The cli­mate in gen­eral is healthy even for Eu­ro­peans, for al­though the heat is of­ten in­tense,1`it is a dry heat very dif­fer­ent to that of places to the south. The av­er­age coastal tem­per­a­ture is 80?, but in­land it is greater. The sea­sons are as fol­lows :

Gu, The heavy rains (March to July).
Haga`, Dry sea­son (July to Au­gust).
Dair, Lesser rains (Sep­tem­ber to No­vem­ber).
Dira`, Dry sea­son (De­cem­ber to Feb­ru­ary).

The two dry sea­sons are some­times also called Ji­laal, and the two rainy sea­sons Bar­waaqo.

The rains fall in­land first, and are of­ten ac­com­pa­nied by se­vere thun­der­storms. On the coast the rain­fall is less than in the in­te­rior. The two mon­soons are equally di­vided into pe­ri­ods of six months each; the south-west, blow­ing from April to Au­gust; and the north-east from Sep­tem­ber to March. Be­tween the two mon­soons comes a calm, when the heat is ex­ces­sive.

The coun­try may be roughly di­vided into the fol­low­ing dis­tricts : Rama-adi, Ba­jun, Kismayu, Juba river, Af­madu, Seren­leh, Eil Wak, Wa­jheir, Lo­rian.

The dis­trict of Rama-adi, in­clud­ing the sub-dis­trict of Joreh, con­tains a group of flat-topped low hills on which a fairly plen­ti­ful quan­tity of rain usu­ally falls dur­ing the year. This wa­ter, drain­ing into the swamps men­tioned above, causes the coun­try to pos­sess valu­able feed­ing-grounds for cat­tle. Port Durn­ford is the nat­ural har­bour for this dis­trict, but at pre­sent the trade is un­de­vel­oped. Much valu­able wild-vine rub­ber could be ob­tained from this neigh­bour­hood, but the trade is hin­dered be­cause the So­mali, who dom­i­nate the coun­try, are too supine to gather the rub­ber, and will not suf­fer the coast tribes, who are not So­mali, to col­lect it.

Three sub-tribes of the Ogaden So­mali dom­i­nate the Rama-adi dis­trict, namely, the Abd Wak, the Maghaabul, and the Ab­dul­lah. They pos­sess large herds of cat­tle, but they do not breed camels.