Two Dianas in Somaliland: The Record of a Shooting Trip — Story, Setting & Ideas

A Woman’s Expedition, Not a Trophy List

The catalog subjects—travel and hunting—accurately describe the book’s surface, but the excerpts reveal a deeper interest in the logistics and human elements of the journey. Herbert and her cousin Cecily planned the trip secretly, because “women hate being laughed at quite as much as men do.” They had previously traveled to the Rockies, but not primarily to shoot; the “charm of the chase captured us” only incidentally. In Somaliland, they face not only lions but also the mundane trials of wet tents, limited supplies, and a spirit lamp used sparingly. Herbert’s account of a two-day deluge describes her tent collapsing and her migrating to Cecily’s, where they “packed like sardines.” The hunting is present, but the narrative dwells on the conditions that make hunting possible—or impossible.

Nicknames and Graves: Somali Encounters

Herbert pays close attention to the Somali men in her caravan. She learns that the men have nicknames for one another and for the Europeans; her own is “Daga-yera,” or “small ears,” which she takes in good humor. The men’s naming is “deadly descriptive,” and Herbert’s willingness to record it shows a curiosity beyond the hunt. She also notes the graves they pass: head-men are buried under stockades of thorn and stone, while women have only thorn and a relic like a bit of shield. The men cross their hands and pray, then resume chanting. These details, scattered through the excerpts, suggest that the book offers ethnographic observation alongside the shooting narrative, though the excerpts are too brief to confirm how systematically this is developed.

Rain, Jackals, and the Unheroic Side

The excerpts repeatedly undercut any romantic notion of safari. Rain is a “very real terror”: fires go out, tents collapse, and Herbert drinks ammoniated quinine until her brain reels. Even the hunting is messy: she shoots a black-backed jackal in the shoulder, then has to chase it a long way before finishing it with a long shot. The jackal’s skin is brought to camp, but the episode is presented as a job, not a triumph. Herbert admires the jackal’s coloring, but the scene is one of wet, effort, and a wounded animal. The catalog subjects do not prepare a reader for this emphasis on discomfort and the unglamorous realities of a shooting trip. The book, at least in these passages, is as much about endurance as about marksmanship.

Readers approaching Two Dianas in Somaliland through its catalog subjects should expect a narrative that balances hunting with the everyday struggles of travel in a harsh environment. Herbert’s voice is wry and specific, and her observations of Somali customs and nicknames add a layer of cultural reporting. The excerpts suggest that the book is less a straightforward trophy list than a personal record of what it took—socially, physically, and logistically—for two women to carry out a big shoot in Somaliland in the early 1900s.

What stayed with me from Agnes Herbert’s Somaliland was the quiet weight of camp life—how rain and mud shaped days more than any rifle. It made me think of The Lake Regions of Central Africa: A Picture of Exploration, Vol. 1 — Reading Notes. That one lingers the same way, the slow, ordinary texture of being far from home.