YEMEN 221 



Arabia repeats very much the same landscape and the 

 same vegetation as the symmetrical mass of Ethiopia. 

 The raised south-western edge of the great desert 

 plateau, which in places exceeds 9,000 feet in elevation, 

 attracts the monsoons from the Indian Ocean in the same 

 manner as does Abyssinia. Hence, on the middle and 

 upper slopes, there is a sufficient rainfall, which is sup- 

 plemented by an abundance of clouds and mists and by 

 plentiful dews at night. The climate is equable, warm 

 temperate to subtropical. The streams have eaten their 

 way far up into the tableland and dissected its jagged 

 rim into a network of deep valleys ; but on reaching the 

 torrid coastal shelf they are swallowed up by the sands, 

 or evaporated. Such fortunate conditions convert the 

 highlands into an island of abundance amid the sur- 

 rounding deserts. 



The vegetation combines the features and profusion 

 of the mediterranean and moist subtropical types; but 

 it includes also many characteristic forms of the ad- 

 jacent dry lands, thanks to an extreme variety of physical 

 conditions. Hence the extraordinary wealth and diver- 

 sity of the natural and cultivated resources which gained 

 for the Yemen, in ancient times, the name of Arabia 

 Felix. It is largely the vegetation of the more arid 

 areas, reaching a point of supreme intensity, which 

 furnishes the abundance of gums, resins, wax, balsams, 

 scents and spices, just as among the foot-hills of Eritrea 

 and Ethiopia. The collection of gums, cassia and senna, 

 myrrh, frankincense and kat occupied the ancient Sa- 

 beans, and gave rise to one of the most famous trades 

 of the remote past. The civilization of the Minoans, 

 Sabeans, and Himyarites spread as from a centre to 

 Syria, Ethiopia, and Babylonia. 



Somaliland, 'the Horn of Africa/ is a region inter- 



