BAY OF TAJOURAH. O 



people that should at least secure the transmission 

 of the public despatches to Capt. Harris in Shoa. 



Tajourah is a small straggling town consist- 

 ing of a number of low mat houses standing on 

 the northern shore of a narrow bay which extends 

 about twenty miles inward, nearly due east and 

 west. The opposite coast is at least ten miles 

 distant. From Tajourah, the bay contracts inland 

 to a channel scarcely four hundred yards wide, 

 when, suddenly expanding again, it terminates in a 

 large irregularly formed lagoon, called Goobat ul 

 Khhrab (the bad haven). In modern maps no 

 appearance of this deep inlet, a very particular 

 feature of the seacoast in this neighbourhood, can 

 be found, though in the older Portuguese maps 

 it is accurately enough laid down. The ancients 

 seem to have been well aware of the existence of 

 the Bay of Tajourah, for it can be easily identified 

 with the Sinus Avalitse of the Periplus. 



The sea immediately in front of Tajourah has 

 received, from the generally unruffled state of its 

 stormless waters, the name of Bahr ul Barateen, 

 " The sea of Maidens ;" which struck me as a sin- 

 gular correspondence with the name of the sea sur- 

 rounding the ancient city of Carthage, which from 

 the map appended to an old school edition of 

 Virgil, we learn was called b.y the Romans, Mare 

 Ni/mjyharum, the poetical Latin translation of the 

 Arabic, Bahr ul Barateen. Tajourah, it must be 

 observed, also being the present name of a village 



