256 NORTH-EAST AFEICA. 



have been able to maintain none but precarious relations with tbeir co-religionists 

 on the opposite coast by means of small craft escaping from the creeks along the 

 coast under cover of night. 



Before Suakin was blocked by the rebels, the merchants of this town withdrew 

 during the hot season to the smiling valley of Sinkaf, which, at a height of 870 

 feet, lies amid extinct volcanoes and cliffs of an extremely fertile reddish marl ; the 

 slopes have been laid out in steep terraces planted with acacias and fruit trees. 

 Tokar, a little fort situated in a fertile valley irrigated by numerous small canals 

 derived from the Barka, stands in the middle of the " granary " of this province. 

 During the sowing and harvest seasons, more than twenty thousand labourers are 

 employed in the fields of Tokar. 



Some of the marsa or mirsa, that is harbours, on the neighbouring coast may 

 perhaps acquire some importance when the mountains of the interior become 

 populated and cultivated. One of the most convenient, as a market of the Khor 

 Barka Valley, will undoubtedly be the port of Akiq, a vast and deep basin well 

 protected, like that of Suakin, by islands and peninsulas ; this port is without 

 doubt one of the best in the Red Sea. In the chief island of the roadway, a Beni- 

 Amer tribe has founded the little village of Badur, before which vessels can cast 

 anchor in a depth of from 23 to 25 feet. On the coast of Suakin and Akiq the sea 

 water teams with animal life. The surface of the sea is often covered for miles 

 with ripplets which seem to be caused by the breeze, but are really produced by the 

 movement of a small fish of the sardine type, myriads of which play in the upper 

 layers of the water. 



