FOOTNOTES:

CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

Plate II(Large-size)Fig. 2. Map of Red Sea

Plate II

(Large-size)Fig. 2. Map of Red Sea

(Large-size)

Fig. 2. Map of Red Sea

FOOTNOTES:[1]For the story of Shêkh Barûd’s death seep. 37.[2]Acacia tortilis.[3]A species ofCarexI believe.[4]I am writing of the neighbourhood of Lat. 22° N. About Suakin conditions are better, at least for plant life.[5]Actual temperature of the wind 100° to 115° Fahr.[6]Besides the completest possible system of harbour lights, the quays, etc., with every facility for handling cargo, the needs of shipping are well provided for by a large stock of coal electrically handled, tugs and water barges, and a complete dockyard for repairs of any kind up to a considerable magnitude. Since 1910 a salvage tug has been stationed here and the slipway at the dockyard has been completed and is in use. The town water supply, though healthy, is slightly brackish (though much less so than most desert wells), but the very large condensing plants produce and sell fresh water very cheaply. The railway of course runs alongside the shipping, the Customs godowns are liberally and conveniently planned, and the railway bridge rises vertically upwards so that any vessel may pass up to the dockyard without obstruction.A first-class hotel has just been opened.Spite of the harbour’s being practically tideless its water is perfectly pure, all garbage being collected in barges and towed out to sea, where they are emptied at a distance of about five miles from land.The whole town is a fine example of what can be done by scientific forethought given free scope and a clear desert site, unhampered by the presence of partially obsolete arrangements and conflicting vested interests, and keeping ever in view the great extensions of every department which the increasing trade of the Sudan will soon need.[7]Many of the smaller mosques in Egypt, particularly those near the deserts (e.g. Suez and Belbês) are very similar.[8]The population of my own tiny village well illustrates the cosmopolitan nature of all commercial and administrative activity in the Sudan; including Governmentemployéswe have:British: one, myself.Syrians: two, my assistant and a carpenter.Italian: one, engineer—we communicate in Arabic.Egyptians: about six.Arabians: also about six, including natives of Sinai in the north and the Yemen and Hadramaut in the south.Hamites: the natives of the country.Negroes: these include several distinct nationalities, e.g. Nubas and Nilotic tribes.Swahili: one, from Zanzibar.Elsewhere Greeks abound, as in so many countries.We all speak Arabic, which was however the mother tongue of only a dozen individuals, and even these speak three or four different dialects![9]I am at a loss for a name for this particular Hamitic nation. The names Hadendoa, Bisharia and so on, are those of large tribal subdivisions of one nationality, which again is but one out of several distinct Hamitic peoples. The name “Beja” is not known to any native I have met.[10]Apart from the use of henna, I have detected a distinct red tinge in some men’s hair, but the wonderful gold and brown mops of the Somalis are not seen here.[11]Some Arabs grow bushy beards as dense as any European’s, but the majority, at any rate before middle age have only scanty beards, if any.[12]Contrast Zanzibar and the tropical coast of East Africa where nearly the whole population is supposed to be a cross between Arab and negro.[13]Presumably General Grenfell’s engagement with the dervishes, Dec. 1888.[14]Inverted commas indicate quotations from Mabrûk’s statement. The probability is that the hardships of a seven months’ voyage were actually compressed into so many weeks.[15]The camel kneels and his halter rope is bound round one foreknee. Only a fractious beast will rise when so tied, and straying or running away is impossible.[16]I am told that the sexual freedom of women is a peculiarity of one tribe only—the Aliab—but it certainly applies to all the maritime people with whom I live.[17]The word Shêkh, meaning literally an old man, is used to designate alike a dead saint of the highest supernatural powers or one whose sanctity is barely acknowledged by an occasional decoration of his tomb by a piece of rag on a stick. Among the living the Shêkh may be a native leader of any grade, from the head of a great tribe, with whom the British Governor of a Province may consult, and to whom is entrusted real power, to one of his subordinate agents. In my village one of these combines the trade of butcher with a dreadful dentistry.[18]Anglicised into “hangar.”[19]I give a few examples, but Dr and Mrs Seligmann, being expert anthropologists, were able to extract more curious information from my own men in half an hour’s talk than I had done in five years. Their report will be of the highest interest.[20]I need not say that I refer to national habit. To say this of personal expression would be an obvious and gross libel.[21]It is curious how all races of mankind, from Ireland to India, Borneo, Japan and Zanzibar, should concur in decorating their holy places in this way. Probably practical convenience is a prosaic part of the explanation.