ABSTRACT
We had broken the thread of the story of our journey which we are now taking back down on the Ethiopian side, the left shore of the Red Sea when one enters it, now once again bound for the narrows. And as we were in its heat, I digressed to tell what I have just related. Resuming the thread of our journey at this place, I say that it was destroyed years ago by Dom Estevao da Gama on the occasion of that incursion he made into the Red Sea with his powerful fleet. 1 There is a distance of sixty leagues between this place and Masua, and in those sixty leagues there is no place of any importance beyond ports and watering-places I visited as a captive when the Turks took me that way to the islands. The island of Masua is flat and one thousand two hundred brasas in circumference. It is divided into three parts. The easternmost point is occupied by a small, dilapidated tower, and from there inward continues one of the three parts, in which the inhabitants have many cisterns, most of them broken and in a state of ruin, a very few in good condition and containing water for the most privileged inhabitants. The second or middle part serves as a burial-place for the Turks and Muslims. The Christians and pagans, however, whom they call cafar, 2
meaning accursed, infamous, lawless and Godless, unclean, etc., are not permitted to be buried next to the Muslim dead, but are thrown to the birds and wild beasts, which feed on them on another island nearby. The third part, which is to the west, contains the population, which occupies all of it. It is small and composed of dilapidated houses, some of straw, some of stone and clay, and some of stone and lime. The island is provided with food and meat. Water comes to it by sea every day in leather bottles brought in three boats, used only for this purpose, from the mainland, a distance of two leagues going up a bay. The Turks have there on the mainland a very weak fortification of stone and clay, a sort of fortress with some soldiers and artillery guarding some wells which they make in the sand. They take the water from these wells
for the population of the island. Their finding water in this place can be explained by two peculiarities. One is that it is close to the sea and the salt water, strained by sand is made fresh, which we too found to be the case when we dug into the sands on this shore. And although it was fresh at first, in a few hours it kept getting briny until it was of no use. The second peculiarity is that streams of water come down from the mountains and come to this place and go underground in the sand and remain fresh and useful so that, by digging down a little, they find water as we also did in places where there were signs of streams having flowed in winter.
