Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/407

Rh pleasure and safety, intending it to be a present to my Rais at parting, as he very well knew. At a quarter past eight, we were towed to our anchorage in the harbour of Konfodah.

means the town of the hedge-hog*. It is a small village, consisting of about two hundred miserable houses, built with green wood, and covered with mats, made of the doom, or palm-tree; lying on a bay, or rather a shallow bason, in a desert waste or plain. Behind the town are small hillocks of white sand. Nothing grows on shore excepting kelp, but it is exceedingly beautiful, and very luxuriant; farther in, there are gardens. Fish is in perfect plenty; butter and milk in great abundance; even the desert looks freshcr than other deserts, which made me imagine that rain fell sometimes here, and this the Emir told me was the case.

I made a draught of the port, it is not worth the publishing. For though in all probability it was once deep, safe, and convenient, yet there is nothing now but a kind of road, under shelter of a point, or ridge of land, which rounds out into the sea, and ends in a Cape, called Ras Mozeffa. Behind the town there is another small Cape, upon which there are three guns mounted, but with what intention it was not possible to guess.

Emir Ferhan, governor of the town, was an Abyssinian slave, who invited me on shore, and we dined together

VOL. I.


 * Or Porcupine.