Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/442

330 on the north is a black hill or cape of no considerable height, that may be seen at four leagues off. It has two watering-places; one on the east of the island, where we now were, the other on the west. The water there is bitter, but it had been troubled by a number of little barks, that had been taking in water just before us. The manner of filling their goat skins being a very slovenly one, they take up much of the mud along with it, but we found the water excellent, after it had settled two or three days; when it came on board, it was as black as ink. It was incomparably the best water we had drank since that of the Nile.

island is covered with a kind of bent grass, which want of rain, and the constant feeding of the few goats that are kept here, prevent from growing to any height. The end of the island, near the north cape, sounds very hollow, underneath, like Solfaterra, near Naples; and as quantities of pumice stones are found here, there is great appearance that the black hill was once a volcano. Several large shells from the fish called Bisser, some of them twenty inches long, are seen turned upon their faces, on the surface of large stones, of ten or twelve ton weight. These shells are sunk into the stones, as if they were into paste, and the stone raised round about, so as to conceal the edge of the shell; a proof that this stone has, some time lately, been soft or liquified. For, had it been long ago, the weather and sun would have worn the surface of the shell, but it seems perfectly entire, and is set in that hard brown rock, as the stone of a ring is in a golden chasing.

inhabitants of Foosht are poor fishermen, of the same degree of blackness as those between Heli and Djezan; like