We have made a brief survey of British Somaliland, and though much is not yet explored, yet it is not likely to differ greatly from the part which we have seen. There will be the same red dust and monotonous stony plain with its thorn bushes and dry stream-beds. In some parts, by way of variety, the thorn will grow so dense as to be impenetrable; in others it will disappear, and we shall find pure desert. Only a Somali or a camel could live and thrive in such a country. So we return to the coast and continue our voyage. Again we must turn aside from the 28 direct road across the ocean to India and follow for a time the long coast of Africa. We round Cape Guardafui, now the extreme tip of the Horn; but the sea here is shallow, and the islands which continue the line of the headland must at some remote time have been joined to the continent. Of these islands, Socotra, long and narrow, about a hundred miles from end to end, alone need be noticed. It is a British Protectorate, controlled from Aden, though nominally dependent on the little Arabian state of Kishin. It is without harbours or trade, and our only interest there is to prevent its occupation by any other Power which might dispute with us the control of the Red Sea entrance. Aden, Somaliland, Perim and Socotra have all the same place in our policy; they have no meaning except in relation to the control of the sea.
We steam onwards, and across the Equator, passing by the coastline of Italian Somaliland and British East Africa, to where, nearly two thousand miles from Aden, and close in to the mainland, are two other islands coloured red on the map, Pemba and Zanzibar. We are a long way off our course to India, yet Zanzibar and the narrow strip of coast behind it belong by history and development to India and Arabia rather than to the neighbouring continent.
The Portuguese, on the way to India, creeping along the coast in their old-fashioned vessels, found here Arab traders and Arab cities with an active intercourse across the Indian Ocean. The periodic Monsoon winds brought the fleets of dhows, with the produce of India and the Persian Gulf, and carried them back with their cargoes of ivory and slaves. The Portuguese occupied the African coast region as part of their Indian Empire; the English and Dutch, at a later time, made straight across the ocean from the Cape or Mauritius and left the Portuguese undisturbed. So, when the rule of Portugal collapsed through its own weakness, the old conditions were restored.