42 APPEARANCES OF COAST. 



cliff of coral limestone, which stood a few hundred 

 yards in rear of the town, and which extended two 

 miles inland to the base of a gravel bank, perhaps 

 100 feet high, capped by a thin stratum of coarse 

 black lava. The undermining of this bank is 

 very rapid and considerable during the rainy 

 season, so that large masses of the superincumbent 

 lava are continually breaking off and rolling into 

 the beds of numberless temporary torrents below. 

 The period of the first appearance of this lava 

 cannot have been more than a few hundred years 

 ago, and volcanoes have certainly existed on this 

 coast within the recorded history of the earth. A 

 few miles in the interior, between Raheita and Ta- 

 jourah, is still a range of hills evidently of igneous 

 origin, called by the natives Jibel Jann, or Demon 

 Mountains. The same name is also given to a 

 more recently active, but very small volcano 

 situated on the road to Shoa; and which was 

 represented by the natives to be the residence of 

 some turbulent genius confined there by Soloman, 

 in accordance with some of the commonly received 

 Arabic traditions. 



This coral reef, however, afforded the most 

 interesting proof of the raising of the coast having 

 occurred during the present existing state of things, 

 as regards the direction of winds and currents in 

 the surrounding sea, as also of its being constructed 

 by the same species of Zoophites, who are now 

 producing its counterpart in the present bay. I 



