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Updated: May 6, 2025
Having there finished our last mouthful of food, we remounted, and following the plain eastward, prepared for a long night-march. As the light of day waned we passed on the right hand a table-formed hill, apparently a detached fragment of the sub-Ghauts or coast range.
Our road lay between low brown hills of lime and sandstone, the Sub-Ghauts forming a scattered line between the maritime mountains and the sea. Presently the path was choked by dense scrub of the Arman Acacia: its yellow blossoms scented the air, but hardly made amends for the injuries of a thorn nearly two inches long, and tipped with a wooden point sharp as a needle.
Behind the town, and distant about seven miles, lie the Sub-Ghauts, a bold background of lime and sandstone. Through a broad gap called Duss Malablay appear in fine weather the granite walls of Wagar and Gulays, whose altitude by aneroid was found to be 5700 feet above the level of the sea.
This part of Somali land is a sandy plain, thinly covered with thorns and bounded by two ranges, the Ghauts and Sub-Ghauts. The Ghauts lie from 8 to 40 miles from the sea, they average from 4000 to 6000 feet, are thickly covered with gum-arabic and frankincense trees, the wild fig and the Somali pine, and form the seaward wall of the great table-land of the interior.
The banks were fringed with Brab and Tamarisk, the Daum palm and green rushes: a clear sparkling and shallow stream bisected the sandy bed, and smaller branches wandered over the surface. This river, the main drain of the Ghauts and Sub-Ghauts, derives its name from the increased volume of the waters during night: evaporation by day causes the absorption of about a hundred yards.
Such is the general formation of the plain between the mountains and the sea, whose breadth, in a direct line, may measure from forty-five to forty-eight miles. Near the first zone of hills, or sub-Ghauts, it produces a thicker vegetation; thorns and acacias of different kinds appear in clumps; and ground broken with ridges and ravines announces the junction.
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