Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/234

 The town of Massawah, the Arabian Medsawa, or Mussawah, and the Abyssinian Mutogna, occupies a coral islet about 3,300 feet long from east to west, but scarcely more than 1,000 feet broad from north to south. Stone houses of Arab construction, and branch huts, are crowded together on this rock, which is connected by a dyke with the still smaller island of Taulud. Taulud itself is attached to the mainland by means of a pier about 5,000 feet long, over which is carried the pipe by which the cisterns of Massawah are supplied with water from M'Kulu. But both aqueduct and pier, like the barracks, fortifications, and other buildings built some twenty years ago under the direction of Munzinger Pacha, are in a very dilapidated condition. As in their own country, the Egyptians imderstand the art of constructing, but neglect the duty of repairing, their public buildings. The Abyssinian trade with the Greek, Banian, and other foreign merchants settled at Massawah is conducted by means of caravans. These caravans, laden chiefly with the valuable products of the Galla country—coffee, gold, and white wax—set out at the end of winter, so as to cross the Takkazeh before the floods. They take two or three months to accomplish the journey, and return at the end of the autumn, resuming their annual journey the following spring. In 1861 the value of the Abyssinian exchanges, including slaves, through the port of Massawah, was estimated at £40,000, and twenty years thereafter, in 1881, they had risen to £280,000. The chief exports are skins and butter for Arabia, and mother-o'-pearl; that of ivory has greatly fallen off. Mules of Abyssinian stock are also exported to the plantations of Mayotte and the Mascarenhas Islands. Early in the year 1885 Massawah and the surrounding district was occupied by the Italians, with the consent of the English and Egyptian Governments. The large coraline islands of Dahlak east of the Gulf of Massawah, the chief of which are Dahlak and Nora, have lost nearly all the commercial importance they enjoyed before the Turkish rule. At that time they were inhabited by a Christian population of Abyssinian origin, whose chapels are still to be seen, and whose dialect, although in a corrupt form, is still current in the archipelago. At present the people, all Mohammedans, number 1,500, whose only resource is the milk and flesh of their goats, and the products of their fisheries. The Persian and Indian traders make yearly voyages to these islands to purchase the pearl oysters from the fisheries of the surrounding bays; the depot stands on the eastern shore of the larger island, at the village of Domolo. Like the pearl-divers of Bahrein, those of Dahlak never commence operations till after the rains, as they say that the pearly secretion is formed by the mixing of the fresh with the salt water. The natives also fish for the turtle, but neglect the sponges with which the bed of the sea is here thickly covered. The people of Dahlak and the surrounding archipelago possess large herds of camels, asses, and goats, which they allow to roam in a wild state over the island, or else confine to desert islands. On one of these islets are even found a few cows.