THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 305 



fhore. We patted feveral ports or harbours ; firft Merfa Amec, 

 where there is good anchorage in eleven fathom of water, 

 a mile and a half from the more ; at eight o'clock, No- 

 houde, with an ifland of the fame name ; at ten, a harbour 

 and village called Dahaban. As the fky was quite overcaft, 

 I could get no obfervation, though I watched very attentive- 

 ly. Dahaban is a large village, where there is both water 

 and provifion, but I did not fee its harbour. It bore E. N. E. 

 of us about three miles diflant. At three quarters pall 

 eleven we came up to a high rock, called Kotumbal y and I 

 lay to, for obfervation. It is of a dark-brown, approaching 

 to red ; is about two miles from the Arabian more, and 

 produces nothing. I found its latitude to be 17 £7' north. 

 A fmall rock ftands up at one end of the bafe of the moun- 

 tain. 



We came to an anchor in the port of Sibt, where I went 

 afhore under pretence of feeking provifions, but in reality 

 to fee the country, and obferve what fort of people the in- 

 habitants were. The mountains from Kotumbal ran in 

 an even chain along the coaft, at no great diftance, but of 

 fuch a height, that as yet we had feen nothing like them. 

 Sibt is too mean, and too fmall to be called a village, even 

 in Arabia. It confifts of about fifteen or twenty miferable 

 huts, built of ftraw; around it there is a plantation of doom- 

 trees, of the leaves of which they make mats and fails, 

 which is the whole manufacture of the place.. 



Our Rais made many purchafes here. The Cotrujhi, the 

 inhabitants of this village, feem to be as brutifh a people 

 as any in the world. They are perfectly lean, but mufcu* 

 Iar, and apparently itrong; they wear all their own hair, 



xi which 



