A moor called Yasine, well known to me afterwards, now came forward, and told me, that Mahomet Gibberti had been very bad ever since we failed, with sea-sickness, and begged that I would not laugh at the spirit, or speak so familiarly of him, because it might very possibly be the devil, who often appeared in these parts. The Moor also desired I would send Gibberti some coffee, and order my servant to boil him some rice with fresh water from Foosht; for hitherto our fish and our rice had been boiled in sea water, which I constantly preferred. This bad news of my friend Mahomet banished all merriment, I gave therefore the necessary orders to my servant to wait upon him, and at the same time recommended to Yasine to go forward with the Koran in his hand, and read all night, or till we should get to Zimmer, and then, or in the morning, bring me an account of what he had seen.
The 8th, early in the morning, we sailed from Foosht, but the wind being contrary, we did not arrive at our destination till near mid-day, when we anchored in an open road about half a mile from the island, for there is no harbour in Baccalan, Foosht, nor Zimmer. I then took my quadrant, and went with the boat ashore, to gather wood. Zimmer is a much smaller island than Foosht, without inhabitants, and without water; though, by the cisterns which still remain, and are sixty yards square, hewed out of the solid rock, we may imagine this was once a place of consequence: rain in abundance, at certain seasons, still falls there. It is covered with young plants of rack tree, whose property it is, as I have already said, to vegetate in salt water. The old trees had been cut down, but there was a considerable number of Saiel, or Acacia trees, and of these we were in want.
Although Zimmer is said to be without water, yet there are antelopes upon it, as also hyænas in number, and it is therefore probable that there is water in some subterraneous caves or clefts of the rocks, unknown to the Arabs or fishermen, without which these animals could not subsist. It is probable the antelopes were brought over from Arabia for the Sherriffe’s pleasure, or those of his friends, if they did not swim from the main, and an enemy afterwards brought the hyæna to disappoint that amusement. Be that as it will, though I did not myself see the animals, yet I observed the dung of each of them upon the sand, and in the cisterns; so the fact does not rest wholly upon the veracity of the boatman. We found at Zimmer plenty of the large shell fish called Bisser and Surrumbac, but no other. I found Zimmer, by an observation of the sun at noon, to be in lat. 16° 7´ North, and from it we observed the following bearings and distances.
| Sahaanah, | dist. | 9 | miles, | S. by W. |
| Foosht, | do. | 8 | do. | N. W. by N.¼ W. |
| Aideen, | do. | 7 | do. | E. |
| Ardaina, | do. | 2 | do. | E. by S. |
| Rahha, | do. | 6 | do. | N. W.¼ N. |
| Doohaarab, | do. | 21 | do. | W. N. W.¼ W. |
We sailed in the night from Zimmer. When we came nearer the channel, the islands were fewer, and we had never less than twenty-five fathom water. The wind was constantly to the north and west, and, during all the heat of the day, N. N. W. At the same time we had visibly a strong current to the northward.
The 9th, at six o’clock in the morning, the island Rapha bore N. E. by east, distant about two leagues, and in the same direction we saw the tops of very high mountains in Arabia Felix, which we imagined to be those above Djezan; and though these could not be less than twenty-six leagues distance, yet I distinguished their tops plainly, some minutes before sun-rise. At noon I observed our latitude to be 16° 10´ 3´´ north, so we had made very little way this day, it being for the most part calm. Rapha then bore E. ¾ north, distant thirteen miles, and Doohaarab N. N. W. five miles off. We continued under sail all the evening, but made little way, and still less during the night.
On the 10th, at seven in the morning, I first saw Jibbel Teir, till then it had been covered with a mist. I ordered the pilot to bear down directly upon it. All this forenoon our vessel had been surrounded with a prodigious number of sharks. They were of the hammer-headed kind, and two large ones seemed to vie with each other which should come nearest our vessel. The Rais had fitted a large harpoon with a long line for the large fish in the channel, and I went to the boltsprit to wait for one of the sharks, after having begged the Rais, first to examine if all was tight there, and if the ghost had done it no harm by sitting so many nights upon it. He shook his head, laughing, and said, “The sharks seek something more substantial than ghosts.” “If I am not mistaken, Rais, said I, this ghost seeks something more substantial too, and you shall see the end of it.”
I struck the largest shark about a foot from the head with such force, that the whole iron was buried in his body. He shuddered, as a person does when cold, and shook the shaft of the harpoon out of the socket, the weapon being made so on purpose; the shaft fell across, kept fixt to the line, and served as a float to bring him up when he dived, and impeded him when he swam. No salmon fisher ever saw finer sport with a fish and a rod. He had thirty fathom of line out, and we had thirty fathom more ready to give him. He never dived, but sailed round the vessel like a ship, always keeping part of his back above water. The Rais, who directed us, begged we would not pull him, but give him as much more line as he wanted; and indeed we saw it was the weight of the line that galled him, for he went round the vessel without seeking to go farther from us. At last he came nearer, upon our gathering up the line, and upon gently pulling it after, we brought him along-side, till we fastened a strong boat-hook in his throat: a man swung upon a cord was now let down to cut his tail, while hanging on the ship’s side, but he was, if not absolutely dead, without the power of doing harm. He was eleven feet seven inches from his snout to his tail, and nearly four feet round in the thickest part of him. He had in him a dolphin very lately swallowed, and about half a yard of blue cloth. He was the largest, the Rais said, he had ever seen, either in the Red Sea or the Indian Ocean.
About twenty minutes before twelve o’clock we were about four leagues distant from the island, as near as I could judge upon a parallel. Having there taken my observation, and all deductions made, I concluded the latitude of the north end of Jibbel Teir to be 15° 38´ north; thirty-two leagues west longitude from Loheia, fifty-three east longitude from Masuah, and forty-six leagues east of the meridian of Jidda. Jibbel Teir, or the Mountain of the Bird, is called by others, Jibbel Douhan, or the Mountain of Smoke. I imagine that the fame was the origin of our name of[205]Gibraltar, rather than from Tarik, who first landed in Spain; and one of my reasons is, that so conspicuous a mountain, near, and immediately in the face of the moors of Barbary, must have been known by some name, long before Tarik with his Arabs made his descent into Spain.
The reason of its being called Jibbel Douhan, the Mountain of Smoke, is, that though, in the middle of the sea, it is a volcano, which throws out fire, and though nearly extinguished, smokes to this day. It probably has been the occasion of the creation of great part of the neighbouring islands. Did it burn now, it would be of great use to shipping in the night, but in the earliest history of the trade of that sea, no mention is made of it, as in a state of conflagration. It was called Orneón in Ptolemy, the Bird-Island, the name as Jibbel Teir. It is likewise called Sheban, from the white spot at the top of it, which seems to be sulphur, and a part seems to have fallen in, and to have enlarged the crater on this side. The island is four miles from south to north, has a peek in form of a pyramid in the middle of it, and is about a quarter of a mile high. It descends, equally, on both sides, to the sea; has four openings at the top, which vent smoke, and sometimes, in strong southerly winds it is said to throw out fire. There was no such appearance when we passed it. The island is perfectly desert, being covered with sulphur and pumice stones.