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, with a present of £2,000. On his way back to his province news was brought to Gessi of Suleiman's whereabouts. He at once started in pursuit with three hundred men, and came up with Suleiman during the night at Gara.
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