Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/326

 266 NORTH-EAST AFEICA. have been able to maintain none but precarious relations with their co-religionists on the opposite coast by means of small craft escaping from the creeks along the coast mder cover of night. Before Suakin was blocked by the rebels, the merchants of this town withdrew during the hot season to the smiling valley of Sinkaf, which, at a height of 870 feet, lies amid extinct volcanoes and cliffs of an extremely fertile reddish marl ; the slopes have been laid out in steep terraces planted with acacias and fruit trees. Tukar, a little fort situated in a fertile valley irrigated by numerous small canals derived from the Barka, stands in the middle of the " granary " of this province. During the sowing and harvest seasons, more than twenty thousand labourers are employed in the fields of Tokar. Some of the morsa or mirsa, that is harbours, on the neighbouring coast may perhaps acquire some importance when the mountains of the interior become populated and cultivated. One of the most convenient, as a market of the Khor Barka Valley, will undoubtedly be the port of Akiq, a vast and deep basin well protected, like that of Suakin, by islands and peninsulas ; this port is without doubt one of the best in. the Red Sea. In the chief island of the roadway, a Beni- Amer tribe has founded the little village of Badur, before which vessels can cast anchor in a depth of from 23 to 25 feet. On the coast of Suakin and Akiq the sea water teams with animal life. The surface of the sea is often covered for miles with ripplets which seem to be caused by the breeze, but are really produced by the movement of a small fish of the sardine type, myriads of which play in the upper layers of the water.