On The Prowl

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On The Prowl

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.
pieces; it is found having this signification in many of their books.
Thus a naked man is not a Tot, but the body of a naked man, with a
dog’s head, an ass’s head, or a serpent instead of a head, is a Tot.
According to the import of that word, it is, I suppose, an almanack,
or section of the phænomena in the heavens which are to happen in
the limited time it is made to comprehend, when exposed for the
information of the public; and the more extensive its use is intended
to be, the greater number of emblems, or signs of observation, it is
charged with.

Besides many other emblems or figures, the common Tot, I think,

has in his hand a cross with a handle, as it is called Crux Ansata,
which has occasioned great speculation among the decypherers.
This cross, fixed to a circle, is supposed to denote the four elements,
and to be the symbol of the influence the sun has over them.
Jamblichus260 records, that this cross, in the hand of Tot, is the name
of the divine Being that travels through the world. Sozomen261 thinks
it means the life to come, the same with the ineffable image of
eternity. Others, strange difference! say it is the phallus, or human
genitals, while a later262 writer maintains it to be the mariner’s
compass. My opinion, on the contrary is, that, as this figure was
exposed to the public for the reason I have mentioned, the Crux
Ansata in his hand was nothing else but a monogram of his own
name TO, and O signifying TOT, or as we write Almanack upon a
TT
collection published for the same purpose.
 London Published December 1st. 1789 by G. Robinson & Co

The changing of these emblems, and the multitude of them,

produced the necessity of contrasting their size, and this again a
consequential alteration in the original forms; and a stile, or small
portable instrument, became all that was necessary for finishing
these small Tots, instead of a large graver or carving tool, employed
in making the large ones. But men, at last, were so much used to
the alteration, as to know it better than under its primitive form, and
the engraving became what we may call the first elements, or root,
in preference to the original.
The reader will see, that, in my history of the civil wars in Abyssinia,
the king, forced by rebellion to retire to the province of Tigré, and
being at Axum, found a stone covered with hieroglyphics, which, by
the many inquiries I made after inscriptions, and some conversations
I had had with him, he guessed was of the kind which I wanted. Full
of that princely goodness and condescension that he ever honoured
me with, throughout my whole stay, he brought it with him when he
returned from Tigré, and was restored to his throne at Gondar.

It seems to me to be one of those private Tots, or portable

almanacks, of the most curious kind. The length of the whole stone
is fourteen inches, and six inches broad, upon, a base three inches
high, projecting from the block itself, and covered with hieroglyphics.
A naked figure of a man, near six inches, stands upon two
crocodiles, their heads turned different ways. In each of his hands
he holds two serpents, and a scorpion, all by the tail, and in the
right hand hangs a noose, in which is suspended a ram or goat. On
the left hand he holds a lion by the tail. The figure is in great relief;
and the head of it with that kind of cap or ornament which is
generally painted upon the head of the figure called Isis, but this
figure is that of a man. On each side of the whole-length figure, and
above it, upon the face of the stone where it projects, are marked a
number of hieroglyphics of all kinds. Over this is a very remarkable
representation; it is an old head, with very strong features, and a
large bushy beard, and upon it a high cap ribbed or striped. This I
take to be the Cnuph, or Animus Mundi, though Apuleus, with very
little probability, says this was made in the likeness of no creature
whatever. The back of the stone is divided into eight
compartments263, from the top to the bottom, and these are filled
with hieroglyphics in the last stage, before they took the entire
resemblance of letters. Many are perfectly formed; the Crux Ansata
appears in one of the compartments, and Tot in another. Upon the
edge, just above where it is broken, is 1119, so fair and perfect in
form, that it might serve as an example of caligraphy, even in the
present times; 45 and 19, and some other arithmetical figures, are
found up and down among the hieroglyphics.
 No. 2
A Table of hieroglyphics, found at axum 1771.

London Publish’d Decr. 1. 1789. by G. Robinson & Co.

This I suppose was what formerly the Egyptians called a book, or

almanack; a collection of these was probably hung up in some
conspicuous place, to inform the public of the state of the heavens,
and seasons, and diseases, to be expected in the course of them, as
is the case in the English almanacks at this day. Hermes is said to
have composed 36,535 books, probably of this sort, or they might
contain the correspondent astronomical observations made in a
certain time at Meroë, Ophir, Axum, or Thebes, communicated to be
hung up for the use of the neighbouring cities. Porphyry264 gives a
particular account of the Egyptian almanacks. “What is comprised in
the Egyptian almanacks, says he, contains but a small part of the
Hermaic institutions; all that relates to the rising and setting of the
moon and planets, and of the stars and their influence, and also
some advice upon diseases.”

