inland it rises in both into high mountains.  The 31st we sailed from Salaka, and an hour before sunset we made fast to the rocks of a shoal a league from the land and 17 leagues from Salaka, being 43 leagues from Swakem.  From the port of Salaka the coast begins to wind very much; and from Raseldoaer or Ras al Dwaer, it runs very low to the N.N.E. ending in a sandy point where there are 13 little hillocks or knobs of stone, which the Moorish pilots said were graves.  From this point of the Calmes[294] about two leagues, the coast runneth N.N.W. to a shoal which is 43 leagues from Swakem.  This point is the most noted in all these seas, as whoever sails from Massua, Swakem, and other places for Jiddah, Al Cossir, and Toro, must necessarily make this point.  The sea for the last seventeen leagues is of such a nature that no rules or experience can suffice for sailing it in safety, so that the skilful as well as the unskilful must pass it at all hazards, and save themselves as it were by chance, for it is so full of numerous and great shoals, so interspersed everywhere with rocks, and so many and continual banks, that it seems better fitted for being travelled on foot than sailed even in small boats.  In the space between Salaka and Ras-al-Dwaer, but nearer to the latter, there are three islands forming a triangle, the largest of which is called Magarzawn, about two leagues long and very high ground, but has no water.  This island bears N. and S. with Ras-al-Dwaer distant three leagues.  The second island lies considerably out to sea, and is called Al Mante, and is high land without water; the third island is all sand and quite low, being four leagues from Salaka towards Ras-al-Dwaer, but I did not learn its name.

[Footnote 294:  Meaning perhaps the sandy point near Ras-al-Dwaer.  This paragraph is very obscure, and seems to want something, omitted perhaps by the abbreviator.—­Astl.]

On the 2d of April 1541, casting loose from the before-mentioned shoal, which is 43 leagues beyond Swakem, we rowed along the coast, and entered a river called Farate, about four leagues from the shoal; whence setting our sails we got into a fine haven a league from thence called Kilfit.  All this day we saw no rocks to landward, but there was a shoal to seaward. Farate is a large and fair river, the mouth of which is in lat. 21 deg.40’ N. Its mouth is formed by two low points about a gun-shot apart, from each of which a shoal stretches towards the middle, where only there is any passage.  The river runs from the west to the east, having very low land on both sides, without either tree or shrub or bush of any kind.  At the entrance it is 30 fathoms deep, and from thence diminishes to 18 fathoms. Kilfit is a fine harbour and very safe, as when once in, no wind whatever need be feared.