Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/471

Rh stant the Turks were removed on the other side of the Hellespont.

are neither horses, dogs, sheep, cows, nor any sort of quadruped, but goats, asses, a few half-starved camels and antelopes at Dahalac, which last are very numerous. The inhabitants have no knowledge of fire-arms, and there are no dogs, nor beasts of prey in the island to kill them; they catch indeed some few of them in traps.

our arrival at Dahalac, on the 14th, we saw swallows there, and, on the 16th, they were all gone. On our landing at Masuah, on the 19th, we saw a few; the 21st and 22d they were in great flocks; on the 2d of October they were all gone. It was the blue long-tailed swallow, with the flat head ; but there was, likewise, the English martin, black, and darkish grey in the body, with a white breast.

language at Dahalac is that of the Shepherds; Arabic too is spoken by most of them. From this island we see the high mountains of Habesh, running in an even ridge like a wall, parallel to the coast, and down to Suakem.

I leave Dahalac, I must observe, that, in a wretched chart, in the hands of some of the English gentlemen at Jidda, there were soundings marked all along the east-coast of Dahalac, from thirteen to thirty fathoms, within two leagues of the shore. Now, the islands I have mentioned occupy a much larger space than that; yet none of them are set down in the chart; and, where the soundings are marked thirty, forty, and even ninety fathom, all is full of shoals under water, with islands and sunken coral rocks,

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