VISIT TO ABYSSINIA. 
articles of European manufacture, embroidered velvets, arms, glass 
ware, silks, and satins ; from Mocha, India goods of every quality, 
from fine muslins and kincaubs to the coarse Surat cloths, which 
are used as articles of apparel in a great part of Africa. On these, 
as I have before observed, when speaking of the fair of Berbera, 
the Banians demand what profit they please ; the Imaum has a 
duty of ten per cent, on the export and import, and the Nayib an- 
other to the same amount. To the consumer, therefore, the article 
comes above one hundred per cent, dearer than it would do, were 
the importation direct : yet the value of the goods imported at 
Massowah is estimated at four hundred thousand dollars per 
annum, exclusively of raw cotton, which is purchased by the Abys- 
sinians for their dresses, although the plant grows in their own 
country, from an ignorance of the way of cleaning it. Of this article 
there is, at present, so great a scarcity, that Hadje Hassan declared 
to me, three ship loads would find a ready market. It is worth 
half a dollar per rottol, though the usual price is only fifty dollars 
per bahar. No merchant of Massowah has a capital sufficiently 
large to enable him to purchase a cargo, nor even a large propor- 
tion of a cargo ; but experience has given rise to a confidence in 
the honour of the dealers, which justifies the captain of a ship in 
trusting his property in their hands. Hadje Hassan or Currum 
Chund would receive the cargo, and consider themselves responsi- 
ble for the whole ; they would dispose of it in smaller quantities 
to people whom they knew worthy of credit, who would depart 
with it into the interior, and would, in about three months, return 
with the value in gold and other articles. A large ship belonging 
to the Nawaub of Surat arrived a few years ago, and actually dis- 
VOL. III. MM 
