262 
APPENDIX. 
western coast, is sui'rounded by an intricate archipelago of 
islets and shoals ; the main island is irregular in outline, 
and includes a bay seven miles long, by four across, in 
which no bottom was found with 252 feet ; there is only 
one entrance into it, half a mile wide, and with an island 
in front. The submerged banks on the eastern coast, 
within the same latitudes, round Farsan Island, are, like- 
wise, penetrated by many narrow creeks of deep water ; 
one is twelve miles long, in the form of a hatchet, and close 
to its broad upper end, soundings were not struck with 
360 feet ; its entrance is only half a mile wide. In 
another creek of the same nature, but even with a more 
irregular outline, there was no bottom with 480 feet. 1 The 
island of Farsan itself, has as singular a form as any of its 
surrounding banks. The bottom of the sea round the 
Dlialac and Farsan Islands consists chiefly of sand and 
agglutinated fragments of coral, but, in the deep and narrow 
creeks, it consists of mud ; the islands cousist of thin, 
horizontally stratified, modern tertiary beds, containing 
but little broken coral ; 2 their shores are fringed by living 
coral-reefs. 
From the account given by Eiippell 3 of the manner in 
which Dhalac is rent by fissures, the opposite sides of 
which have been unequally elevated (in one instance to 
the amount of 50 feet), it seems probable that this irregular 
form, as well as that of Farsan, may have been partly 
caused by unequal elevation ; but, considering the general 
form of the banks, and of the deep-water creeks, together 
with the composition of the land, I think their configura- 
1 [The islands of this group are of upraised coral, as is the fore- 
shore of the opposite coast of Abyssinia. In many parts of the Eed 
Sea coast the low coral cliffs give evidence of upheaval. There are, 
nevertheless, reefs which would be classed as barrier-reefs on both 
sides of the central part of the Eed Sea. — Capt. Whartsn.] 
2 Eiippell, Eeise in Abyssinie, Band. i. a 247. 
s Ibid. s. 245. 
