Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/413

Rh more. We passed several ports or harbours ; first Mersa Amec, where there is good anchorage in eleven fathom of water, a mile and a half from the shore; at eight o'clock, Nohoude, with an island of the same name; at ten, a harbour and village called Dahaban. As the sky was quite overcast, I could get no observation, though I watched very attentively. Dahaban is a large village, where there is both water and provision, but I did notsee its harbour. It bore E. N. E. of us about three miles distant. At three quarters past eleven we came up to a high rock, called Kotumbal, and I lay to, for observation. It is of a dark-brown, approaching to red; is about two miles from the Arabian shore, and produces nothing. I found its latitude to be 17° 57' north. A small rock stands up at one end of the base of the mountain.

came to an anchor in the port of Sibt, where I went ashore under pretence of seeking provisions, but in reality to see the country, and observe what sort of people the inhabitants were. The mountains from Kotumbal ran in an even chain along the coast, at no great distance, but of such a height, that as yet we had seen nothing like them. Sibt is too mean, and too fmall to be called a village, even in Arabia. It consists of about fifteen or twenty miserable huts, built of straw; around it there is a plantation of doom-trees, of the leaves of which they make mats and sails, which is the whole manufacture of the place.

Rais made many purchases here. The Cotrushi, the inhabitants of this village, seem to be as brutish a people as any in the world. They are perfectly lean, but muscular, and apparently strong; they wear all their own hair, Rh