Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/232

 or Bizan, founded in the fourteenth century, and often mentioned by Portuguese authors under the name of the convent of the "Vision." It takes this name from a gilded cloud said to have been seen hovering in mid air by the traveller Poncet and other pilgrims in the year 1700. Nearly a thousand monks live in the convent and the adjacent buildings.

At the foot of the mountains, but separated from the littoral plain by a chain of hills, stands the village of Ailef, in a lonely valley which would amply repay cultivation. In the neighbourhood, three miles farther south, are hot springs (138° F.) sufficiently copious to form a stream ; the surrounding ground within a radius of 155 feet from the orifice is too hot to permit of its being traversed barefooted. When descending the plateau the Abyssinians are accustomed to plunge into the source of the river Ailet, and even occasionally to wash their sheep in it. A poisonous beetle lives in a part of the hot spring where the temperature cools down to 118° F. Northwards in the Samhar district are many ancient ruins, chiefly tombs, some of which resemble the megalithic monuments of France. An ancient town, now abandoned, at one time covered a space of several miles in circumference. On the plain a few stations follow along the route to the coast at Massawah. Such are Saati, or the "Fens," so-called from the pools of water which are usually found in the beds of the dried- up watercourses during the dry season; M'Kulu, which the Europeans of Massawah have chosen as their health-resort, and have surrounded with groves of tamarinds and other trees; Hotumlu, headquarters of the Swedish missionaries and their schools. To the south, nestled amidst mimosa-trees, is the town of Arkiio, a kind of capital, where resides the naïb, a descendant of a dynasty of chiefs who, since the end of the sixteenth century, have negotiated all commercial transactions between Abyssinia and Massawah. The inhabitants of this territory owe a double allegiance to the traders of the neighbouring seaport and to the Abyssinians of the plateau, whose claim to the ownership of the lowlands has been maintained" from age to age, and annually renewed by raising winter crops in the district. The Turks, having conquered the uplands and the coast in 1557, attempted at first to govern the coast populations directly; but finding themselves powerless against nomads ever on the move, they surrendered their authority to the chief of the Belaus, a branch of the Hababs who roamed over the neighbouring plains. Even the garrison of Massawah, mainly composed of Bosniaks, was gradually absorbed with the Ilababs by marriage. Made naïb, or "lieutenant," of the viceroys of Ilejaz, the chief of the Belau received a regular subsidy from the Turkish Government conditionally on his protecting the Turkish or Abyssinian caravans against the attacks of the neighbouring tribes, remitting to the suzerain a portion of the taxes paid by the merchants, and supplying the island with the necessary water. Frequent quarrels arose between the naïb and the Massawah islanders; the aqueducts were often cut, and the naïb himself, driven from Arkiio, was often