opposite, in all its characteristics, of the northern. Instead of
having a steep drop of from 6000 to 7000 feet, it falls by gentle
slopes to successive terraces, like a giant staircase, to scarcely
half that depth, where it rests at the head of the high plateau land
of Nogal, and is almost barren. Nogal, as I have said before, is also
very barren, only producing trees, such as the hardy acacia and
jujube, in sheltered places, in the valleys or watercourses which
drain that land to the south-east. I had no means of determining it,
but should judge this second great geographical feature, the plateau
of Nogal, by the directions its streams lie in, to have a gradual
decreasing declination, like all the rest of the interior, from the
north, where it averages an altitude of from 3000 to 4000 feet, down
to the level of the sea on south and by east.

According to traditional histories furnished me by the natives who
accompanied me on the journeys I undertook, it appears that the
present Somali are of rather recent origin, not more than four and a
half centuries old. About the year 1413, an Arab chieftain,
Darud-bin-Ismail, who had been disputing with an elder brother for
certain territorial rights at Mecca, was overpowered and driven from
the Mussulman Holy Land, and marched southwards, accompanied by a
large number of faithful followers,--amongst whom was an Asyri damsel,
of gentle blood and interesting beauty, whom he subsequently
married,--to Makallah, on the southern shores of Arabia. Once arrived
there, this band of vanquished fugitives hired vessels, and, crossing
the Gulf of Aden, came to Bunder Gori. Here they were hospitably
received by the then governing people, who, for the most part, were
Christians--probably Gallas and Abyssinians--who, judging from the few
archaeological remains they subsequently left behind them, must have
lived in a far more advanced state of civilisation than the present