It is very remarkable, that, besides my Tot here described, there are

five or six, precisely the same in all respects, already in the British
Museum; one of them, the largest of the whole, is made of
sycamore, the others are of metal. There is another, I am told, in
Lord Shelburn’s collection; this I never had an opportunity of seeing;
but a very principal attention seems to have been paid to make all of
them light and portable, and it would seem that by these having
been formed so exactly similar, they were the Tots intended to be
exposed in different cities or places, and were neither more nor less
than Egyptian almanacks.

Whether letters were known to Noah before the flood, is no where

said from any authority, and the inquiry into it is therefore useless. It
is difficult, in my opinion, to imagine, that any society, engaged in
different occupations, could subsist long without them. There seems
to be less doubt, that they were invented, soon after the dispersion,
long before Moses, and in common use among the Gentiles of his
time.

It seems also probable, that the first alphabet was Ethiopic, first
founded on hieroglyphics, and afterwards modelled into more
current, and less laborious figures, for the sake of applying them to
the expedition of business. Mr Fourmont is so much of this opinion,
that he says it is evident the three first letters of the Ethiopic
alphabet are hieroglyphics yet, and that the Beta resembles the door
of a house or temple. But, with great submission, the doors of
houses and temples, when first built, were square at the top, for
arches were not known. The Beta was taken from the doors of the
first Troglodytes in the mountains, which were rounded, and gave
the hint for turning the arch, when architecture advanced nearer to
perfection.

Others are for giving to letters a divine original: they say they were
taught to Abraham by God himself; but this is no where vouched;
though it cannot be denied, that it appears from scripture there
were two sorts of characters known to Moses, when God spoke to
him on Mount Sinai. The first two tables, we are told, were wrote by
the finger of God, in what character is not said, but Moses received
them to read to the people, so he surely understood them. But,
when he had broken these two tables, and had another meeting
with God on the mount on the subject of the law, God directs him
specially not to write in the Egyptian character or hieroglyphics, but
in the current hand used by the Ethiopian merchants, like the letters
upon a signet; that is, he should not write in hieroglyphics by a
picture, representing the thing, for that the law forbids; and the bad
consequences of this were evident; but he should write the law in
the current hand, by characters representing sounds, (though
nothing else in heaven or on earth,) or by the letters that the
Ishmaelites, Cushites, and India trading nations had long used in
business for signing their invoices, engagements, &c. and this was
the meaning of being like the letters of a signet.

Hence, it is very clear, God did not invent letters, nor did Moses, who
understood both characters before the promulgation of the law upon
Mount Sinai, having learned them in Egypt, and during his long stay
among the Cushites, and Shepherds in Arabia Petrea. Hence it
should appear also, that the sacred character of the Egyptian was
considered as profane, and forbid to the Hebrews, and that the
common Ethiopic was the Hebrew sacred character, in which the
copy of the law was first wrote. The text is very clear and explicit:
“And the stones shall be with the names of the children of Israel,
twelve, according to their names, like the engravings of signet; every
one with his name, shall they be according to the twelve tribes265.”
Which is plainly, You shall not write in the way used till this day, for it
leads the people into idolatry; you shall not type Judah by a lion,
Zebulun by ship, Issachar by an ass couching between two burdens;
but, instead of writing by pictures, you shall take the other known
hand, the merchants writing, which signifies sounds, not things;
write the names Judah, Zebulun, Issachar, in the letters, such as the
merchants use upon their signets. And, on Aaron’s breast-plate of
pure gold, was to be written, in the same alphabet, like the
engravings of a signet, HOLINESS TO THE LORD266.

These signets, of the remotest antiquity in the East, are worn still
upon every man’s hand to this day, having the name of the person
that wears them, or some sentence upon it always religious. The
Greeks, after the Egyptians, continued the other method, and
described figures upon their signet; the use of both has been always
common in Britain.

