After a short half-hour, we remounted and pursued our way down the Duntu chasm. As we advanced, the hills shrank in size, the bed became more level, and the walls of rock, gradually widening out, sank into the plain. Brisk and elastic above, the air, here soft, damp, and tepid, and the sun burning with a more malignant heat, convinced us that we stood once more below the Ghauts. For two hours we urged our mules in a south-east direction down the broad and winding Fiumara, taking care to inspect every well, but finding them all full of dry sand. Then turning eastwards, we crossed a plain called by the Donkey "Battaladayti Taranay"--the Flats of Taranay--an exact representation of the maritime regions about Zayla. Herds of camels and flocks of milky sheep browsing amongst thorny Acacia and the tufted Kulan, suggested pleasing visions to starving travellers, and for the first time after three days of hard riding, we saw the face of man. The shepherds, Mikahil of the Habr Awal tribe, all fled as we approached: at last one was bold enough to stand and deliver the news. My companions were refreshed by good reports: there had been few murders, and the sea-board was tolerably clear of our doughty enemies, the Ayyal Ahmed. We pricked over the undulating growth of parched grass, shaping our course for Jebel Almis, to sailors the chief landmark of this coast, and for a certain thin blue stripe on the far horizon, upon which we gazed with gladdened eyes. 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. Emerging, towards evening, from this bush, we saw large herds of camels, and called their guardians to come and meet us. For all reply they ran like ostriches to the nearest rocks, tittering the cry of alarm, and when we drew near each man implored us to harry his neighbour's cattle. Throughout our wanderings in Somaliland this had never occurred: it impressed me strongly with the disturbed state of the regions inhabited by the Habr Awal. After some time we persuaded a Bedouin who, with frantic gestures, was screaming and flogging his camels, to listen: reassured by our oaths, he declared himself to be a Bahgoba, and promised to show us a village of the Ayyal Gedid. The Hammal, who had married a daughter of this clan, and had constituted his father-in-law my protector at Berberah, made sure of a hospitable reception: "To-night we shall sleep under cover and drink milk," quoth one hungry man to another, who straightways rejoined, "And we shall eat mutton!"