Ὀρυζα[18]—Rice.
Βούτυρον—Butter, i. e. ghî.
Ἔλαιον σησάμινον—Oil of sesamum.
Ὀθόνιον ἥ τε μοναχὴ καὶ ἡ σαγματογήνη—Fine cotton called Monakhê, and a coarse kind for stuffing called Sagmatogene.
Περιζώματα—Sashes or girdles.
Μέλι τὸ καλάμινον τὸ λεγόμενον σάκχαρι—The honey of a reed, called sugar.
Some traders undertake voyages for this commerce expressly, while others, as they sail along the coast we are describing, exchange their cargoes for such others as they can procure. There is no king who reigns paramount over all this region, but each separate seat of trade is ruled by an independent despot of its own.
(14) At this harbour is introduced the mention of the voyage which was annually made between the coast of India and Africa in days previous to the appearance of the Greeks on the Indian Ocean, which has already been referred to.
15. After Opônê, the coast now trending more to the south, you come first to what are called the little and the great Apokopa (or Bluffs) of Azania, where there are no harbours, but only roads in which ships can conveniently anchor. The navigation of this coast, the direction of which is now to the south-west, occupies six days. Then follow the Little Coast and the Great Coast, occupying other six days, when in due order succeed the Dromoi (or Courses) of Azania, the one going by the name of Sarapiôn, and the other by that of Nikôn. Proceeding thence, you pass the mouths of numerous rivers, and a succession of other roadsteads lying apart one from another a day’s distance either by sea or by land. There are seven of them altogether, and they reach on to the Puralaoi islands and the narrow strait called the Canal, beyond which, where the coast changes its direction from south-west slightly more to south, you are conducted by a voyage of two days and two nights to Menouthias, an island stretching towards sunset, and distant from the mainland about 300 stadia. It is low-lying and woody, has rivers, and a vast variety of birds, and yields the mountain tortoise, but it has no wild beasts at all, except only crocodiles, which, however, are quite harmless. The boats are here made of planks sewn together attached to a keel formed of a single log of wood, and these are used for fishing and for catching turtle. This is also caught in another mode, peculiar to the island, by lowering wicker-baskets instead of nets, and fixing them against the mouths of the cavernous rocks which lie out in the sea confronting the beach.
(15) After leaving Opônê the coast first runs due south, then bends to the south-west, and here begins the coast which is called the Little and the Great Apokopa or Bluffs of Azania, the voyage along which occupies six days. This rocky coast, as we learn from recent explorations, begins at Râs Mabber [about lat. 9° 25´ N.], which is between 70 and 80 miles distant from Ras Hafûn and extends only to Râs-ul-Kheil [about lat. 7° 45´ N.], which is distant from Râs Mabber about 140 miles or a voyage of three or four days only. The length of this rocky coast (called Hazine by the Arabs) is therefore much exaggerated in the Periplûs. From this error we may infer that our author, who was a very careful observer, had not personally visited this coast. Ptolemy, in opposition to Marînos as well as the Periplûs, recognizes but one Apokopa, which he speaks of as a bay. Müller concludes an elaborate note regarding the Apokopa by the following quotation from the work of Owen, who made the exploration already referred to, “It is strange that the descriptive term Hazine should have produced the names Ajan, Azan and Azania in many maps and charts, as the country never had any other appellation than Barra Somâli or the land of the Somâli, a people who have never yet been collected under one government, and whose limits of subjection are only within bow-shot of individual chiefs. The coast of Africa from the Red Sea to the river Juba is inhabited by the tribe called Somâli. They are a mild people of pastoral habits and confined entirely to the coast; the whole of the interior being occupied by an untameable tribe of savages called Galla.”
The coast which follows the Apokopa, called the Little and the Great Aigialos or Coast, is so desolate that, as Vincent remarks, not a name occurs on it, neither is there an anchorage noticed, nor the least trace of commerce to be found. Yet it is of great extent—a six days’ voyage according to the Periplûs, but, according to Ptolemy, who is here more correct, a voyage of eight days, for, as we have seen, the Periplûs has unduly extended the Apokopa to the South.