We find afterwards, that, in place of stone or gold, for greater

convenience Moses wrote in a book, “And it came to pass, when
Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book,
until they were finished;267”—

Although, then, Moses certainly did not invent either, or any

character, it is probable that he made two, perhaps more, alterations
in the Ethiopic alphabet as it then stood, with a view to increase the
difference still more between the writing then in use among the
nations, and what he intended to be peculiar to the Jews. The first
was altering the direction, and writing from right to left, whereas,
the Ethiopian was, and is to this day, written from left to right, as
was the hieroglyphical alphabet268. The second was taking away the
points, which, from all times, must have existed and been, as it
were, a part of the Ethiopic letters invented with them, and I do not
see how it is possible it ever could have been read without them; so
that, which way soever the dispute may turn concerning the
antiquity of the application of the Masoretic points, the invention was
no new one, but did exist as early as language was written. And I
apprehend, that these alterations were very rapidly adopted after
the writing of the law, and applied to the new character as it then
stood; because, not long after, Moses was ordered to submit the law
itself to the people, which would have been perfectly useless, had
not reading and the character been familiar to them at that time.

It appears to me also, that the Ethiopic words were always

separated, and could not run together, or be joined as the Hebrew,
and that the running the words together into one must have been
matter of choice in the Hebrew, to increase the difference in writing
the two languages, as the contrary had been practised in the
Ethiopian language. Though there is really little resemblance
between the Ethiopic and the Hebrew letters, and not much more
between that and the Samaritan, yet I have a very great suspicion
the languages were once much nearer a-kin than this disagreement
of their alphabet promises, and, for this reason, that a very great
number of words are found throughout the Old Testament that have
really no root, nor can be derived from any Hebrew origin, and yet
all have, in the Ethiopic, a plain, clear, unequivocal origin, to and
from which they can be traced without force or difficulty.

I shall now finish what I have to say upon this subject, by observing,
that the Ethiopic alphabet consists of twenty-six letters, each of
these, by a virgula, or point annexed, varying in sound, so as to
become, in effect, forty-two distinct letters. But I must further add,
that at first they had but twenty-five of these original letters, the
Latin P being wanting, so that they were obliged to substitute
another letter in the place of it. Paulus, for example, they called
Taulus, Oulus, or Caulus. Petros they pronounced Ketros. At last they
substituted T, and added this to the end of their alphabet, giving it
the force of P, though it was really a repetition of a character, rather
than invention. Besides these there are twenty others of the nature
of diphthongs, but I should suppose some of these are not of the
same antiquity with the letters of the alphabet, but have been
invented in later times by the scribes for convenience.

The reader will understand, that, speaking of the Ethiopic at present,

I mean only the Geez language, the language of the Shepherds, and
of the books. None of the other many languages spoken in Abyssinia
have characters for writing. But when the Amharic became
substituted, in common use and conversation, to the Geez, after the
restoration of the Royal family, from their long banishment in Shoa,
seven new characters were necessarily added to answer the
pronunciation of this new language, but no book was ever yet
written in any other language except Geez. On the contrary, there is
an old law in this country, handed down by tradition only, that
whoever should attempt to translate the holy scripture into Amharic,
or any other language, his throat should be cut after the manner in
which they kill sheep, his family sold to slavery, and his house razed
to the ground; and, whether the fear of this law was true or feigned,
it was a great obstacle to me in getting those translations of the
Song of Solomon made which I intend for specimens of the different
languages of those distinct nations.

The Geez is exceedingly harsh and unharmonious. It is full of these

two letters, D and T, on which an accent is put that nearly resembles
stammering. Considering the small extent of sea that divides this
country from Arabia, we are not to wonder that it has great affinity
to the Arabic. It is not difficult to be acquired by those who
understand any other of the oriental languages; and, for a reason I
have given some time ago, that the roots of many Hebrew words are
only to be found here, I think it absolutely necessary to all those
that would obtain a critical skill in that language.

Wemmers, a Carmelite, has wrote a small Ethiopic dictionary in thin

quarto, which, as far as it goes, has considerable merit; and I am
told there are others of the same kind extant, written chiefly by
Catholic priests. But by far the most copious, distinct, and best-
digested work, is that of Job Ludolf, a German of great learning in
the Eastern languages, and who has published a grammar and
dictionary of the Geez in folio. This read with attention is more than
sufficient to make any person of very moderate genius a great
proficient in the Ethiopic language. He has likewise written a short
essay towards a dictionary and grammar of the Amharic, which,
considering the very small help he had, shews his surprising talents
and capacity. Much, however, remains still to do; and it is indeed
scarcely possible to bring this to any tolerable degree of forwardness
for want of books, unless a man of genius, while in the country itself,
were to give his time and application to it: It is not much more
difficult than the former, and less connected with the Hebrew or
Arabic, but has a more harmonious pronunciation.
 CHAP. IV.
Some Account of the Trade Winds and Monsoons—Application of this
to the Voyage to Ophir and Tarshish.

