Horn of Africa covered the Simien and Bale Mountains but melted at the beginning of the Holocene. The mountains descend in a huge escarpment to the Red Sea and more steadily to the Indian Ocean. Socotra is a small island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia. Its size is 3,600 km (1,390 sq mi) and it is a territory of Yemen. The lowlands of the Horn are generally arid in spite of their proximity to the equator. This is because the winds of the tropical monsoons that give seasonal rains to the Sahel and the Sudan blow from the west.
Up the Country Up the Country Up The Country is a popular poem by iconic Australian writer and poet Henry Lawson. It was first published in "The Bulletin" magazine on 9 July 1892, under the title "Borderland," and started the Bulletin Debate, a series of poems by both Lawson and Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson about the true nature of life in the Australian bush. In "Up The Country," Lawson recounts his trip to the barren and gloomy Australian bush, and criticises "City Bushmen" such as Banjo Paterson who tended to romanticize bush life. Paterson later responded with a poem of his own, entitled