The aspect of the Maritime mountains is very forbidding. Bare 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 Bulhár 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 débris 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 distresses the baggage animals, and the stones are very trying to horses’ feet, even camels going better over them. The sand-rivers find their way 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 Gólis 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 mimósa 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 gudá or larger thorn-tree, with a dense undergrowth of pointed aloes, making it impossible to move about except in the sheep and game paths. Narrow strips of thorn bushes and dark green poison trees (wabé) wind down from the mountains, marking the tributary watercourses. The river-beds themselves consist of broad, flat, 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 gudá trees grow closely together at the edge of the steep or overhanging banks, their branches being covered with long drapery of armo 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 driftwood 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 plains, we arrive at the higher mountains, rising to nearly 6900 feet. Gólis is the collective name, though Somális have a name for each flat-topped bluff, as Daar-áss (Red clay), Gán-Libah (Lion hand), Ban-yéro (Little plain), and Dig-wein (Big ears). In fact, in Somáliland every watering-place, hill, or mound, and many a prominent tree, has some descriptive name known to all the local tribes.
The Gólis Range forms a gigantic step rising abruptly on the northern or coast face, and presenting to the sea, thirty-five miles distant, great scarped precipices and bold descents, long walls of perpendicular rock, red, yellow, or gray in colour, fringing the summit for many miles. The whole interior of Somáliland presents the appearance of having, in some great movement of the earth’s crust, been elevated from the level of Guban, an abrupt break or fault occurring at Gólis Range, which seems to have been upheaved for about six thousand feet; while at Hargeisa the country is crumpled up into a chaos of hills, Guban rising gradually into Ogo in several successive steps instead of in one great fault. On the Hargeisa side the country between the levels of Guban and Ogo is called Ogo-Gudan. At the base of the fringing precipices, which are two or three hundred feet high, vast tumbled masses of rock which have slipped from the crest lie heaped together half buried among the foliage of tall cedar-trees and a profusion of forest growth, forming caves and moss-grown recesses with great variety of wild flowers, and clumps of maiden-hair fern growing in the damp crevices of the rocks. The soil is a rich black vegetable mould.
There can be no greater contrast than that between this fine mountain country and the brown sterile shores of the Gulf of Aden. Often as one looks down from the top of Gólis the whole of Guban is hidden from view by an immense expanse of white cloud lying below, resembling a storm-tossed sea, the tops of Deimoleh-Wein and other detached hills rising like islands above it. The air is so clear in the elevated interior that from a hill in the Eilo Range, above Zeila, I have recognised each separate bluff of Gólis at a distance of one hundred and twenty miles. In these hills the roar of a lion or the alarm note of a koodoo antelope can be heard echoing up the gorges for great distances.
On the northern slope, at about a thousand feet below the level of the crest of Gólis, is a ledge of broken ground, a mile or two wide, running parallel to the range for twenty or thirty miles. It is called Mirso, or “The Haven,” and is a favourite pasture of the Habr Awal and Habr Gerhajis tribes, and also good ground for koodoo. It is covered with jungle, but the soil is shallow and stony. A gigantic blue-green cactus, or euphorbia, called hassádan, grows here to a height of about forty feet, and gives a very dense shade. The sap is a white milky liquid, which pours from every cut in the tree, and if caught in cups and dried, it solidifies into a kind of rubber. The top of the range is covered with dense jungle of mountain cedar. In the gorges some of these trees, called dayeb, grow tall and straight, often four feet in diameter at the foot, and over a hundred feet high; but more frequently the dayeb forest is of comparatively stunted growth, being about forty feet high, with the trunks and branches much bent and twisted. The best trees which I saw were under Daar-áss Bluff, near Kulméye in Mirso, and on Wagar Mountain, farther east.