I T is a matter of real affliction, which shews the vanity of all human

attainments, that the preceding pages have been employed in
describing, and, as it were, drawing from oblivion, the history of
those very nations that first conveyed to the world, not the elements
of literature only, but all sorts of learning, arts, and sciences in their
full detail and perfection. We see that these had taken deep root,
and were not easily extirpated. The first great and fatal blow they
received was from the destruction of Thebes, and its monarchy, by
the first invasion of the Shepherds under Salatis, which shook them
to the very foundation. The next was in the conquest of the Thebaid
under Sabaco and his Shepherds. The third was when the empire of
Lower Egypt (I do not think of the Thebaid) was transferred to
Memphis, and that city taken, as writers say, by the Shepherds of
Abaris only, or of the Delta, though it is scarcely probable, that, in so
favourite a cause as the destruction of cities, the whole Shepherds
did not lend their assistance.

These were the calamities, we may suppose, under which the arts in
Egypt fell; for, as to the foreign conquests of Nebuchadnezzar and
his Babylonians, they affected cities and the persons of individuals
only. They were temporary, never intended to have lasting
consequences; their beginning and end were prophesied at the same
time. That of the Assyrians was a plundering expedition only, as we
are told by scripture itself, intended to last but forty years269, half the
life of man, given, for a particular purpose, for the indemnification of
the king Nebuchadnezzar, for the hardships he sustained at the siege
of Tyre, where the obstinacy of the inhabitants, in destroying their
wealth, deprived the conqueror of his expected booty. The
Babylonians were a people the most polished after the Egyptians.
Egypt under them suffered by rapacity, but not by ignorance, as it
did in all the conquests of the Shepherds.

After Thebes was destroyed by the first Shepherds, commerce, and

it is probable the arts with it, fled for a time from Egypt, and
centered in Edom, a city and territory, tho’ we know little of its
history, at that period the richest in the world. David, in the very
neighbourhood of Tyre and Sidon, calls Edom the strong city; “Who
will bring me into the strong city? Who will lead me into Edom270?”
David, from an old quarrel, and probably from the recent instigations
of the Tyrians his friends, invaded Edom271, destroyed the city, and
dispersed the people. He was the great military power then upon the
continent; Tyre and Edom were rivals; and his conquest of that last
great and trading state, which he united to his empire, would yet
have lost him the trade he sought to cultivate, by the very means he
used to obtain it, had not Tyre been in a capacity to succeed to
Edom, and to collect its mariners and artificers, scattered abroad by
the conquest.

David took possession of two ports, Eloth and Ezion-gaber272, from

which he carried on the trade to Ophir and Tarshish, to a very great
extent, to the day of his death. We are struck with astonishment
when we reflect upon the sum that Prince received in so short a time
from these mines of Ophir. For what is said to be given by King
David273 and his Princes for the building of the Temple of Jerusalem,
exceeds in value eight hundred millions of our money, if the talent
there spoken of is a Hebrew talent274, and not a weight of the same
denomination, the value of which was less, and peculiarly reserved
for and used in the traffic of these precious metals, gold and silver. It
was, probably, an African or Indian weight, proper to the same
mines, whence was gotten the gold appropriated to fine
commodities only, as is the case with our ounce Troy different from
the Averdupoise.

Solomon, who succeeded David in his kingdom, was his successor

likewise in the friendship of Hiram king of Tyre. Solomon visited
Eloth and Ezion-gaber275 in person, and fortified them. He collected a
number of pilots, shipwrights, and mariners, dispersed by his father’s
conquest of Edom, most of whom had taken refuge in Tyre and
Sidon, the commercial states in the Mediterranean. Hiram supplied
him with sailors in abundance; but the sailors so furnished from Tyre
were not capable of performing the service which Solomon required,
without the direction of pilots and mariners used to the navigation of
the Arabian Gulf and Indian Ocean. Such were those mariners who
formerly lived in Edom, whom Solomon had now collected in Eloth
and Ezion-gaber.

