Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/223

 attested by its Mohammedan settlers. The Agau, who form the basis of the local population, are not sufficiently energetic to trade or work tho coalfields in the neighbourhood. The market of Sokota, which lasts three days every week, is mostly visited by the merchants and dealers in salt which serves as the chief small currency of southern Abyssinia, whereas in northern Tigré bales of cloth are employed. The amolch, or salt money, shaped like French whetstones, is procured from the salt lake Alalbed. The mean weight of each block is a pound and a quarter, and it naturally increases in value as it penetrates farther into the interior. Whilst the Danakil quarries of the Taltal tribe supply over a hundred of these amoleh for a Maria-Theresa talari, they are occasionally sold on the western banks of Lake Tana at tenpence a-piece. When Sarzec and Raffray crossed this country in 1873, they were worth at Sokota about threepence half-penny; but eight years afterwards, at the time of Rohlfs' visit, their value had diminished by three-fourths. When the means of communication shall have become more easy, they will entirely lose their conventional value in the barter trade, and will be exclusively used as a condiment. The Abyssinian proverb, "He eats salt," applied to prodigals and spendthrifts, will then have lost its point. The packers are very careful to protect the salt bricks from moisture; they lay them in parallel rows on copper plates, made like cartridge boxes, which are placed in layers on the back of a mule and covered with an awning.

Sokota has recently been greatly impoverished; devastated by epidemic fevers, it has lost three-fourths of its population, which from 4,000 to 5,000 in 1868 had fallen to not more than 1,500 at the time of Rohlfs' visit in 1881. In the vicinity of Sokota a monolithic church, like those of Lasta, has been hewn in the granite; its crypt contains the mummies of several kings of the country. The roads are bordered with dolmens similar to those of Brittany. One of the neighbouring Agau tribes bears the name of Kani, or Ham, after whom D'Abbadie applies this term to the whole group of "Hamitic" languages, of which the Ham, or Hamtenga, is regarded as typical. From Sokota to the country of the Bogos another caravan route, passing about 60 miles to the west of the Abyssinian border-range, traverses Abbi-Addi, capital of the province of Tembien, on the route to Adua, present capital of the Tigré, and next to Gondar and Basso, the largest market in all Abyssinia. This town stands nearly in the middle of the region of plateaux separating the two large curves described by the Takkazeh and the Upper Mareb. The River Assam, a tributary of the Takkazeh, winding through the naked but fertile plain of Adua, flows southwards, whilst to the north of the hill on whose side the town is built (6,500 feet), stands the isolated and precipitous Mount Shelota, or Sholoda, 9,000 feet high. Eastwards, overtopping the other summits, stands the lofty Semayata, 10,300 feet high. Adua, with its steep winding streets lined with small stone houses thatched with straw and encircled by slate terraces, scarcely presents the