[22]In spite of its improbabilities the story illustrates well-known and interesting phenomena. Such a sudden rise of the sea as is demanded is quite possible, and the shore level about Jedda, as elsewhere, is extremely low. Though practically tideless the Red Sea is subject to variations of level which cannot be predicted, and which may be as much as three feet vertically. Also objects from the Arabian shore are very commonly carried across the whole sea and stranded on the west side. A year or two ago we learnt that abnormal floods had occurred in Arabia from the number of palm trunks found stranded, and another time, the whole coast, for 100 miles at least, was littered with the bases of palm leaves. These had been left on the ground in some Arabian valley when the leaves were cut for use or sale, and carried into the sea by a flood.[23]In Egypt Mûled or Mowled means a fair held on a saint’s birthday. On the Red Sea coast a man “makes a mûled” to celebrate any private event, or simply by way of giving an entertainment.[24]Really dolphin, but this name is also used for a certain fish. The true dolphins, like porpoises, are whales in miniature, air-breathing animals which have become disguised by a fish-like outer shape in accordance with their marine life. Internally every structure is like that of the land mammals from which they are descended, and totally different to that of fishes.[25]Science of the Sea, issued by the Challenger Society, John Murray. Any reader interested in Part II of this volume should obtain this book as a guide to work in Marine Biology.[26]One would notdrownthem simply because water costs money.[27]Suakin is populous in winter, the inhabitants going into the hills to escape the summer heat. At my village the reverse is the case.[28]Flint and steel are sometimes used, but nowadays matches are extremely cheap in all corners of the world.[29]The leaves and midribs of the date palm are essentials to the people of the desert, nowadays at least, as they use them for all sorts of handicrafts. There are some date palms near Suakin, but their matting is imported.[30]Gourds are continually mentioned in books of travel, and as the word remained mysterious to me from my eighth to my twentieth year I explain in detail. Certain species of melon-like plants produce a hard-skinned fruit, the bitter pulp of which dries up to a powder, leaving the skins hollow. Cut a hole in this, clear out the seeds and fibre, and you have a basin or a bottle according to the shape of the fruit. Only the former shape is seen on the Red Sea coast.[31]Is “coffee bean” a corruption of the Arabicbûn?[32]This is of course the regular way of making Turkish coffee and can be imitated at home by anyone. The coffee should be finely ground or crushed like cocoa.[33]The sheet is passed round a smooth thick thwart and one or two of the crew take up the slack as the rest haul in. Thisto some extenttakes the place of tackle.[34]They do notbalewater out of a canoe, but throw it with a paddle, shell or broken wooden bowl! The method is very effective.[35]Merely to see the bottom, without distinguishing small objects, is often possible at greater depths still.[36]The flesh of the pearl oysters and clams are only eaten when all else fails and as fish is obtainable in times of scarcity it is not much appreciated when anything else is to be had.[37]Unlike the Ballistes, some species at least are able to swallow the flesh of shellfish without the shells, so that the only indications of the origin of their diet is by finding opercula and radulae among the half-digested mass. They also break up pearl oysters, leaving the ground strewn with the broken shells.[38]The rather majestic term “Shêkh” often means nothing more than this, though it also includes persons of real importance and power in the country, and saints devoutly venerated.[39]Donkeys’ dung provides a cheap substitute for soap. The clothes are buried in the sand of the sea-shore with dung, left overnight and washed out in the sea next day.[40]Except certain rare forms obtainable only from very deep water in the Atlantic.[41]More correctly by decomposition of calcium sulphate, thus,CaSO₄ + H₂CO₃ = CaCO₃ + H₂SO₄,since the sulphate forms 3·6% while the carbonate only forms 0·2% of the salts dissolved in sea-water.[42]Similar masses are common in the Red Sea, but I do not know of a case quite so striking as this.[43]The apes include a wide variety of type, e.g. the baboon is on the whole lower than the ordinary monkey, which is lower than the big man-like apes, chimpanzee, orang-outang and gorilla. The lemurs link lower monkeys and ordinary quadrupeds. See Huxley’s essay “On the relations of man to the lower animals,” 1863.[44]Avoid the conception of descent as the highest fish giving rise to the lowest amphibian, the highest amphibian giving birth to the lowest reptile, and so on. The fishes did not cease their evolution when the amphibia appeared, and ancestral types must have been generalised, and so, in one sense, lowly forms.[45]More accurately gypsum, CaSO₄, which is decomposed to form limestone CaCO₃ as noted bottom ofpage 89above.[46]To obtain a specimen of coral of this beautiful snow-white colour it is necessary to remove the flesh from any living colony, which is usually coloured brown or yellow, by rotting the same for a week in sea-water in a bucket. Cover the bucket to keep out dust, and change the water a few times to reduce the smell. The last traces of decayed flesh are removed by dashing buckets of water on to the coral. Rinse in fresh water. Or the specimens may be driedthoroughly, rotted in water after return to Europe, and finally bleached with hydrogen peroxide.