Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/463





SOMALI AND EAST GALLA LANDS.

HIS easternmost region of Africa projects in rude peninsular form beyond the normal continental coast-line, in such a way as to skirt for some 600 miles the south side of the Gulf of Aden, which separates it from the far larger Arabian peninsula on the north. Few other African lands present an equal degree of geographical unity, both as regards its main physical outlines and the homogeneous character of its unruly nomad populations. Taken as a whole, Somali Land constitutes a region of triangular shape, which is bounded on the north by the Gulf of Aden, on the east and south-east by the reefs and shores of the Indian Ocean as fur us the Tana estuary, and on the west, that is, landwards, by the little known and rarely visited mountain range which forms the outer escarpment of the inland plateaux from Mount Kenia to Wosho and the Ankober highlands.

This extensive tract, which has o superficial area of over 400,000 square miles, is inhabited by tribal groups which present great uniformity of type, language, and usages, from one end of the territory to the other. They even appear to have maintained the same uniformity, or at least to have undergone but slight change since the remote ages recorded on the ancient Egyptian monuments.

Although it has been known for thousands of years to history, the Somali domain has remained almost entirely excluded from the sphere of European influences, which have elsewhere made themselves felt in nearly all regions washed by the marine waters. The geographical exploration of the country is even still very far from being completed. Students of historical geography are unacquainted with the itineraries both of Jorge de Abreu, who accompanied an Abyssinian army to the shores of Lake Zuai in 1525, and of Antonio Fernandez, who traversed this region a century later. On the other hand, the routes of the modern explorers who have penetrated farther inland — Cruttenden, Burton, James, Von der Decken, Brenner, Menges, Révoil, Paulitschke, Mokhtar Bey — stop far short of the mountain range bounding the plateaux of Gallaland, nor have they yet been connected with