Lieut. Herne calculates that the total money dues during the Fair-season amount to 2000 dollars, and that, in the present reduced state of Berberah, not more than 10,000_l._ worth of merchandize is sold. This estimate the natives of the place declare to be considerably under the mark.
[18] The similarity between the Persian "Gach" and this cement, which is found in many ruins about Berberah, has been remarked by other travellers.
[19] The following note by Dr. Carter of Bombay will be interesting to Indian geologists.
"Of the collection of geological specimens and fossils from Berberah above mentioned, Lieut. Burton states that the latter are found on the plain of Berberah, and the former in the following order between the sea and the summits of mountains (600 feet high), above it—that is, the ridge immediate behind Berberah.
"1. Country along the coast consists of a coralline limestone, (tertiary formation,) with drifts of sand, &c. 2. Sub-Ghauts and lower ranges (say 2000 feet high), of sandstone capped with limestone, the former preponderating. 3. Above the Ghauts a plateau of primitive rocks mixed with sandstone, granite, syenite, mica schiste, quartz rock, micaceous grit, &c.
"The fawn-coloured fossils from his coralline limestone are evidently the same as those of the tertiary formation along the south-east coast of Arabia, and therefore the same as those of Cutch; and it is exceedingly interesting to find that among the blue-coloured fossils which are accompanied by specimens of the blue shale, composing the beds from which they have been weathered out, are species of Terebratula Belemnites, identical with those figured in Grant's Geology of Cutch; thus enabling us to extend those beds of the Jurassic formation which exist in Cutch, and along the south-eastern coast of Arabia, across to Africa."
[20] These animals are tolerably tame in the morning, as day advances their apprehension of man increases.
[21] Lieut. Cruttenden in considering what nation could have constructed, and at what period the commerce of Berberah warranted, so costly an undertaking, is disposed to attribute it to the Persian conquerors of Aden in the days of Anushirwan. He remarks that the trade carried on in the Red Sea was then great, the ancient emporia of Hisn Ghorab and Aden prosperous and wealthy, and Berberah doubtless exported, as it does now, ivory, gums, and ostrich feathers. But though all the maritime Somali country abounds in traditions of the Furs or ancient Persians, none of the buildings near Berberah justify our assigning to them, in a country of monsoon rain and high winds, an antiquity of 1300 years.
The Somal assert that ten generations ago their ancestors drove out the Gallas from Berberah, and attribute these works to the ancient Pagans. That nation of savages, however, was never capable of constructing a scientific aqueduct. I therefore prefer attributing these remains at Berberah to the Ottomans, who, after the conquest of Aden by Sulayman Pacha in A.D. 1538, held Yemen for about 100 years, and as auxiliaries of the King of Adel, penetrated as far as Abyssinia. Traces of their architecture are found at Zayla and Harar, and according to tradition, they possessed at Berberah a settlement called, after its founder, Bunder Abbas.
[22] Here, as elsewhere in Somali land, the leech is of the horse-variety. It might be worth while to attempt breeding a more useful species after the manner recommended by Capt. R. Johnston, the Sub-Assistant Commissary General in Sindh (10th April, 1845). In these streams leeches must always be suspected; inadvertently swallowed, they fix upon the inner coat of the stomach, and in Northern Africa have caused, it is said, some deaths among the French soldiers.