Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/231

 The camp of the ras, or chief, who governs the province of Tigré, is situated at Alsaga (9,460 feet), at the junction of the routes ascending from the coast at Massawah, and from the countries of the Bogos and Mensas. A short distance to the east stands the town of Asmara, present residence of a shum, or chief, who claims the title of "King of the Sea." Asmara lies on the extreme edge of the Abyssinian plateau, at the point where the route entering on the Red Sea watershed winds down to the plain.

Like Asmara, a few other hamlets serve as intermediary stations for the caravans on their arrival at the crest of the Tigré plateau. Kasen, standing on the last spur of the Hamassen uplands north-west of Asmara, also commands one of the routes leading to Massawah. This post is occasionally dimly visible at a distance of 45 miles in a straight line between the haze of the horizon and the marine vapours.

From Kasen another caravan route runs north-west to the Senhit uplands, and to Keren, capital of the Bogos territory. This place, surrounded by olive-groves, already lies in the kwalla zone at a height of 4,800 feet above the sea. A fortress named Senhit, like the country itself, has been built by the Egyptians at the side of the town; but in virtue of the treaty concluded with the English it is to be evacuated and surrendered to the King of Abyssinia. Keren was the centre of the Catholic missions in northern Abyssinia, and its large seminary supplied numerous native priests for the churches scattered throughout the provinces of the empire. Nearly all the inhabitants of the Bogos and Mensa territories have abandoned their Mahommedan practices to re-embrace the Christian religion as taught in its new form by the Lazarist missionaries.

The route descending from Asmara to the Red Sea, encircles on the north a group of projecting uplands, on one of which stands the famous monastery of Bijan