Page:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.djvu/281

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Somaliland (and likewise to much of East Africa, Madagascar and Western India) but the ordinary type, without humps; which are bred in Southern Arabia and Socotra.

“The cattle of these regions and in fact the whole of Gallaland and Southern Abyssinia are all the humped variety. I have travelled fairly extensively in these regions and have never seen the non-humped breed, and very much doubt if they ever existed in these dried-up parts, as the hump is to these cattle what the camel’s hump is to the camel, a sort of storehouse. Besides this, cattle are rare in Somali- land proper, and it is improbable if they ever existed in greater num- bers or were exported.”

Vase of black pottery ornamented with figures of humped cattle. From the Madagascar collection in the Commercial Museum, Philadelphia.

This is one more proof that the Punt Expedition did not make its terminus on the Somali coast, but must have gone to the Plain of Dhofar, or possibly to the south side of Socotra, which was a depen- dency of Dhofar. The localization of the island Pa-anch of the XHIth dynasty tale, and the incense-land Panchaia of Virgil, in