THE ALLEGED DESICCATION OF EAST AFRICA 7 
of such extensive Arab settlements as this, and I am inclined 
to believe that they may date back as far as Himyaritic times, 
and be an offshoot of that great civilisation which built the 
huge dam at Mareb in South Arabia and excavated the Aden 
tanks. There is some reason for the belief that the tribes 
of the interior were influenced at a remote period by Semitic 
beliefs, pre-Mohammedan in point of time, and this influence 
may have emanated from these settlements ; the Mohammedan 
mosques and graves being products of the culture superimposed 
by Arab conquerors. In some places, if we examine the 
maritime plain in the vicinity, the limits of their cultivated 
fields can be seen, for land which has been cultivated for a 
considerable period and then abandoned carries a different flora 
from land covered by primeval bush or forest ; but wherever 
I have had the opportunity of examining the area of the 
previously cultivated strip, it would not prove a raison d'etre 
for the presence of the old population. 
Now, knowing the congestion of the average Eastern settle- 
ment, there is no doubt that the population which built these 
towns must have been very considerable, and the question 
arises as to what they were doing there, and what they were 
living on. Presumably the glib reply will be that they were 
trading for ivory, apes, and peacocks. The ivory trade 
probably was considerable ; but I imagine that the apes and 
peacocks did not figure very largely in their Customs returns, 
to say nothing of the fact that the peacock is an Asiatic bird, 
although some ingenious commentator has suggested that 
the term 4 peacock ’ really referred to the African guinea-fowl. 
I am inclined to believe that these settlements really thrived 
on the cattle and live-stock trade with the tribes of the interior, 
and for the following reason. In the Somali hinterland there 
are also evidences of a much greater population, and it is 
highly probable that they were great pastoral people, for the 
country is naturally not an agricultural area, but pre-eminently 
a stock country. Around Wajheir, in Jubaland, to-day, large 
numbers of artificial mounds are to be found, many of them as 
much as thirty feet in height, and these are, it is believed, 
the funeral mounds of an extinct race. The Hon. K. Dundas 
opened one of the smaller ones. He found a few fragmentary 
