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crisp, inviting a gallop, and having almost the appearance of unlimited 
English pasture. The soil is red and powdery. Some of our camps on 
the plains were between 6000 and 7000 feet above sea-level. The country 
is probably similar to the South African veldt, the great elevation in a 
measure compensating for the nearness to the equator. 
There is heavy rainfall, the Marar Prairie partaking of that of Harar 
and Abyssinia, but the water sinks to a great depth, so that with the 
exception of temporary rain-pools the surface is waterless. There are, 
however, many permanent watering-places in the jungle-covered hills and 
broken ground bordering the prairie to the north and west, and in the 
Harar Highlands, whose lofty summits can be seen overlooking the 
western edge of the plain, some of them rising to over 10,000 feet. The 
Somalis say there is sometimes ice on these mountains, and that people 
die of cold. 
The Marar Prairie supports enormous masses of game, and upon it I 
have had many a good day’s sport. Although this is the largest ban we 
have actually circumscribed and measured, it may not be larger than 
many others in unexplored parts of Somaliland, but is probably the best 
in quality. Some of the low-lying ban — as, for instance, that of the 
Zeila Maritime Plain — is of very poor quality, and this is partly why the 
Esa is not a mounted tribe. I am told by Dolbahanta tribesmen whom 1 
took to Marar, that there are similar elevated plains at the back of the 
unexplored Warsingali country. There are many other fine patches of 
ban in the Hand which have been explored by us, as at Aror and Toyo. 
My brother, while passing through the Esa country, wrote] in his 
Journal: “After leaving Doleimalleh we came across a strip of plain 
which seemed to afford an example of the manner in which the ban is 
formed. There were miles upon miles of dead and bleached thorn- trees, 
about twenty feet high, evidently vigorous some ten years ago. These 
had either been killed by very heavy floods, as the ground is flat and 
water does not drain off easily, or had been destroyed by extensive fires. 
Among these trees were scores of red ant-hills, eight or ten feet high, and 
many of the dead trees were overwhelmed by them, just a branch or the 
part of a trunk projecting here and there. When the trees have all been 
eaten the termites no doubt leave, and their mounds are washed away by 
rain and wind, leaving behind only a vast grassy plain.” 
The extreme north-western angle of the Marar Prairie is marked by 
a hill called Sarir Gerad, and from its base the ground falls abruptly to 
the north into the Harrawa Valley in the Gadabursi country, and to the 
west into deep gorges which lead towards Gildessa. The bushes cling in 
a sharply-defined line to the rugged hills of denudation into which the 
high prairie breaks up. The main rock of these hills is limestone, much 
eroded in the ravines by water, and weathered into holes and caves, lined 
with deposits of stalactite. Some of the torrents which descend to the 
east of Sarir cut through deep alluvial deposits, leaving overhanging earth 
banks eighty to one hundred feet deep. The whole of this wild and 
mountainous region is very picturesque, and the more interesting to a 
sportsman because, together with the Harrawa Yalley, it is still visited 
at the right season by two or three herds of elephants. The average 
elevation of this valley is about 5000 feet above sea-level. The vegetation 
is very luxuriant, the predominating kind being the hassadan or euphorbia, 
which here grows to a height of from thirty to sixty feet. There is a 