[47]See for instance, among other literature by the same author, “The Fauna and Geography of the Maldives and Laccadives,” Cambridge University Press, and “The Percy Sladen Trust Expedition to the Indian Ocean,” by J. Stanley Gardiner, M.A., F.R.S., etc.,Transactions Linnean Soc. Zoology, Vol. XII., pp. 35, 51, and illustrations on Plate IX, and on pages 128 and 135.[48]The duller coloured and peculiarly shaped “bladder” or “parrot” fish,Tetraodonor “four tooth” is distinguished by its peculiarly rounded shape and alteration of scales into spines. Though its teeth are very similar to the coral eater,Pseudoscarus, it eats softer animals, e.g. Ascidians and Echinoderms, and sometimes shell-fish.[49]Includes the whole oyster and bivalve shell-fish family, and many other less generally known forms of life.[50]Owing to the practical absence of tide in the Red Sea the boat channels of the fringing reef are discontinuous, so that at intervals the canoe men must wait for favourable weather and put out to the open sea. In Zanzibar, e.g., one can travel the whole 60 miles of the east coast within the reef but for the crossing of one bay, except at lowest spring tides. Some of the deeper parts of the boat channel of Red Sea reefs are due to faulting (see next chapter) as may be also a very peculiar reef channel just north of Mombasa Harbour.[51]For the qualities and formation of this rock seepage 111.[52]The absence of similar stones from all other parts of the reef is to be accounted for by their being subject to the continual friction of strong sand-laden currents, while those on the raised edge are exposed to waves of clean water for a portion of each day only.[53]These tubes form a mass by coiling loosely together like a cluster of worms, though the animal which makes them is exactly like those that have regular spiral shells and move about freely, e.g. the whelks. The youngVermetushas a shell like a young whelk, but as it then fixes itself down, the shell degenerates, and grows into the loosely coiled tube of the adult mollusc. Nothing could be more different than the body of aVermetusand that of a worm, the resemblances between the shell of the one and the tube of the other being pure coincidence.[54]More correctly acompound, not mixture of carbonates, is formed, viz. dolomite, CaMg(CO₃)₂.[55]Examples of all three are well shewn on the map oppositepage 136.[56]I.e. in the great oceans. As shewn later, volcanic mounds and islands are found in the Red Sea, and may have formed the foundations of certain of its reefs.[57]Gardiner, J. S., “The building of Atolls,”Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc.or The Challenger Society’sScience of the Sea, John Murray.[58]In some lagoons quantities of sand are formed of great numbers of the minute shells of lowly organisms, the foraminifera. This is, of course, a very different thing to that resulting from breaking up of coral and shells.[59]1912 was a rich year! 40 millimetres fell on Oct. 22nd and 20 millimetres in December, about 2½ inches altogether.[60]J. W. Gregory,The Great Rift Valley, John Murray, 1896.[61]The ranges bordering the sea are from 4000 feet to 8000 feet high, but of course were much higher in the days when the Rift opened.[62]Recently, that is, geologically speaking.[63]Such ring-shaped reefs, rising out of deep water, are termed Atolls. Sanganeb is a small example compared to those of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.[64]I have marked other harbours as they are interesting geologically, but there are only three miserable villages on this whole coast in addition to the two towns. There is no village at Trinkitat, but the cotton from Tokar is loaded on tosambûkshere.[65]I.e. hills of Archean, ancient rock, as opposed to the newer sandstones, gravels and limestones.[66]The Eastern Desert of Egypt, southern section, describes a part of the Red Sea coast range north of the Sudan boundary, but essentially similar to the rest.[67]Two borings, made in the hope of obtaining water two miles inland, near Port Sudan, were carried down through 300 metres, nearly 1000 feet, of this kind of material.[68]“Mersa” in Arabic = anchorage.[69]Arabic Hamâma = pigeon. The shape of this hill is a cone with a cubical block on its apex, hence the appropriate name Pigeon Hill. “Khor” is used for an inlet of the sea, among other meanings.[70]Actually many of these shells retain some of their colour! e.g. the red of the commonSpondylus, the bands ofStrombus fasciatusand the mottlings ofCyprina tigrinaare quite distinct on some specimens from 100 feet above, and on others dug out 15 feet below sea level.[71]Allthe corals are of existing species, but the identification is less easy than in the case of the shells.[72]Such fossils as are found in the Equatorial rocks are recent species, and the fault harbours of the coast have not had time to lose altogether the peculiar characters of such structures under the influence of the rivers which enter them and the strong tidal currents.[73]The gypsum often found between the sandstone and the coral was most probably formed by the drying up of ashallowsea which occupied the site before the Rift Valley appeared, and probably the sandstones are the sediments deposited in the same sea; also parts of the present maritime plain were formed as the shore deposits of this ancient sea.[74]The forms Salak and Shalak are both used by the natives.

