The north-west­ern bound­ary of Juba­land is a line drawn from the Lo­rian swamp, pass­ing through the dis­tricts of Wa­jheir and Eil Wak, and ter­mi­nat­ing at Dolo, on the river Juba. Its south-east­ern bound­ary is the In­dian ocean. Its east­ern bound­ary is the river Juba, whose east­ern bank is within the Ital­ian sphere of in­flu­ence. The west­ern bound­ary is an imag­i­nary line from the Lo­rian swamp to the Ba­jun set­tle­ment of Ki­unga on the coast. Off the coast is a se­ries of coral reefs and small is­lands, partly in­hab­ited, which makes the ap­proach by ves­sels some­what dif­fi­cult.

The avail­able har­bours are two in num­ber, Kismayu and Port Durn­ford; the lat­ter can only be en­tered by ves­sels of light draught. The mouth of the river Juba is blocked by a sand-bar, which can be crossed by ves­sels not re­quir­ing more than 6 feet of wa­ter. There is, in ad­di­tion, the large creek of Arnoleh [Anooleh] (place of milk), which is nav­i­ga­ble by dhows, and ex­tends some 20 miles in­land. Along the shore there is a line of sand­hills stretch­ing in­land for about a mile. Their heights av­er­age not more than 200 feet, and they are clothed with bush and mi­mosa thorn.

Im­me­di­ately be­hind the sand­hills lies a flat coun­try, thick with thorn and other bushes, but which pos­sesses here and there open or park-like plains whereon cat­tle, camels and goats are pas­tured. As we pro­ceed north-west­ward the belts of bush be­come denser and more dif­fi­cult to pen­e­trate, while in the more south­ern dis­tricts the open plains are larger and more nu­mer­ous.

The gen­eral view of the coun­try is un­in­ter­est­ing from lack of hills, and de­press­ing from want of va­ri­ety; yet it pos­sesses great pos­si­bil­i­ties as a graz­ing coun­try. Along the whole of the west­ern bank of the river Juba lies a belt of what is called ” black-cot­ton ” soil, the fer­til­ity of which, un­der ir­ri­ga­tion, may be com­pared to that of the Nile val­ley. It is al­ready pro­duc­ing crops of cot­ton equal to the best Egypt­ian, and in the fu­ture might be­come a dis­trict of con­sid­er­able com­mer­cial im­por­tance. The Juba, lo­cally called the Webbe Ganana, rises in the moun­tains of south­ern Abyssinia. Its course is south­ward, but it winds in many di­rec­tions. Its only trib­u­tary in Juba­land is the Daua. The lo­cal drainage is very small, and there are nu­mer­ous swamps on ei­ther bank. The river is low­est from De­cem­ber to March, it then rises slowly un­til May. Af­ter this month the river again falls, and this fall is fol­lowed by its great­est rise, which oc­curs be­tween Au­gust and No­vem­ber. The banks are well de­fined and clothed with veg­e­ta­tion and bush. The swamps lie be­yond these banks. The river is nav­i­ga­ble all the year round to Yonti. Dur­ing the floods steam­ers can even reach Seren­leh. The tsetse fly haunts the banks and swamps.