ABSTRACT
The ‘Horn of Africa’, the Somalia peninsula, is a hard-scrabble place inhabited by a hard-scrabble people, the Somalis. The Northern half of the Horn – that portion which later became the British Protectorate in Somaliland – is, in general, the least prepossessing of the Somali territories. Aside from a narrow coastal belt, bordering the sweltering Gulf of Aden, most of the country is of very little value to anyone, and is hard to love even for the nomads who live there still. The coastal belt is very constricted, and boxed in by the Karkaar Mountains. Beyond the mountains stretches the Somali plain – high, riverless, almost waterless, and featureless – which constitutes most of the country. These stretch beyond the current boundaries of Somalia up to the Ethiopian highlands, and are the nomadic Somalis’ natural range.