[1]For the story of Shêkh Barûd’s death seep. 37.

[2]Acacia tortilis.

[3]A species ofCarexI believe.

[4]I am writing of the neighbourhood of Lat. 22° N. About Suakin conditions are better, at least for plant life.

[5]Actual temperature of the wind 100° to 115° Fahr.

[6]Besides the completest possible system of harbour lights, the quays, etc., with every facility for handling cargo, the needs of shipping are well provided for by a large stock of coal electrically handled, tugs and water barges, and a complete dockyard for repairs of any kind up to a considerable magnitude. Since 1910 a salvage tug has been stationed here and the slipway at the dockyard has been completed and is in use. The town water supply, though healthy, is slightly brackish (though much less so than most desert wells), but the very large condensing plants produce and sell fresh water very cheaply. The railway of course runs alongside the shipping, the Customs godowns are liberally and conveniently planned, and the railway bridge rises vertically upwards so that any vessel may pass up to the dockyard without obstruction.A first-class hotel has just been opened.Spite of the harbour’s being practically tideless its water is perfectly pure, all garbage being collected in barges and towed out to sea, where they are emptied at a distance of about five miles from land.The whole town is a fine example of what can be done by scientific forethought given free scope and a clear desert site, unhampered by the presence of partially obsolete arrangements and conflicting vested interests, and keeping ever in view the great extensions of every department which the increasing trade of the Sudan will soon need.

A first-class hotel has just been opened.

Spite of the harbour’s being practically tideless its water is perfectly pure, all garbage being collected in barges and towed out to sea, where they are emptied at a distance of about five miles from land.

The whole town is a fine example of what can be done by scientific forethought given free scope and a clear desert site, unhampered by the presence of partially obsolete arrangements and conflicting vested interests, and keeping ever in view the great extensions of every department which the increasing trade of the Sudan will soon need.

[7]Many of the smaller mosques in Egypt, particularly those near the deserts (e.g. Suez and Belbês) are very similar.

[8]The population of my own tiny village well illustrates the cosmopolitan nature of all commercial and administrative activity in the Sudan; including Governmentemployéswe have:British: one, myself.Syrians: two, my assistant and a carpenter.Italian: one, engineer—we communicate in Arabic.Egyptians: about six.Arabians: also about six, including natives of Sinai in the north and the Yemen and Hadramaut in the south.Hamites: the natives of the country.Negroes: these include several distinct nationalities, e.g. Nubas and Nilotic tribes.Swahili: one, from Zanzibar.Elsewhere Greeks abound, as in so many countries.We all speak Arabic, which was however the mother tongue of only a dozen individuals, and even these speak three or four different dialects!

[8]The population of my own tiny village well illustrates the cosmopolitan nature of all commercial and administrative activity in the Sudan; including Governmentemployéswe have:

British: one, myself.

Syrians: two, my assistant and a carpenter.

Italian: one, engineer—we communicate in Arabic.

Egyptians: about six.

Arabians: also about six, including natives of Sinai in the north and the Yemen and Hadramaut in the south.

