Firing And Clarified Butter Are The Farrier's Panaceas.

Camels are cured by sheep's head broth, asses by chopping one ear, mules by cutting off the tail, and horses by ghee or a drench of melted fat.

CHAP. VI.

FROM THE ZAYLA HILLS TO THE MARAR PRAIRIE.

I have now, dear L., quitted the maritime plain or first zone, to enter the Ghauts, that threshold of the Ethiopian highlands which, beginning at Tajurrah, sweeps in semicircle round the bay of Zayla, and falls about Berberah into the range of mountains which fringes the bold Somali coast. This chain has been inhabited, within History's memory, by three distinct races,--the Gallas, the ancient Moslems of Adel, and by the modern Somal. As usual, however, in the East, it has no general vernacular name. [1]

The aspect of these Ghauts is picturesque. The primitive base consists of micaceous granite, with veins of porphyry and dykes of the purest white quartz: above lie strata of sandstone and lime, here dun, there yellow, or of a dull grey, often curiously contorted and washed clear of vegetable soil by the heavy monsoon. On these heights, which are mostly conoid with rounded tops, joined by ridges and saddlebacks, various kinds of Acacia cast a pallid and sickly green, like the olive tree upon the hills of Provence. They are barren in the cold season, and the Nomads migrate to the plains: when the monsoon covers them with rich pastures, the people revisit their deserted kraals. The Kloofs or ravines are the most remarkable features of this country: in some places the sides rise perpendicularly, like gigantic walls, the breadth varying from one hundred yards to half a mile; in others cliffs and scaurs, sapped at their foundations, encumber the bed, and not unfrequently a broad band of white sand stretches between two fringes of emerald green, delightful to look upon after the bare and ghastly basalt of Southern Arabia. The Jujube grows to a height already betraying signs of African luxuriance: through its foliage flit birds, gaudy-coloured as kingfishers, of vivid red, yellow, and changing-green. I remarked a long-tailed jay called Gobiyan or Fat [2], russet-hued ringdoves, the modest honey-bird, corn quails, canary-coloured finches, sparrows gay as those of Surinam, humming-birds with a plume of metallic lustre, and especially a white-eyed kind of maina, called by the Somal, Shimbir Load or the cow-bird. The Armo-creeper [3], with large fleshy leaves, pale green, red, or crimson, and clusters of bright berries like purple grapes, forms a conspicuous ornament in the valleys. There is a great variety of the Cactus tribe, some growing to the height of thirty and thirty-five feet: of these one was particularly pointed out to me. The vulgar Somal call it Guraato, the more learned Shajarat el Zakkum: it is the mandrake of these regions, and the round excrescences upon the summits of its fleshy arms are supposed to resemble men's heads and faces.

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