298 Professor Bayley Balfour [April 20, 



plants bearing Ana^ which is shown as a gum-resin in the form of tears 

 on the stems of small trees. The famous Egyptologist Mariette has 

 recently identified the land of Poun — Pliny's country of the Troglo- 

 dytes — with Somali-land, the name being preserved in the modern 

 Bennah, and the To Nuter of the inscriptions is, in his opinion, the 

 Sacred Islands of Pliny, and the modern archipelago including Socotra. 

 This identification would make the historical record of Socotra a very 

 ancient one. How far the scientific evidence supports such identifica- 

 tion is referred to subsequently. 



The author of the ' Perij^lus of the Erythrean Sea ' refers to it as 

 a desolate island inhabited by a mixed poj)ulation of Arabs, Indians, 

 and Greeks, all speaking Greek, who had come thither in search of 

 grain, and carried on a trade with the West Coast of India and with 

 Mokha. The island is frequently mentioned by the early Arab 

 geographers, who account for the Greek population by the story, 

 which Colonel Yule considers a myth, that Alexander the Great, 

 acting on the advice of Aristotle, settled an Ionian colony there, in 

 order to cultivate the aloe. They further state that the Greeks and 

 other inhabitants were converted to Christianity, and that clergy 

 from Persia regularly visited the island. The population at this 

 time, a few centuries after the Christian era, is put down by some at 

 as much as 10,000, the majority of whom are described as Nestorian 

 Christians and pirates. 



In the time of Marco Polo, towards the end of the thirteenth 

 century, the island was a metropolitan see of the Nestorian Church. 

 Many ships visited the island, all vessels for Aden touching there, 

 and the trade was mainly in ambergris, cotton stuffs, and salt fish. 

 The people had the reputation of being enchanters, and of being 

 able at will to raise the wind, to bring back ships, and to produce 

 storms and disasters. 



Although so mixed a population lived on the island, yet from the 

 earliest times it appears to have been under the rule of the Mahra 

 tribe, dwelling on the opposite coast of Arabia, whose sultan or 

 sheikh lived at Keshin. 



In 1503 Fernandez Pereira discovered it for the Portuguese, at 

 which time an Arab sheikh lived in a fort at Zoko (modern Suk), then 

 the capital of the island ; but it was not until 1507 that Tristan da 

 Cunha and Albuqerque captured the island for the Portuguese. 

 After four years' occupancy the Portuguese retired from the island, 

 leaving abundant traces of their presence. The remains of a fort on 

 Hadibu plain, and at various places on the S. and S.W. sides of the 

 island, are most substantial ruins. Besides in these, their influence is 

 possibly seen in such names of places as Derafonta and in Feraigey, 

 the name of one of the ruined forts, which may be Feringee. And 

 indeed the dialect of Socotra may, it is thought by some, owe part of 

 its peculiarity to a Portuguese basis. Moreover, at the present time, 

 a large section of the inhabitants of the hill-region of the island 



