(2) Gu—May, June—the heavier rains (little felt on the coast).
(3) Haga—July, August, September—the hot weather. The karíf wind, or south-west monsoon, blows furiously. It is hot in Guban, with sand-storms, but cold on the Haud and other parts of the high interior.
(4) Dair—October, November, December—the lighter rains. Heavy on the coast.
(5) At the end of Jilál is a short season of greatest heat just before Gu, called Kalíl.
Of these seasons the Haga is the most unpleasant on the coast, the karíf, a strong south-west gale, sweeping along with great fury, blowing the dust and stones in the face of any caravan so unfortunate as to have to march against it, and making it impossible to keep a tent up. The wind generally commences at midnight and blows till 2 P.M. on the next day; the remainder of the twenty-four hours, from 2 P.M. till midnight, being a time of great heat, which is even more unpleasant than the wind, unless tempered by a slight north-east breeze, coming as a reaction after the fourteen hours’ gale. My usual plan was to make the longest marches in the mornings, in spite of the wind, and on halting, to camp under the shade of a tree till the wind should have stopped sufficiently for us to pitch tents. Then at night a bivouac was made by piling all the baggage and camel-mats into a steep wall, all of us sleeping under the lee of it in the open, by which means one could get a comfortable sleep till morning; but I never kept up a tent during the wind-storm.
At this season coast communication by dhow is very uncertain; dhows cannot beat against the karíf, but while sailing before it they make about eleven knots an hour. Dhows for Aden cannot leave the Berbera harbour during the Haga season until evening, when the lull occurs, and then they sail out to near the lighthouse, three miles west of the town, waiting till midnight to cross towards Aden; on getting thirty-five miles out to sea they are usually clear of the karíf. This wind seems to cease above the level of Guban, and above Gólis the heat of July is mitigated by cool south-west breezes which are not very violent. As one descends again to the Webbe Shabéleh valley in the far interior, one comes into the karíf again; it is much worse at Bulhár, Berbera, and Karam than it is on the Zeila side.
In the Kalíl season, the intense heat just before the rains, I have registered 118° Fahrenheit under the shade of a double “Cabul” tent at midday, in my camp at Malgui in the maritime mountains. As we marched to the camp where this heat was registered, several of the men were bleeding from the nose, and on my asking them the reason, they said cheerfully, “Oh! Allah makes our noses bleed to cool our heads.” The Somális do not wear anything on their heads, and the close-shaven skulls of the older men are entirely exposed to the hot sun.
Caravans coming down from a distance of ten or twelve days’ march—that is, from Milmil or from this side of Gerlogubi—generally make two trips to the coast each year. For the first trip they come down from the interior late in the Haga, or about September, leaving Berbera again for the interior in the Dair, about December. They then come on a second trip in Jilál, bringing down animals, hides, ivory, feathers, gum, and ghee; and return in Kalíl, taking up chiefly rice and cloth.
From distant parts of Ogádén, or the Webbe, caravans make one trip a year, coming down at the end of Haga and returning in Kalíl or the beginning of Gu. Many smaller caravans, coming from the nearer parts of the Haud and Ogo, and engaged in petty barter, make more than two journeys to and from Berbera. Those coming from Fáf in Ogádén make the journey in, say, fifteen days’ fast marching without halts. The gédi, or march, is usually from four to five hours, ten to twelve miles being covered. The start is made at 4 A.M., marching goes on till 9 A.M., the midday halt giving the camels time to feed till 1 P.M., when another march is made till about 5 P.M.[11]