The inhabitants of Dahalac seemed to be a simple, fearful, and inoffensive people. It is the only part of Africa, or Arabia, (call it which you please) where you see no one carry arms of any kind; neither gun, knife, nor sword, is to be seen in the hands of any one. Whereas, at Loheia, and on all the coast of Arabia, and more particularly at Yambo, every person goes armed; even the porters, naked, and groaning under the weight of their burden, and heat of the day, have yet a leather belt, in which they carry a crooked knife, so monstrously long, that it needs a particular motion and address in walking, not to lame the bearer. This was not always the case at Dahalac; several of the Portuguese, on their first arrival here, were murdered, and the island often treated ill, in revenge, by the armaments of that nation. The men seem healthy. They told me they had no diseafes among them, unless sometimes in Spring, when the boats of Yemen and Jidda bring the small-pox among them, and very few escape with life that are infected. I could not observe a man among them that seemed to be sixty years old, from which I infer, they are not long livers, though the air should be healthy, as being near the channel, and as they have the north wind all summer, which moderates the heat.
Of all the islands we had passed on this side the channel, Dahalac alone is inhabited. It depends, as do all the rest, upon Masuah, and is conferred by a firman from the Grand Signior, on the Bashia of Jidda; and, from him, on Metical Aga, then on the Naybe and his servants. The present governor's name was Hagi Mahomet Abd el cader, of whom I have before spoken, as having sailed from Jidda to Masuah before me, where he did me all the dis-service in his power,
