Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/322

 and 300 Arab vessels, which carried rice, dates, salt, cowries, and European merchandise, to be exchanged for slaves, mules, wild beasts, and the many products of the Abyssinian spurs, such as gum, ivory, ostrich feathers, skins, wax, musk, grains, and coffee. Suakin is the port where the pilgrims embark for Mecca, to the number of six or seven thousand annually; the distance from here to Jeddah is about 20 miles including the deviations caused by the reefs. The slave merchants from the interior present themselves in the disguise of ordinary travellers, accompanied by their wives, concubines, and servants. But on their return from Arabia to Suakin,

they have no longer wives or servants; divorce, desertion, and unforeseen events being supposed to have relieved them of their families and followers.

The town, overlooked by several minarets, consists of stone houses with wooden balconies and "musharabiehs" elegantly carved. It is a cosmopolitan city, where the trade is chiefly in the hands of the Arabs. Turks and Hedarmeh, or "Men of Hadramaut," here meet the Greek, Maltese, or European merchants: But the native population live in huts of branches covered with mats outside the town in the suburb of El-Kef. It is a far more extensive place than Suakin itself, with which it is connected by a low bridge some 330 feet long, and since 1884 by a railway