c. 1150.—"This section embraces the description of the remainder of the country of Sofāla.... The inhabitants are poor, miserable, and without resources to support them except iron; of this metal there are numerous mines in the mountains of Sofāla. The people of the islands ... come hither for iron, which they carry to the continent and islands of India ... for although there is iron in the islands and in the mines of that country, it does not equal the iron of Sofāla."—Edrisi, i. 65.

c. 1220.—"Sofāla is the most remote known city in the country of the Zenj ... wares are carried to them, and left by the merchants who then go away, and coming again find that the natives have laid down the price [they are willing to give] for every article beside it.... Sofālī gold is well-known among the Zenj merchants."—Yāḳūt, Mu'jam al-Buldān, s.v.

In his article on the gold country, Yāḳūt describes the kind of dumb trade in which the natives decline to come face to face with the merchants at greater length. It is a practice that has been ascribed to a great variety of uncivilized races; e.g. in various parts of Africa; in the extreme north of Europe and of Asia; in the Clove Islands; to the Veddas of Ceylon, to the Poliars of Malabar, and (by Pliny, surely under some mistake) to the Seres or Chinese. See on this subject a note in Marco Polo, Bk. iv. ch. 21; a note by Mr. De B. Priaulx, in J. R. As. Soc., xviii. 348 (in which several references are erroneously printed); Tennent's Ceylon, i. 593 seqq.; Rawlinson's Herodotus, under Bk. iv. ch. 196.

c. 1330.—"Sofāla is situated in the country of the Zenj. According to the author of the Kánún, the inhabitants are Muslim. Ibn Ṡayd says that their chief means of subsistence are the extraction of gold and of iron, and that their clothes are of leopard-skin."—Abulfeda, Fr. Tr. i. 222.

" "A merchant told me that the town of Sofāla is a half month's march distant from Culua ([Quiloa]), and that from Sofāla to Yūfī (Nūfī) ... is a month's march. From Yūfī they bring gold-dust to Sofāla."—Ibn Batuta, ii. 192-3.

1499.—"Coming to Mozambique (i.e. Vasco and his squadron on their return) they did not desire to go in because there was no need, so they kept their course, and being off the coast of Çofala, the pilots warned the officers that they should be alert and ready to strike sail, and at night they should keep their course, with little sail set, and a good look-out, for just thereabouts there was a river belonging to a place called Çofala, whence there sometimes issued a tremendous squall, which tore up trees and carried cattle and all into the sea...."—Correa, Lendas, i. 134-135.

1516.—"... at xviii. leagues from them there is a river, which is not very large, whereon is a town of the Moors called Sofala, close to which town the King of Portugal has a fort. These Moors established themselves there a long time ago on account of the great trade in gold, which they carry on with the Gentiles of the mainland."—Barbosa, 4.

1523.—"Item—that as regards all the ships and goods of the said Realm of Urmuz, and its ports and vassals, they shall be secure by land and by sea, and they shall be as free to navigate where they please as vassals of the King our lord, save only that they shall not navigate inside the Strait of Mecca, nor yet to Çoffala and the ports of that coast, as that is forbidden by the King our lord...."—Treaty of Dom Duarto de Menezes, with the King of Ormuz, in Botelho, Tombo, 80.

1553.—"Vasco da Gama ... was afraid that there was some gulf running far inland, from which he would not be able to get out. And this apprehension made him so careful to keep well from the shore that he passed without even seeing the town of Çofala, so famous in these parts for the quantity of gold which the Moors procured there from the Blacks of the country by trade...."—Barros, I. iv. 3.

1572.—