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The camp is in a "Devil's Punchbowl," stiflingly hot during nine months of the year, and subject to alternations of sandstorm and Simum, "without either seed, water, or trees," as Ibn Batutah described it 500 years ago, unproductive for want of rain, not a sparrow can exist there, nor will a crow thrive, and essentially unhealthy.
We pursued our way over hard alluvial soil to sand, and thence passed into a growth of stiff yellow grass not unlike a stubble in English September. Day broke upon a Somali Arcadia, whose sole flaws were salt water and Simum.
My arms were peeled even in the month of December; and my companions, panting with the heat, like the Atlantes of Herodotus, poured forth reproaches upon the rising sun. The townspeople, when forced to hurry across it in the hotter season, cover themselves during the day with Tobes wetted every half hour in sea water; yet they are sometimes killed by the fatal thirst which the Simum engenders.
The Somal divide their year into four seasons: Haga is the hot season after the monsoon, and corresponding with our autumn: the country suffers from the Fora, a violent dusty Simum, which is allayed by a fall of rain called Karan. Dair, the beginning of the cold season, opens the sea to shipping.
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