Berbera harbour, which is an excellent one, and the best to be found either on the north or east Somáli coast, is formed by a sand spit, similar to that at Bulhár, but rising above high-water mark. It starts from the native town and runs west for two miles till well beyond the official town. Inside this spit large steamers are well protected. On the shore, nearly three miles west of the new town, is a good lighthouse, built by the Egyptians before the British Government took over the north Somáli coast from them. Clearing the point of the sand spit it marks the entrance to the harbour. The water-supply is obtained from a spring near the old Egyptian fort of Dubár, eight miles inland under the Maritime Ranges, the water being brought over the Maritime Plain in pipes.
The plain immediately round Berbera is covered with white pebbles and devoid of bushes; a mile or two inland it becomes sandy and covered with a flat-topped mimósa, which is called khansa, growing here to a height of about three feet. There are also scattered thorn bushes about twelve feet high. The plain round Berbera has been greatly denuded of bush for firewood since 1885. I have watched this denudation gradually going on year after year, and have attributed it to the increased traffic since the British have been at Berbera, and to the fact that the town is now well populated all the year round, giving the bush no chance of recovering after the trade season is over. In the Maritime Ranges there are gaps, through which can be seen the towering blue line of Gólis. At a distance of about twenty miles east and west of Berbera the Maritime Ranges come down to within a mile or two of the sea, receding again at Bulhár to form a semicircle of hills with a radius of fourteen miles; then towards Zeila the Maritime Plain widens to thirty or forty miles.
This town is one hundred and seventy miles north-west of Berbera by the coast caravan track, and consists of one compact town of mat huts, with about fifty substantial Arab buildings. There is, strictly speaking, no harbour, but vessels lying off the place are protected by small islands to the north and west. The site of Zeila is low, and at high spring-tides it is almost an island. Water for the use of the town is carried in goatskins from Tukusha, three miles to the west.
For a mile or two inland the Zeila Maritime Plain is a desert of smooth sand, then there is a strip of low evergreen bush, and behind this a great open grass plain or ban, intersected by many dry river-beds, fringed with tamarisks and acacias. Travelling across this plain in 1890, my brother described it in his Journal as follows: “Except one or two low hills there is nothing to break the broad sheet of dull yellow, merging into blue haze on the horizon, here and there divided into light and dark patches by the shadows of the drifting clouds.”
This prairie rises to Eilo and Bur-ád Ranges to the south, thirty-five or forty miles inland, and stretches away to the north-west along the foot of the Tajurra Mountains nearly to the French settlement of Obok. Between Obok and Zeila is another settlement created by the French, called Jibúti, which within the last three or four years has risen into notice. The site is a promontory of coral rock, and there is a good harbour and a pier. The French are working hard to develop the place, in order if possible to make it compete with Zeila as a trade port.
At Bulhár, forty-two miles west of Berbera by the coast track, the Ayyal Yunis sub-tribe of the Habr Awal settle during the trading season, from November to April. At this time both Berbera and Bulhár are surrounded by the karias, or temporary kraals of the halted trading caravans, and these karias stretch far out into the Maritime Plain; but from May to October the town is nearly empty, a detachment of police being kept there as a guard. The Bulhár Plain is a vast expanse of bush, surrounded by blue mountains, and viewed from the sea, with the long line of white beach in the foreground, is very striking. Two very notable landmarks well known to sailors are Elmas Mountain, thirteen miles west of Bulhár, and Laba Gumbur Mado (the “two black hills”), twenty-five miles east of Berbera. Elmas rises to about 1500 feet, and is a cluster of bold peaks.
The Maritime mountains are composed principally of limestone, and some of them are nearly as barren-looking as the volcano at Aden. Here and there they are cut through by river-beds like the wádi of Arabia, water percolating slowly, hidden at various depths below a glaring expanse of dry powdery sand. Sometimes it is so near the surface that the sand is moist, and water can be got by scraping out a hole with the hands, though generally it is obtained by digging the lás, or shallow pit, through the surface sand.
However inviting these smooth stretches of sand may appear, a camp should never be pitched in the main channel. On a dozen different occasions, after heavy rain in the hills, I have seen a yellow flood, two to four feet deep and fifty yards wide, rush foaming down the dry channel of the Issutugan with great speed, rolling down in front of it a mass of branches, débris, and large boulders, and undermining the high perpendicular banks, pieces of which would drop into the river with a loud splash. At such a time the whole of the river-bed in front of the freshet has been absolutely dry, untouched by water perhaps for months. These freshets dwindle to a trickling stream in about six hours, and may cease to flow in two days. The water does not always reach the sea, as the dry loose sand of the Maritime Plain drinks it up. After one of these floods has run itself away a thin layer of mud remains deposited, which dries, cracks, and curls up into small flakes, to be swept away in a few days by the wind, leaving the surface of the sand again exposed.
At Bulhár, when there has been particularly heavy rain in the hills, the Issutugan comes sweeping down over twenty miles of river-bed and plain, and reaching the coast makes a clear cut through the high bank behind the sea-beach. When the river dries the sea-bank is again in the course of time silted up by the surf to its original height. At ordinary times the water of the Issutugan, which is a typical tug or Somáli sand-river, loses itself in the sand at So-Midgán, twenty-three miles inland from Bulhár, and sinking deep down below the Maritime Plain, collects behind the sea-bank, where it can be reached by digging.
Vast numbers of shallow pits, which render riding rather dangerous at night, are seen at intervals along the coast between Bulhár and Zeila. They contain water which is brackish, but drinkable. After being used for some time the well deepens, striking through the layer of fresh water into the underlying sea-water, and a new pit has to be dug. Where the Issutugan cuts through the Maritime hills, which it does for forty miles of its course, there is generally a tiny rivulet of water running along the centre of its bed, now and then sinking out of sight, to reappear again a mile or two below, the sand saturated with water held in suspension, forming awkward although not dangerous quicksands.