This last-mentioned navigation was very different in all respects from

that of the Mediterranean, which, in respect to the former, might be
compared to a pond, every side being confined with shores little
distant the one from the other; even that small extent of sea was so
full of islands, that there was much greater art required in the pilot
to avoid land than to reach it. It was, besides, subject to variable
winds, being to the northward of 30° of latitude, the limits to which
Providence hath confined those winds all over the globe; whereas
the navigation of the Indian Ocean was governed by laws more
convenient and regular, though altogether different from those that
obtained in the Mediterranean. Before I proceed, it will be necessary
to explain this phænomenon.

It is known to all those who are ever so little versant in the history of
Egypt, that the wind from the north prevails in that valley all the
summer months, and is called the Etesian winds; it sweeps the
valley from north to south, that being the direction of Egypt, and of
the Nile, which runs through the midst of it. The two chains of
mountains, which confine Egypt on the east and on the west,
constrain the wind to take this precise direction.
It is natural to suppose the same would be the case in the Arabian
Gulf, had that narrow sea been in a direction parallel to the land of
Egypt, or due north and south. The Arabian Gulf, however, or what
we call the Red Sea, lies from nearly north-west to south-east, from
Suez to Mocha. It then turns nearly east and west till it joins the
Indian Ocean at the Straits of Babelmandeb, as we have already
said, and may be further seen by consulting the map. Now, the
Etesian winds, which are due north in Egypt, here take the direction
of the Gulf, and blow in that direction steadily all the season, while it
continues north in the valley of Egypt; that is, from April to October
the wind blows north-west up the Arabian Gulf towards the Straits;
and, from November till March, directly contrary, down the Arabian
Gulf, from the Straits of Babelmandeb to Suez and the isthmus.

These winds are by some corruptly called the trade-winds; but this
name given to them is a very erroneous one, and apt to confound
narratives, and make them unintelligible. A trade-wind is a wind
which, all the year through, blows, and has ever blown, from the
same point of the horizon; such is the south-west, south of the Line,
in the Indian and Pacific Ocean. On the contrary, these winds, of
which we have now spoken, are called monsoons; each year they
blow six months from the northward, and the other six months from
the southward, in the Arabian Gulf: While in the Indian Ocean,
without the Straits of Babelmandeb, they blow just the contrary at
the same seasons; that is, in summer from the southward, and in
winter from the northward, subject to a small inflexion to the east
and to the west.

The reader will observe, then, that, a vessel sailing from Suez or the
Elanitic Gulf, in any of the summer months, will find a steady wind at
north-west, which will carry it in the direction of the Gulf to Mocha.
At Mocha, the coast is east and west to the Straits of Babelmandeb,
so that the vessel from Mocha will have variable winds for a short
space, but mostly westerly, and these will carry her on to the Straits.
She is then done with the monsoon in the Gulf, which was from the
north, and, being in the Indian Ocean, is taken up by the monsoon
which blows in the summer months there, and is directly contrary to
what obtains in the Gulf. This is a south-wester, which carries the
vessel with a flowing sail to any part in India, without delay or
impediment.

The same happens upon her return home. She sails in the winter
months by the monsoon proper to that sea, that is, with a north-
east, which carries her through the Straits of Babelmandeb. She
finds, within the Gulf, a wind at south-east, directly contrary to what
was in the ocean; but then her course is contrary likewise, so that a
south-easter, answering to the direction of the Gulf, carries her
directly to Suez, or the Elanitic Gulf, to whichever way she proposes
going. Hitherto all is plain, simple, and easy to be understood; and
this was the reason why, in the earliest ages, the India trade was
carried on without difficulty.

Many doubts, however, have arisen about a port called Ophir,

whence the immense quantities of gold and silver came, which were
necessary at this time, when provision was making for building the
Temple of Jerusalem. In what part of the world this Ophir was has
not been yet agreed. Connected with this voyage, too, was one to
Tarshish, which suffers the same difficulties; one and the same fleet
performed them both in the same season.

In order to come to a certainty where this Ophir was, it will be

necessary to examine what scripture says of it, and to keep precisely
to every thing like description which we can find there, without
indulging our fancy farther. First, then, the trade to Ophir was
carried on from the Elanitic Gulf through the Indian Ocean.
Secondly, The returns were gold, silver, and ivory, but especially
silver276. Thirdly, The time of the going and coming of the fleet was
precisely three years277, at no period more nor less.

