178 NORTH-EAST AFEICA. 



or Bizan, founded in the fourteenth century, and often mentioned by Portuguese 

 authors under the name of the convent of the " Vision, " It takes this name from 

 a gilded cloud said to have been seen hovering in mid air by the traveller Poncet 

 and other pilgrims in the year 1700. Nearly a thousand monks live in the convent 

 and the adjacent buildings. 



At the foot of the mountains, but separated from the littoral plain by a chain 

 of hills, stands the village of A ilef, in a lonely valley which would amply repay 

 cultivation. In the neighbourhood, three miles farther south, are hot springs 

 (138° F.) sufficiently copious to form a stream; the surrounding ground within 

 a radius of 155 feet from the orifice is too hot to permit of its being traversed 

 barefooted. "When descending the plateau the Abyssinians are accustomed to 

 plunge into the source of the river Ailet, and even occasionally to wash their sheep 

 in it. A poisonous beetle lives in a part of the hot spring where the temperature 

 cools down to 118° F . Northwards in the Samhar district are many ancient ruins, 

 chiefly tombs, some of which resemble the megalithic monuments of France. An 

 ancient town, now abandoned, at one time covered a space of several miles in cir- 

 cumference. 



Massavs^ah. 



On the plain a few stations follow along the route to the coast at Massawah. 

 Such are Saati, or the " Fens," so-called from the pools of water which are usually 

 found in the beds of the dried- up watercourses during the dry season ; M'Kulu, 

 which the Europeans of Massawah have chosen as their health-resort, and have 

 surrounded with groves of tamarinds and other trees ; Hotamlu, headquarters of the 

 Swedish missionaries and their schools. To the south, nestled amidst mimosa-trees, 

 is the town of Arkilo, a kind of capital, where resides the naïb, a descendant of a 

 dynasty of chiefs who, since the end of the sixteenth century, have negotiated all 

 commercial transactions between Abyssinia and Massawah. The inhabitants of this 

 territory owe a double allegiance to the traders of the neighbouring seaport and to 

 the Abyssinians of the plateau, whose claim to the ownership of the lowlands has 

 been maintained from age to age, and annually renewed by raising winter crops in 

 the district. The Turks, having conquered the uplands and the coast in 1557, 

 attempted at first to govern the coast populations directly ; but finding themselves 

 powerless against nomads ever on the move, they surrendered their authority to the 

 chief of the Belaus, a branch of the Hababs who roamed over the neighbouring 

 plains. Even the garrison of Massawah, mainly composed of Bosniaks, was gradually 

 absorbed with the Hababs by marriage. Made naïb, or " lieutenant," of the viceroys 

 of Hejaz, the chief of the Belau received a regular subsidy from the Turkish 

 Government conditionally on his protecting the Turkish or Abyssinian caravans 

 against the attacks of the neighbouring tribes, remitting to the suzerain a portion 

 of the taxes paid by the merchants, and supplying the island with the necessary 

 water. Frequent quarrels arose between the naïb and the Massawah islanders ; 

 the aqueducts were often cut, and the naïb himself, driven from Arkilo, was often 



