so seldom rains as to be looked upon as a wonder.  In the whole neighbouring country on the coast, fields, mountains, or hills, there groweth no kind of herb, grass, tree, or bush; and nothing is to be seen but black scorched mountains and a number of bare hillocks, which environ the whole place from sea to sea, like an amphitheatre of barrenness and sterility, most melancholy to behold.  Any flat ground there is, is a mere dry barren sand mixed with gravel.  The port even is the worst I have seen on all this coast, and has no fish, though all the other ports and channels through which we came have abundance and variety.  It has no kind of cattle; and the people are supplied from three wells near the town, the water of which differs very little from that of the sea.

[Footnote 307:  In Purchas, Al Kossir is named Alcocer.  Don John thinks this place to be the Philoteras of Ptolomy; but Dr Pocock places it 2 deg.40’ more to the north, making Kossir Berenice, which is highly probable, as it is still the port of Kept, anciently Coptos, or of Kus near it, both on the Nile, as well as the nearest port to the Nile on all that coast, which Berenice was.  Dr Pocock supposes old Kossir to have been Myos Hormos:  but we rather believe it to have been Berenice.—­Ast.]

The most experienced of the Moors had never heard of the name of Egypt[308], but call the whole land from Al Kossir to Alexandria by the name of Riffa[309], which abounds in all kinds of victuals and provisions more than any other part of the world, together with great abundance of cattle, horses, and camels, there not being a single foot of waste land in the whole country.  According to the information I received; their language and customs are entirely Arabic.  The land, as I was told, is entirely plain, on which it never rains except for a wonder; but God hath provided a remedy by ordaining that the Nile should twice a year[310] overflow its natural bounds to water the fields.  They said likewise that the Nile from opposite to Al Kossir, and far above that towards the bounds of Abyssinia, was navigable all the way to Alexandria; but having many islands and rocks, either it was necessary to have good pilots or to sail only by day.  They told me likewise that the natives inhabited this barren spot of Al Kossir, as being the nearest harbour on the coast of the Red Sea to the Nile, whence provisions were transported; and that the inhabitants were satisfied with slight matts instead of roofs to their houses because not troubled with rain, and the matts were a sufficient protection from the sun:  but made their walls of stone to defend themselves against the malignity and rapaciousness of the Badwis, a perverse people, void of all goodness, who often suddenly assaulted the place in hope of plunder, and frequently pillaged the caravans coming across from the Nile with provisions and other commodities.