Page:The Natural History of Sokotra and Abd-el-Kuri.djvu/38

 were suffering most, but some of the children seemed hopelessly ill. The duration of our visit was too short to enable me to treat these poor people with much hope of benefit. Dysentery among the children is probably due to bad and scanty food. The islanders must subsist almost exclusively on fish, molluscs, and turtle—on the latter so abundantly that they may truly be called chelonophagi. The extensive aridity of the island has been remarked upon, and where the mosquitos which showed themselves in our cabins on board at night—with, however, little inconvenience to us—were bred,is difficult to imagine. Nowhere during our excursions did we see the slightest vestige of cultiva-

-tion of any sort. With the exception of a few goats there were no domestic animals, nor any indications of the presence of any other mammal on the island. The statement, therefore, of D'Albuquerque, who visited the island in 1507, that there were, in his day, large flocks and herds, is very remarkable, considering the vegetation that the soil now produces.

At 5•30 on the morning of the 6th December, the Elphinstone weighed anchor, and stood away for Sokotra. Proceeding eastward for some hours close under the shore as far as the south-east cape, her course was laid north-east by east for Kallansiya. In several places as we passed along, I could plainly observe patches of limestone abutting with a sharply defined line of demarcation against the low granitoid hills facing the sea and at a