From the crest of Gólis the country slopes towards the south-east, falling gently towards the interior, the cedar forests ceasing at a distance of about six miles inside the crest, and opening out into grassy downs or thorn-covered wilderness. Soon, as we pass through Ogo, the Haud waterless country, from one hundred to two hundred and fifty miles across, is reached; and on its farther edge the ground again drops slightly, as at Milmil, into Ogádén, the broad broken surface of Ogádén finally sloping into the valley of the Webbe Shabéleh or Leopard river, beyond which is the Juba. Where the Haud Plateau drops at Milmil the limestone surface, which is covered with red soil, breaks up into flat-topped hills, which continue the level of the Haud, but cease a little farther south. They are covered with high durr grass, and form some of the most favourite retreats for lions. Thus the Gólis Range and its prolongations east and west are the most prominent natural feature in Northern Somáliland, forming the watershed between Ogo, the high cool country, and Guban, the arid coast belt. Guban is drained by sand-rivers and ravines, which, starting in Gólis, pass through the interior plains and cut through the Maritime Ranges, the water being eventually lost under the Maritime Plain, to reappear near the surface behind the sea-shore. I consider the whole of the Guban country to be almost valueless, except as a pasture for sheep and goats, as it is only upon reaching the high country that the soil is found to be fertile.
The Haud is the great elevated wilderness which separates Ogádén and Harar from Ogo, Guban, and the coast. The Somáli word haud is used to describe a peculiar kind of country, consisting of thick and sometimes impenetrable thorn jungle, broken up by shallow watercourses, and generally having an undergrowth of hig or dár aloes. The great waterless plateau which is generally called the Haud is really a district, and besides the variety of ground usually called haud, it includes large strips of open, rolling, grass plains called ban, or, to the south-east, semi-desert country called aror. Ban is the Somáli term for an open plain absolutely, or nearly devoid of bushes.
In the wooded parts of the Haud dense thorn jungles alternate with small glades of durr grass six feet high, luxuriating in beautiful feathery clumps, with a level red soil; ant-hills crop up at about every hundred yards, their pinnacles often rising to twenty-five feet. Some of the dead thorn-trees are to be seen standing half eaten by white ants, and the débris of fallen ones are found scattered about half-buried in the soil, where they have been swept along by sheets of water during the last rains. The remains of galól bushes attain an almost iron hardness, and many a wound have I and my followers received at night by stumbling against a gori, or jagged stump, half hidden in the high grass. There is excellent pasture in the glades and between the bushes, the Haud pastures being considered better than those of Ogo or Guban. Extensive tracts of fertile soil, of good depth, are to be found at about five thousand feet elevation, which, although, except at one or two mullah villages, none of them are under cultivation, owing to the nomadic life of the people, may yet in the distant future become very valuable. The rainfall in the higher parts of the country is ample, and the water would only require to be stored in tanks, as is done in the drier parts of India, to ensure a supply all the year round. Of course for three months in the dry season the whole of the soil is baked hard by the sun, but the same thing occurs in India. In June, when there is a hot wind at the coast, cool breezes blow over the elevated Haud, making it possible to march all day long; and although in the sun it is hot, yet in a tent pitched under the shade of a flat-topped gudá tree it is sometimes quite chilly, even at midday, while it is disagreeably so in the early mornings.
The Haud was first crossed by Mr. F. L. James and his party in the winter of 1884-85, and a description of the journey is given in his book, The Horn of Africa. Their camels were carrying loads for thirteen days without touching a drop of water. The description of the Haud in the above-named work, although I believe it to be an accurate portrait of the country passed over by that expedition, does not give any idea of the pleasant coolness and apparent fertility of the more elevated North-eastern Haud. Mr. James’s party crossed this district at almost its widest part, and in the Jilál or driest season. The plateau is traversed by several warda, or great trade routes, to the far interior from the coast, generally running nearly north and south. In the strips of ban, or open plain, often many miles wide, all caravan paths are lost, each caravan crossing independently of landmarks, and no impression is left on the growing grass. Once the ban is passed, however, all tracks will have converged into one well-worn path, or group of parallel paths. One of the most important of these is the Warda Gumaréd crossing the plateau from Hargeisa to Milmil.