Hamites: the natives of the country.

Negroes: these include several distinct nationalities, e.g. Nubas and Nilotic tribes.

Swahili: one, from Zanzibar.

Elsewhere Greeks abound, as in so many countries.

We all speak Arabic, which was however the mother tongue of only a dozen individuals, and even these speak three or four different dialects!

[9]I am at a loss for a name for this particular Hamitic nation. The names Hadendoa, Bisharia and so on, are those of large tribal subdivisions of one nationality, which again is but one out of several distinct Hamitic peoples. The name “Beja” is not known to any native I have met.

[10]Apart from the use of henna, I have detected a distinct red tinge in some men’s hair, but the wonderful gold and brown mops of the Somalis are not seen here.

[11]Some Arabs grow bushy beards as dense as any European’s, but the majority, at any rate before middle age have only scanty beards, if any.

[12]Contrast Zanzibar and the tropical coast of East Africa where nearly the whole population is supposed to be a cross between Arab and negro.

[13]Presumably General Grenfell’s engagement with the dervishes, Dec. 1888.

[14]Inverted commas indicate quotations from Mabrûk’s statement. The probability is that the hardships of a seven months’ voyage were actually compressed into so many weeks.

[15]The camel kneels and his halter rope is bound round one foreknee. Only a fractious beast will rise when so tied, and straying or running away is impossible.

[16]I am told that the sexual freedom of women is a peculiarity of one tribe only—the Aliab—but it certainly applies to all the maritime people with whom I live.

[17]The word Shêkh, meaning literally an old man, is used to designate alike a dead saint of the highest supernatural powers or one whose sanctity is barely acknowledged by an occasional decoration of his tomb by a piece of rag on a stick. Among the living the Shêkh may be a native leader of any grade, from the head of a great tribe, with whom the British Governor of a Province may consult, and to whom is entrusted real power, to one of his subordinate agents. In my village one of these combines the trade of butcher with a dreadful dentistry.

[18]Anglicised into “hangar.”

[19]I give a few examples, but Dr and Mrs Seligmann, being expert anthropologists, were able to extract more curious information from my own men in half an hour’s talk than I had done in five years. Their report will be of the highest interest.

[20]I need not say that I refer to national habit. To say this of personal expression would be an obvious and gross libel.

[21]It is curious how all races of mankind, from Ireland to India, Borneo, Japan and Zanzibar, should concur in decorating their holy places in this way. Probably practical convenience is a prosaic part of the explanation.

[22]In spite of its improbabilities the story illustrates well-known and interesting phenomena. Such a sudden rise of the sea as is demanded is quite possible, and the shore level about Jedda, as elsewhere, is extremely low. Though practically tideless the Red Sea is subject to variations of level which cannot be predicted, and which may be as much as three feet vertically. Also objects from the Arabian shore are very commonly carried across the whole sea and stranded on the west side. A year or two ago we learnt that abnormal floods had occurred in Arabia from the number of palm trunks found stranded, and another time, the whole coast, for 100 miles at least, was littered with the bases of palm leaves. These had been left on the ground in some Arabian valley when the leaves were cut for use or sale, and carried into the sea by a flood.

[23]In Egypt Mûled or Mowled means a fair held on a saint’s birthday. On the Red Sea coast a man “makes a mûled” to celebrate any private event, or simply by way of giving an entertainment.

[24]Really dolphin, but this name is also used for a certain fish. The true dolphins, like porpoises, are whales in miniature, air-breathing animals which have become disguised by a fish-like outer shape in accordance with their marine life. Internally every structure is like that of the land mammals from which they are descended, and totally different to that of fishes.

[25]Science of the Sea, issued by the Challenger Society, John Murray. Any reader interested in Part II of this volume should obtain this book as a guide to work in Marine Biology.

[26]One would notdrownthem simply because water costs money.

[27]Suakin is populous in winter, the inhabitants going into the hills to escape the summer heat. At my village the reverse is the case.

[28]Flint and steel are sometimes used, but nowadays matches are extremely cheap in all corners of the world.

[29]The leaves and midribs of the date palm are essentials to the people of the desert, nowadays at least, as they use them for all sorts of handicrafts. There are some date palms near Suakin, but their matting is imported.

