Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/272

250 the dignity attending this office, it was also one of the most lucrative. Frankincense, myrrh, and a species of cinnamon, called by the Italians Cannella, with several kinds of gums and dyes, all very precious, from Cape Gardefan to Bilur, were the valuable produce of this country: but this territory, though considerable in length, is not of any great breadth; for, from south of Hadea to Masuah, it consists in a belt seldom above forty miles from the sea, which is bounded by a ridge of very high mountains, running parallel to the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, as far as Masuah.

Azab begin the mines of fossile salt, which, cut into square, solid bricks of about a foot long, serve in place of the silver currency in Abyssinia; and from this, as from a kind of mint, great benefit accrues also.

Masuah the same narrow belt continues to Suakem; nay, indeed, though the rains do not reach so far, the mountains continue to the Isthmus of Suez. This northern province of the Baharnagash is called the Habab, or the land of the Agaazi, or Shepherds; they speak one language, which they call Geez, or the language of the Agaazi. From the earliest times, they have had letters and writing among them; and no other has ever been introduced into Abyssinia, to this day, as we have already observed.

the expulsion of the Turks from Dobarwa and the continent of Abyssinia, Masuah has been governed by a Naybe, himself one of the Shepherds, but Mahometan. A treaty formerly subsisted, that the king should receive half of