Now, if Solomon’s fleet sailed from the Elanitic Gulf to the Indian
Ocean, this voyage of necessity must have been made by monsoons,
for no other winds reign in that ocean. And, what certainly shews
this was the case, is the precise term of three years, in which the
fleet went and came between Ophir and Ezion-gaber. For it is plain,
so as to supersede the necessity of proof or argument, that, had this
voyage been made with variable winds, no limited term of years ever
could have been observed in its going and returning. The fleet might
have returned from Ophir in two years, in three, four, or five years;
but, with variable winds, the return precisely in three years was not
possible, whatever part of the globe Ophir might be situated in.

Neither Spain nor Peru could be Ophir; part of these voyages must
have been made by variable winds, and the return consequently
uncertain. The island of Ceylon, in the East Indies, could not be
Ophir; the voyage thither is indeed made by monsoons, but we have
shewed that a year is all that can be spent in a voyage to the East
Indies; besides, Ceylon has neither gold nor silver, though it has
ivory. St. Domingo has neither gold, nor silver, nor ivory. When the
Tyrians discovered Spain, they found a profusion of silver in huge
masses, but this they brought to Tyre by the Mediterranean, and
then sent it to the Red Sea over land to answer the returns from
India. Tarshish, too, is not found to be a port in any of these
voyages, so that part of the description fails, nor were there ever
elephants bred in Spain.

These mines of Ophir were probably what furnished the East with
gold in the earliest times; great traces of excavation must, therefore,
have appeared; yet in none of the places just mentioned are there
great remains of any mines that have been wrought. The ancient
traces of silver-mines in Spain are not to be found, and there never
were any of gold. John Dos Santos278, a Dominican friar, says, that
on the coast of Africa, in the kingdom of Sofala, the main-land
opposite to Madagascar, there are mines of gold and silver, than
which none can be more abundant, especially in silver. They bear the
traces of having been wrought from the earliest ages. They were
actually open and working when the Portuguese conquered that part
of the peninsula, and were probably given up since the discovery of
the new world, rather from political than any other reasons.
John Dos Santos says, that he landed at Sofala in the year 1586;
that he sailed up the great river Cuama as far as Tetè, where, always
desirous to be in the neighbourhood of gold, his Order had placed
their convent. Thence he penetrated for above two hundred leagues
into the country, and saw the gold mines then working, at a
mountain called Afura279. At a considerable distance from these are
the silver mines of Chicoua; at both places there is great appearance
of ancient excavations; and at both places the houses of the kings
are built with mud and straw, whilst there are large remains of
massy buildings of stone and lime.

It is a tradition which generally obtains in that country, that these

works belonged to the Queen of Saba, and were built at the time,
and for the purpose of the trade on the Red Sea: this tradition is
common to all the Cafrs in that country. Eupolemus, an ancient
author quoted by Eusebius280, speaking of David, says, that he built
ships at calls them, metal-men, to Orphi, or Ophir, an island in the
Red Sea. Now, by the Red Sea, he understands the Indian Ocean281;
and by Orphi, he probably meant the island of Madagascar; or Orphi
(or Ophir) might have been the name of the Continent, instead of
Sofala, that is, Sofala where the mines are might have been the
main-land of Orphi.

The kings of the isles are often mentioned in this voyage; Socotra,
Madagascar, the Commorras, and many other small islands
thereabout, are probably those the scripture calls the Isles. All, then,
at last reduces itself to the finding a place, either Sofala, or any
other place adjoining to it, which avowedly can furnish gold, silver,
and ivory in quantity, has large tokens of ancient excavations, and is
at the same time under such restrictions from monsoons, that three
years are absolutely necessary to perform the voyage, that it needs
no more, and cannot be done in less, and this is Ophir.

Let us now try these mines of Dos Santos by the laws of the
monsoons, which we have already laid down in describing the
voyage to India. The fleet, or ship, for Sofala, parting in June from
Ezion-gaber, would run down before the northern monsoon to
Mocha. Here, not the monsoon, but the direction of the Gulf
changes, and the violence of the south-westers, which then reign in
the Indian Ocean, make themselves at times felt even in Mocha
Roads. The vessel therefore comes to an anchor in the harbour of
Mocha, and here she waits for moderate weather and a fair wind,
which carries her out of the Straits of Babelmandeb, through the few
leagues where the wind is variable. If her course was now to the
East Indies, that is east-north-east, or north-east and by north, she
would find a strong south-west wind that would carry her to any part
of India, as soon as she cleared Cape Gardefan, to which she was
bound.

