Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/466

354 and nearly procured my assassination. The revenue of this governor consists in a goat brought to him monthly by each of the twelve villages. Every vessel, that puts in there for Masuah, pays him also a pound of coffee, and every one from Arabia, a dollar or pataka. No sort of small money is current at Dahalac, excepting Venetian glass-beads, old and new, of all sizes and colours, broken and whole.

this is the miserable state of Dahalac at present, matters were widely different in former times. The pearl fishery flourished greatly here, under the Ptolemies; and even long after, in the time of the Caliphs, it produced a great revenue, and, till the sovereigns of Cairo, of the present miserable race of slaves, began to withdraw themselves from their dependency on the port (for even after the reign of Selim, and the conquests of Arabia, under Sinan Basha, the Turkish gallies were still kept up at Suez, whilst Masuah and Suakem had Bashas) Dahalac was the principal island that furnished the pearl fishers, or divers. It was, indeed, the chief port for the fishery on the southern part of the Red Sea, as Suakem was on the north; and the Basha of Masuah passed part of every summer here, to avoid the heat at his place of residence on the Continent.

fishery extended from Dahalac and its islands nearly to lat. 20°. The inhabited islands furnished each a bark, and so many divers, and they were paid in wheat, flour, &c. such a portion to each bark, for their use, and so much to leave with their family, for their subsistence; so that a few months employment furnished them with every thing necessary for the rest of the year. The fishery was rented, in latter times, to the Basha of Suakem, but there was a place