[30]Gourds are continually mentioned in books of travel, and as the word remained mysterious to me from my eighth to my twentieth year I explain in detail. Certain species of melon-like plants produce a hard-skinned fruit, the bitter pulp of which dries up to a powder, leaving the skins hollow. Cut a hole in this, clear out the seeds and fibre, and you have a basin or a bottle according to the shape of the fruit. Only the former shape is seen on the Red Sea coast.

[31]Is “coffee bean” a corruption of the Arabicbûn?

[32]This is of course the regular way of making Turkish coffee and can be imitated at home by anyone. The coffee should be finely ground or crushed like cocoa.

[33]The sheet is passed round a smooth thick thwart and one or two of the crew take up the slack as the rest haul in. Thisto some extenttakes the place of tackle.

[34]They do notbalewater out of a canoe, but throw it with a paddle, shell or broken wooden bowl! The method is very effective.

[35]Merely to see the bottom, without distinguishing small objects, is often possible at greater depths still.

[36]The flesh of the pearl oysters and clams are only eaten when all else fails and as fish is obtainable in times of scarcity it is not much appreciated when anything else is to be had.

[37]Unlike the Ballistes, some species at least are able to swallow the flesh of shellfish without the shells, so that the only indications of the origin of their diet is by finding opercula and radulae among the half-digested mass. They also break up pearl oysters, leaving the ground strewn with the broken shells.

[38]The rather majestic term “Shêkh” often means nothing more than this, though it also includes persons of real importance and power in the country, and saints devoutly venerated.

[39]Donkeys’ dung provides a cheap substitute for soap. The clothes are buried in the sand of the sea-shore with dung, left overnight and washed out in the sea next day.

[40]Except certain rare forms obtainable only from very deep water in the Atlantic.

[41]More correctly by decomposition of calcium sulphate, thus,CaSO₄ + H₂CO₃ = CaCO₃ + H₂SO₄,since the sulphate forms 3·6% while the carbonate only forms 0·2% of the salts dissolved in sea-water.

[41]More correctly by decomposition of calcium sulphate, thus,

CaSO₄ + H₂CO₃ = CaCO₃ + H₂SO₄,

since the sulphate forms 3·6% while the carbonate only forms 0·2% of the salts dissolved in sea-water.

[42]Similar masses are common in the Red Sea, but I do not know of a case quite so striking as this.

[43]The apes include a wide variety of type, e.g. the baboon is on the whole lower than the ordinary monkey, which is lower than the big man-like apes, chimpanzee, orang-outang and gorilla. The lemurs link lower monkeys and ordinary quadrupeds. See Huxley’s essay “On the relations of man to the lower animals,” 1863.

[44]Avoid the conception of descent as the highest fish giving rise to the lowest amphibian, the highest amphibian giving birth to the lowest reptile, and so on. The fishes did not cease their evolution when the amphibia appeared, and ancestral types must have been generalised, and so, in one sense, lowly forms.

[45]More accurately gypsum, CaSO₄, which is decomposed to form limestone CaCO₃ as noted bottom ofpage 89above.

[46]To obtain a specimen of coral of this beautiful snow-white colour it is necessary to remove the flesh from any living colony, which is usually coloured brown or yellow, by rotting the same for a week in sea-water in a bucket. Cover the bucket to keep out dust, and change the water a few times to reduce the smell. The last traces of decayed flesh are removed by dashing buckets of water on to the coral. Rinse in fresh water. Or the specimens may be driedthoroughly, rotted in water after return to Europe, and finally bleached with hydrogen peroxide.

[47]See for instance, among other literature by the same author, “The Fauna and Geography of the Maldives and Laccadives,” Cambridge University Press, and “The Percy Sladen Trust Expedition to the Indian Ocean,” by J. Stanley Gardiner, M.A., F.R.S., etc.,Transactions Linnean Soc. Zoology, Vol. XII., pp. 35, 51, and illustrations on Plate IX, and on pages 128 and 135.

[48]The duller coloured and peculiarly shaped “bladder” or “parrot” fish,Tetraodonor “four tooth” is distinguished by its peculiarly rounded shape and alteration of scales into spines. Though its teeth are very similar to the coral eater,Pseudoscarus, it eats softer animals, e.g. Ascidians and Echinoderms, and sometimes shell-fish.

[49]Includes the whole oyster and bivalve shell-fish family, and many other less generally known forms of life.

