240 



NOETH-EAST APRICA. 



the wars that it was necessary to sustain against the tribes, the depopulation 

 consequent on slave-hunting, and the surveillance of the convicts who washed the 

 sand, cost the Viceroy much more than was covered by the product of the mines. 

 Hence Said Pasha ordered them to be abandoned and the fortresses to be levelled, 

 after which the towns were again reoccupied by their original inhabitants. Never- 

 theless the native gold-miners found their fortunes where the Government had met 

 with financial ruin. The grains, called tihr, and usually collected in the quills of 

 vultures' feathers, are used as money to purchase the merchandise brought by the 

 jeUnhi, or local traders. The principal gold-washing stations are on the western 

 side of the mountains, in the valley sloping towards the White Nile, and in the 



Fig. 77. — Fazogl Gold Mines. 

 Scale 1 : 600,000. 





J5° C - of breenwich 



middle of which rises the pyramidal Jebel-Dul, in all of whose ravities gold is 

 found. The amount annually obtained is valued by Schuver at £1,600, on which 

 the Sheikh of Gomasha raises a tax of about a fourth. The soldiers he has collected 

 round him are mostly slave-hunters, who have escaped from the disaster of Sulei- 

 man in the zeriba region. The Gallas who come from the markets of Tumat 

 prefer another medium of exchange to gold-dust, and will only receive the " salt 

 bricks " imported from Eastern Abyssinia in exchange for their goods. According 

 to Schuver, the inhabitants of the Tumat Valley receive yearly over 75,000 pounds 

 of salt money. 



Fadasi. 



Even after evacuating the country, the Egyptians compelled the riverain tribes 

 of the Tumat Valley to pay them a tax of about £6,000 ; but beyond the district 



