At Arnoleh [Anooleh] is the only set­tle­ment of the Gala tribe in Juba­land, though they are to be found scat­tered among the So­mali through­out the whole coun­try. Mon­seigneur Taruin Ca­haigne, of Har­rur in Abyssinia, has sug­gested, ac­cord­ing to Colonel Swayne, that this tribe had their orig­i­nal lo­cal habi­ta­tion in Tana­land. It would ap­pear more prob­a­ble, from in­quiries made from the Gala them­selves, that their tribe came from the north of Ital­ian So­ma­liland, whence they were dri­ven by the more pow­er­ful So­mali; and that they first took refuge in Juba­land and af­ter­wards in Tana­land, where a large set­tle­ment of them still ex­ists.

North­ern So­ma­liland can show many cairns of Gala ori­gin, but in Juba­land I have found not one. It ap­pears that, af­ter be­ing dri­ven across the Juba by the So­mali, the Gala took pos­ses­sion of the coun­try to the west of that river. About 1842 the So­mali crossed the Juba, at­tacked the Gala, and were de­feated with great loss. These at­tacks were con­tin­ued un­til 1845, when tbe So­mali of­fered peace on con­di­tion that they should be al­lowed to in­habit Juba­land side by side with the Gala. The Gala fool­ishly con­sented to this. In 1848 the So­mali treach­er­ously broke the agree­ment, and drove the Gala south ward and west­ward. Many of them were starved into servi­tude un­der the So­mali, and are now em­ployed in con­sid­er­able num­bers as
herds­men in the Ogaden coun­try. The Gala are mostly Pa­gans, but lately a con­sid­er­able num­ber of them have be­come con­verts to Mo­hammedanism. Their mar­riage cus­toms do not in­clude the giv­ing of a dowry, and their con­ju­gal moral­ity is very lax. In in­tel­li­gence they com­pare un­favourably with the So­mali; nev­er­the­less they are a coura­geous and usu­ally self-re­strain­ing race, yet sub­ject to vi­o­lent fits of ex­cite­ment when suf­fi­ciently pro­voked. As traders and hunters they are more skil­ful than a So­mali, but not equal to the Boni.
 

The Kismayu dis­trict may be said to ex­tend from the coast north­ward to the Deshek Wama lake, and on the east it is bounded by the Juba river. Kismayu, which may be con­sid­ered as the cap­i­tal of Juba­land, pos­sesses a well-pro­tected road­stead. It con­tains about 4000 in­hab­i­tants – con­sist­ing of So­mali, a few In­dian traders, and Ba­jun. It ex­ports hides, maize, and cot­ton; it im­ports man­u­fac­tured ar­ti­cles, es­pe­cially cot­ton cloth of all de­scrip­tions. The trade at pre­sent is mostly in the hands of Kho­jas from Bom­bay. The goods are prin­ci­pally made in Hin­dus­tan or Amer­ica. Very few British-made ar­ti­cles reach the coun­try. As the seat of the Gov­ern­ment, it is the res­i­dence of a few Eng­lish of­fi­cials.

Gob­wein (“large plain“), 2 miles from the Juba mouth, is a vil­lage of about 2000 in­hab­i­tants. Yonti, 12 miles from Gob­wein, is also sit­u­ated on the Juba river. It is a mil­i­tary can­ton­ment. Near this vil­lage an Eng­lish com­pany has com­menced the cul­ti­va­tion of cot­ton.