Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/501

 OPIA.— BERGHEL. 411 however, the number of buyers of these goods is greatly retlucwl ; nor is much business any longer done in slip])er8 and matting, the other staple industries of this district. The future of Magdoshu will depend not so much on its local products as on the movement of exchanges between foreign markets and the Webi basin as fur as the Galla territories in llarrar and Ethiopia. Magdoshu is separated by a distance of scarcely 24 miles from its fluvial port, Geiii/iy a town composed of latticed cone-shaped huts, where the explorer, Kinzel- bach, was poisoned in the year 1869. The mediaDval Arab writers ^peak of the watercourse flowing to the west of Magdoshu as of another Nile, comparable to that of Egypt itself. Yet this river at present is scarcely more than a hundred feet broad at Gelidi, where the natives cross it in little ferry-boats held together by cordage made of creeping plants. The last point on the Somali coast going northwards, the possession of which is still claimed by the Sulton of Zanzibar, is the village of Jfans/iek {Warrishir), whose harbour is inaccessible duriiig the prevalence of high winds. Beyond this place stretches the domain of the Somali coast tribes, who were till recently independent, but over whom Germany now claims dominion in virtue of some treaty concluded with the Sultan of Opin, an obscure princelet now put forward as the " chief of all the Somali people." His very existence is unknown to the vast majority of the nation, as is theirs to him. This village, or rather camping-ground of Opia, which has been thus suddenly promoted to the dignity of a capital, is situated on a headland between the territory of the Ilawiyas and that of the Mijertin tribe. But even diplomatists will never be able to make it the centre of any large population, for the surrounding country is a waterless steppe, while the neighbouring seaboard is absolutely destitute of harbours. AlLULA. — BOSSASSA. The Mijertins, the most powerful branch of all the Ilashiya nation, inhabit the shole of the northern section of the coast as far as the shores of the Gulf of Aden. The point of the seaboard where they are concentrated in the largest numbers is in the neighbourhood of the liaH-el-Klioil, or " Horse Cape," near an inlet where the waters of the Wady Nogal are discharged during the rainy season. According to Graves, as many as twelve thousand Somali are occasionally attracted to the fair or market of Ras el-Khail. The half-Arab, half Portuguese name of Bnidcr (VAgoa ("water haven") indicates the point where the small coasting craft finds most convenient anchorage. At the time of M. Revoil's visit in 1881, the sultan of the Mijertin nation had his residence at Berghcl, a hamlet of some forty inhabitants, which is sheltered on the north by the sandy slopes and lofty spurs of the Jebel Karomu, terminating eastwards in Cape Guardafui. In the neighbourhood of this modest little capital of the Mijertins are seen some ancient sepulchral mounds and the remains of a fortified camp. The section of the Somali seaboard which skirts the south side of the Gulf of