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.
German horn players since about 1930 because of the increasing ubiquity of the German horn. Since that time, the true French horn's use has been confined mainly to France, and even in that country the German horn was already gaining favour with some French players as early as 1938. In the late seventeenth century, French makers became preeminent in the manufacture of hunting horns, and were credited with the creation of the now-familiar, circular "hoop" shape of the instrument. As a result, even in England these instruments were often referred to by their French names, "trompe de chasse" or "cor de chasse"