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Each portion of the plain between these ranges has some local name, such as the "Shimberali Valley" extending westwards from the detached hill Dimoli, to Gauli, Dinanjir and Gularkar. Intersected with Fiumaras which roll torrents during the monsoon, they are covered with a scrub of thorns, wild fig, aloe, and different kinds of Cactus.
Through an avenue in the rolling nimbus, we could trace the long courses of Fiumaras, and below, where mist did not obstruct the sight, the tawny plains, cut with watercourses glistening white, shone in their eternal summer.
They are reconciled to it by its beneficial effects, especially after and before a journey. Good water, however, can be procured in any of the Fiumaras intersecting the plain; when the Hajj Sharmarkay's towers commanded the town wells, the people sank pits in low ground a few hundred yards distant, and procured a purer beverage.
Nothing could be worse for camels than the rough ridges at the foot of the mountain, full of thickets, cut by deep Fiumaras, and abounding in dangerous watercourses: the burdens slipped now backwards then forwards, sometimes the load was almost dragged off by thorns, and at last we were obliged to leave one animal to follow slowly in the rear.
The ground of the valley is a stiff clay, sprinkled with pebbles of primitive formation: the hills are mere rocks, and the torrent banks with strata of small stones, showed a watermark varying from ten to fifteen feet in height: in these Fiumaras we saw frequent traces of the Edler-game, deer and hog.
About a dozen contained running water: Captain Tuckey did not see one that would turn a mill in August and September; but in November and December all these fiumaras will discharge torrents. The breadth of the entroughed bed varies from 700 yards to two miles where it most dispreads itself.
The watershed is of course from south to north, and the rain from the hills is carried off by a number of Fiumaras or freshets, with broad shallow beds, denoting that much of the monsoon rain falling in the mountains is there absorbed, and that little finds its way to the sea. Meteorological observations show a moderate temperature, clear air, and a regular north-easterly wind.
The eastern staple rises at first sheer from the water's edge to the estimated altitude of a thousand feet, this is the "Crocodile's Head" which we saw on the last march, and already the thin rains are robing its rocky surface with tender green. The strata are disposed at angles, varying from 35deg. to 45deg., and three streaks of bright trees denote Fiumaras about to be filled.
Everywhere the surface was burnt up by the sun, and withered from want of rain. Towards evening we entered a broad slope called by the Somal Dihh Murodi, or Murodilay, the Elephants' Valley. Crossing its breadth from west to east, we traversed two Fiumaras, the nearer "Hamar," the further "Las Dorhhay," or the Tamarisk waterholes.
The surveyors doubtless found difficulty in obtaining the Bedawi names for the several features, which are unknown to the citizens of the coast; but they might easily have consulted the only authorities, the Jerafin-Huwaytat, who graze their flocks and herds on and around the mountain. As usual in Arabia, the four several main "horns" are called after the Fiumaras that drain them.
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