[50]Owing to the practical absence of tide in the Red Sea the boat channels of the fringing reef are discontinuous, so that at intervals the canoe men must wait for favourable weather and put out to the open sea. In Zanzibar, e.g., one can travel the whole 60 miles of the east coast within the reef but for the crossing of one bay, except at lowest spring tides. Some of the deeper parts of the boat channel of Red Sea reefs are due to faulting (see next chapter) as may be also a very peculiar reef channel just north of Mombasa Harbour.

[51]For the qualities and formation of this rock seepage 111.

[52]The absence of similar stones from all other parts of the reef is to be accounted for by their being subject to the continual friction of strong sand-laden currents, while those on the raised edge are exposed to waves of clean water for a portion of each day only.

[53]These tubes form a mass by coiling loosely together like a cluster of worms, though the animal which makes them is exactly like those that have regular spiral shells and move about freely, e.g. the whelks. The youngVermetushas a shell like a young whelk, but as it then fixes itself down, the shell degenerates, and grows into the loosely coiled tube of the adult mollusc. Nothing could be more different than the body of aVermetusand that of a worm, the resemblances between the shell of the one and the tube of the other being pure coincidence.

[54]More correctly acompound, not mixture of carbonates, is formed, viz. dolomite, CaMg(CO₃)₂.

[55]Examples of all three are well shewn on the map oppositepage 136.

[56]I.e. in the great oceans. As shewn later, volcanic mounds and islands are found in the Red Sea, and may have formed the foundations of certain of its reefs.

[57]Gardiner, J. S., “The building of Atolls,”Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc.or The Challenger Society’sScience of the Sea, John Murray.

[58]In some lagoons quantities of sand are formed of great numbers of the minute shells of lowly organisms, the foraminifera. This is, of course, a very different thing to that resulting from breaking up of coral and shells.

[59]1912 was a rich year! 40 millimetres fell on Oct. 22nd and 20 millimetres in December, about 2½ inches altogether.

[60]J. W. Gregory,The Great Rift Valley, John Murray, 1896.

[61]The ranges bordering the sea are from 4000 feet to 8000 feet high, but of course were much higher in the days when the Rift opened.

[62]Recently, that is, geologically speaking.

[63]Such ring-shaped reefs, rising out of deep water, are termed Atolls. Sanganeb is a small example compared to those of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

[64]I have marked other harbours as they are interesting geologically, but there are only three miserable villages on this whole coast in addition to the two towns. There is no village at Trinkitat, but the cotton from Tokar is loaded on tosambûkshere.

[65]I.e. hills of Archean, ancient rock, as opposed to the newer sandstones, gravels and limestones.

[66]The Eastern Desert of Egypt, southern section, describes a part of the Red Sea coast range north of the Sudan boundary, but essentially similar to the rest.

[67]Two borings, made in the hope of obtaining water two miles inland, near Port Sudan, were carried down through 300 metres, nearly 1000 feet, of this kind of material.

[68]“Mersa” in Arabic = anchorage.

[69]Arabic Hamâma = pigeon. The shape of this hill is a cone with a cubical block on its apex, hence the appropriate name Pigeon Hill. “Khor” is used for an inlet of the sea, among other meanings.

[70]Actually many of these shells retain some of their colour! e.g. the red of the commonSpondylus, the bands ofStrombus fasciatusand the mottlings ofCyprina tigrinaare quite distinct on some specimens from 100 feet above, and on others dug out 15 feet below sea level.

[71]Allthe corals are of existing species, but the identification is less easy than in the case of the shells.

[72]Such fossils as are found in the Equatorial rocks are recent species, and the fault harbours of the coast have not had time to lose altogether the peculiar characters of such structures under the influence of the rivers which enter them and the strong tidal currents.

[73]The gypsum often found between the sandstone and the coral was most probably formed by the drying up of ashallowsea which occupied the site before the Rift Valley appeared, and probably the sandstones are the sediments deposited in the same sea; also parts of the present maritime plain were formed as the shore deposits of this ancient sea.

[74]The forms Salak and Shalak are both used by the natives.

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Transcriber's note:The change indicated in theErratahas been done.pg101(footnote 48) Changed:Pseudocarusto:PseudoscarusSpelling inconsistencies have been left unchanged.Pages84,88,102,126,137,144,147,that contained full-page captions or figures, have been placed between paragraphs in the page after them.The same image file is displayed forFig. 1and78., being completely identical in the source material.New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

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