APPENDIX II 
357 
precipices rise everywhere, or the hills form great rounded shoulders, 
having a surface of gravel sprinkled over with a wretched scrub of 
little brown bushes a foot high, which are generally dry as tinder. 
Between Berbera and Bulhar the mountains come closer to the sea, 
and take the form of low, table-topped plateaux of black trap-rock, 
with fringing precipices about thirty feet deep, and a steep talus slope 
of debris dropping three hundred feet to the level of the river-beds 
which cut through these plateaux. Hegebo, near Berbera, is a typical 
plateau of this kind, and on the Zeila side of the British Protectorate 
this sort of ground covers an enormous area. On the top of the 
plateaux the surface has the appearance of having been rained upon by 
showers of black stones. Here and there tufts of feathery grass grow 
in the crevices, and there is light, open jungle of flat -topped thorn 
bushes. Everywhere there are boulders and jagged or rounded pieces 
of rock, so that where there are no paths caravans cannot go. The sun 
beating down on the polished black surfaces causes great heat, and dis- 
tresses the baggage animals, and the stones are very trying to horses’ 
feet, even camels going better over them. The sand-rivers find their 
wa}r through these plateaux from the high mountains to the sea, forming 
deep gullies, the expanse of sand and green bush below contrasting 
strangely with the black frowning heights on either side. 
Between the Maritime Mountains and the great Golis Range are 
elevated, undulating interior plains, intersected by river-beds and ravines 
running generally from south to north. These slope up in continuation 
of the Maritime Plain, but present greater variety of scenery : here a 
strip of gravel and rocky ground scantily dotted with low mimosa bushes, 
and cut up by torrent-beds choked with rough boulders and a tangle 
of savage thorns, there a wide sand-river winding through a belt of thick 
forest of the beautiful gudd , or larger tliorn-tree, with a dense under- 
growth of pointed aloes, 1 making it impossible to move about except in 
the sheep and game paths. Narrow strips of thorn -bushes and dark 
green poison-trees ( wab6 ) wind down from the mountains, marking the 
tributary watercourses. The river-beds themselves consist of broad, 
Hat, sandy reaches between alluvial banks, which have been scarped 
perpendicularly, at alternate points on the right and left, where the 
swirling water has undermined them with an inward sweep. Large 
gudd trees grow closely together at the edge of the steep or overhanging 
banks, their branches being covered with long drapery of arrno creepers, 
which hang down, often as much as thirty feet, to the level of the river- 
bed below. Behind the jungle which fringes the banks is high grass, 
until the ground rises, when the red soil, exposed by the action of the 
rains, is worked into miniature hills and valleys. Here and there at 
the side or in the centre of the channel is a clump of thorn-trees, round 
which the sand has been washed up into a bank, and masses of drift- 
wood are heaped round the lower branches. Between the parallel sand- 
rivers of the interior plains are watersheds of stony ground, very trying 
to travel over, the sunbeams beating down on the stony path, glittering 
on the points of the aloes, and being reflected like fire from the thousands 
of chipped rocks, scattered pieces of quartz, feldspar, and mica which 
everywhere crop above the surface. 
Two days’ march due south of Berbera, having crossed the interior 
1 Really not an aloe but Sanseveira . 
