Words cannot be strung together to describe the, apparently, utter barrenness and sterility--to the European mind--of the hundred odd miles of country I have ridden across during the last four days. The soil is too poor and dry to produce anything in the nature of food for man, but Nature has provided--not too plentifully--shrubs with deep wide-spreading roots which store up the moisture in bulb-like receptacles and so tide the plant over the worst and hottest days of the year. Thus there are green nourishing leaves for the hardy cattle to eat when all else is dead. Even the deep roots of the grass are provided with nodules to store up moisture that the plants may live. And all these plants know the secret of extracting from this apparently sterile earth the richest ingredient necessary for the sustenance of cattle and camels. Further, centuries of training and natural selection have evolved a beast, be it camel, cow, horse, sheep, or goat, that is capable of living through drought and conditions that would soon prove fatal to animals from fatter lands. These Somal-bred animals can pass over stretches necessitating several days' journey without water, carrying on their backs the water to drink, in their udders the rich milk--food as well as drink--for man, their master, and his children. In such country as this, it would be plagiarism to attempt to describe what has so often been described before. The rainy season, compared with that of more favoured parts of the world, appears as little short of a drought; and a drought here, similarly compared, might well be classed as "hell let loose." To-day we are to commence a further ascent into a more favoured land. Why these plain-dwellers and low-hill men have not done the same, and stayed on the cool high plateaux, blessed with a comparatively fair soil and better watered, is one of those puzzles in life it is impossible to solve.