Next follow the Dromoi or Courses of Azania, the first called that of Serapiôn and the other that of Nikôn. Ptolemy interposes a bay between the Great Coast and the port of Serapiôn, on which he states there was an emporium called Essina—a day’s sail distant from that port. Essina, it would therefore appear, must have been somewhere near where Makdashû [Magadoxo, lat. 2° 3´ N.] was built by the Arabs somewhere in the eighth century A.D. The station called that of Nikôn in the Periplûs appears in Ptolemy as the mart of Tonikê. These names are not, as some have supposed, of Greek origin, but distortions of the native appellations of the places into names familiar to Greek ears. That the Greeks had founded any settlements here is altogether improbable. At the time when the Periplûs was written all the trade of these parts was in the hands of the Arabs of Mouza. The port of Serapiôn may be placed at a promontory which occurs in 1° 40´ of N. lat. From this, Tonikê, according to the tables of Ptolemy, was distant 45´, and its position must therefore have agreed with that of Torre or Torra of our modern maps.
Next occurs a succession of rivers and roadsteads, seven in number, which being passed we are conducted to the Puralaän Islands, and what is called a canal or channel (διώρυξ). These islands are not mentioned elsewhere. They can readily be identified with the two called Manda and Lamou, which are situate at the mouths of large rivers, and are separated from the mainland and from each other by a narrow channel. Vincent would assign a Greek origin to the name of these islands. “With a very slight alteration,” he says, “of the reading, the Puralian Islands (Πῦρ ἁλιον, marine fire,) are the islands of the Fiery Ocean, and nothing seems more consonant to reason than for a Greek to apply the name of the Fiery Ocean to a spot which was the centre of the Torrid Zone and subject to the perpendicular rays of an equinoctial sun.” [The Juba islands run along the coast from Juba to about Lat. 1° 50´ S., and Manda bay and island is in Lat. 2° 12´ S.]
Beyond these islands occurs, after a voyage of two days and two nights, the island of Menouthias or Menouthesias, which it has been found difficult to identify with any certainty. “It is,” says Vincent, “the Eitenediommenouthesias of the Periplûs, a term egregiously strange and corrupted, but out of which the commentators unanimously collect Menoothias, whatever may be the fate of the remaining syllables. That this Menoothias,” he continues, “must have been one of the Zangibar islands is indubitable; for the distance from the coast of all three, Pemba, Zangibar, and Momfia, affords a character which is indelible; a character applicable to no other island from Guardafui to Madagascar.” He then identifies it with the island of Zangibar, lat. 6° 5´ S., in preference to Pemba, 5° 6´ S., which lay too far out of the course, and in preference to Momfia, 7° 50´ S. (though more doubtfully), because of its being by no means conspicuous, whereas Zangibar was so prominent and obvious above the other two, that it might well attract the particular attention of navigators, and its distance from the mainland is at the same time so nearly in accordance with that given in the Periplûs as to counterbalance all other objections. A writer in Smith’s Classical Geography, who seems to have overlooked the indications of the distances both of Ptolemy and the Periplûs, assigns it a position much further to the north than is reconcilable with these distances. He places it about a degree south from the mouth of the River Juba or Govind, just where an opening in the coral-reefs is now found. “The coasting voyage,” he says, “steering S. W., reached the island on the east side—a proof that it was close to the main.... It is true the navigator says it was 300 stadia from the mainland; but as there is no reason to suppose that he surveyed the island, this distance must be taken to signify the estimated width of the northern inlet separating the island from the main, and this estimate is probably much exaggerated. The mode of fishing with baskets is still practised in the Juba islands and along this coast. The formation of the coast of E. Africa in these latitudes—where the hills or downs upon the coast are all formed of a coral conglomerate comprising fragments of madrepore, shell and sand, renders it likely that the island which was close to the main 16 or 17 centuries ago, should now be united to it. Granting this theory of gradual transformation of the coast-line, the Menouthias of the Periplûs may be supposed to have stood in what is now the rich garden-land of Shamba, where the rivers carrying down mud to mingle with the marine deposit of coral drift covered the choked-up estuary with a rich soil.”
The island is said in the Periplûs to extend towards the West, but this does not hold good either in the case of Zangibar or any other island in this part of the coast. Indeed there is no one of them in which at the present day all the characteristics of Menouthias are found combined. Momfia, for instance, which resembles it somewhat in name, and which, as modern travellers tell us, is almost entirely occupied with birds and covered with their dung, does not possess any streams of water. These are found in Zangibar. The author may perhaps have confusedly blended together the accounts he had received from his Arab informants.