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Our sailors on New Year's Eve took a handsome present of bread and candles, presented to them by us, to a holy man who dwelt on the extreme point of Ras Bernas, and had a long gossip with him concerning what boats had passed that way and the prospects of trade i.e. the slave trade in these desert regions.
The Arabs call them 'houris' why, I cannot think for a more uncomfortable thing to sit in, when half full of water in a rolling surf, I never found elsewhere, except on a South-East African river. At the present moment the coast below Ras Bernas and above Sawakin is the hot-bed of the slave trade, carried on between the Dervishes of the Nile Valley and Arabia.
Three large cisterns for water are still in a fair state of preservation, and I am told that a Kufic inscription was found here some years ago. There seems no doubt that this town is the one mentioned by the Arab geographers, Abou'lfida and Edrisi, by the name of Aydab, which was a place of considerable importance between Ras Bernas and Sawakin.
Regular Egyptian coastguard boats keep matters pretty clear north of Ras Bernas, and we can testify to their activity, for we ourselves were boarded and searched by one; but south of this, before the influence of Sawakin is reached, there is a long stretch of country where the traffic in human flesh can be carried on undisturbed.
There was always a large surface of wet wood to dry up. Leaving Kosseir on the last day of 1895, we reached Ras Bernas on the second day of 1896, stopping, of course, each night, always rolling and tossing about, and always keeping a sharp look out for coral reefs, the watchers shouting advice continually to Reis Hamaya.
On Sith-Aedha Patrick blessed Conall Mac Neill, when Patrick's hands would fall on the head of Fergus. After Patrick had blessed the Cenel-Conaill, and had left a blessing on their forts and rivers and churches, he went into the country of Eoghan, the son of Niall, across Bernas of Tir-Aedha into Magh-Itha, and to Domhnachmor of Magh-Itha, where he left Dudubae, son of Corcan, of his people.
The Bishari of the Akhmed Orab tribe, who inhabit the mountains, are exceedingly few in number, and the Batran told us that all the way from Ras Bernas to Mount Sorturba, just south of Shellal, over which country his rule extends, the whole tribe could muster only about three hundred fighting men.
He pointed out another thing, a shrub called tuldum, with tiny yellow flowers on green stalks, good to tie round the arm to make one see far. Ras Bernas is a long, wandering cape composed of rocky hills of ironstone and silicate curiously blended together, with shoals and rocks, and coral reefs, and sandbanks hanging on to it in very shallow water.
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