But matters are widely different if she is bound for Sofala; her
course is nearly south-west, and she meets at Cape Gardefan a
strong south-wester that blows directly in her teeth. Being obliged to
return into the gulf, she mistakes this for a trade-wind, because she
is not able to make her voyage to Mocha but by the summer
monsoon, which carries her no farther than the Straits of
Babelmandeb, and then leaves her in the face of a contrary wind, a
strong current to the northward, and violent swell.

The attempting this voyage with sails, in these circumstances, was

absolutely impossible, as their vessels went only before the wind: if
it was performed at all, it must have been by oars282, and great
havock and loss of men must have been the consequence of the
several trials. This is not conjecture only; the prophet Ezekiel
describes the very fact. Speaking of the Tyrian voyages probably of
this very one he says, “Thy rowers have brought thee into great
waters (the ocean): the east wind hath broken thee in the midst of
the seas283.” In short, the east, that is the north-east wind, was the
very monsoon that was to carry them to Sofala, yet having no sails,
being upon a lee-shore, a very bold coast, and great swell, it was
absolutely impossible with oars to save themselves from destruction.
At last philosophy and observation, together with the unwearied
perseverance of man bent upon his own views and interest, removed
these difficulties, and shewed the mariners of the Arabian Gulf, that
these periodical winds, which, in the beginning, they looked upon as
invincible barriers to the trading to Sofala, when once understood,
were the very means of performing this voyage safely and
expeditiously.

The vessel trading to Sofala sailed, as I have said, from the bottom
of the Arabian Gulf in summer, with the monsoon at north, which
carried her to Mocha. There the monsoon failed her by the change
of the direction of the Gulf. The south-west winds, which blow
without Cape Gardefan in the Indian Ocean, forced themselves
round the Cape so as to be felt in the road of Mocha, and make it
uneasy riding there. But these soon changed, the weather became
moderate, and the vessel, I suppose in the month of August, was
safe at anchor under Cape Gardefan, where was the port which,
many years afterwards, was called Promontorium Aromatum. Here
the ship was obliged to stay all November, because all these summer
months the wind south of the Cape was a strong south-wester, as
hath been before said, directly in the teeth of the voyage to Sofala.
But this time was not lost; part of the goods bought to be ready for
the return was ivory, frankincense, and myrrh; and the ship was
then at the principal mart for these.

I suppose in November the vessel sailed with the wind at north-east,

with which she would soon have made her voyage: But off the coast
of Melinda, in the beginning of December, she there met an
anomalous monsoon at south-west, in our days first observed by Dr
Halley, which cut off her voyage to Sofala, and obliged her to put in
to the small harbour of Mocha, near Melinda, but nearer still to
Tarshish, which we find here by accident, and which we think a
strong corroboration that we are right as to the rest of the voyage.
In the Annals of Abyssinia, we see that Amda Sion, making war upon
that coast in the 14th century, in a list of the rebellious Moorish
vassals, mentions the Chief of Tarshish as one of them, in the very
situation where we have now placed him.

Solomon’s vessel, then, was obliged to stay at Tarshish till the month
of April of the second year. In May, the wind set in at north-east, and
probably carried her that same month to Sofala. All the time she
spent at Tarshish was not lost, for part of her cargo was to be
brought from that place, and she probably bought, bespoke, or left it
there. From May of the second year, to the end of that monsoon in
October, the vessel could not stir; the wind was north-east. But this
time, far from being lost, was necessary to the traders for getting in
their cargo, which we shall suppose was ready for them.

The ship sails, on her return, in the month of November of the

second year, with the monsoon south-west, which in a very few
weeks would have carried her into the Arabian Gulf. But off Mocha,
near Melinda and Tarshish, she met the north-east monsoon, and
was obliged to go into that port and stay there till the end of that
monsoon; after which a south-wester came to her relief in May of
the third year. With the May monsoon she ran to Mocha within the
Straits, and was there confined by the summer monsoon blowing up
the Arabian Gulf from Suez, and meeting her. Here she lay till that
monsoon, which in summer blows northerly from Suez, changed to a
south-east one in October or November, and that very easily brought
her up into the Elanitic Gulf, the middle or end of December of the
third year. She had no need of more time to complete her voyage,
and it was not possible she could do it in less. In short, she changed
the monsoon six times, which is thirty-six months, or three years
exactly; and there is not another combination of monsoons over the
globe, as far as I know, capable to effect the same. The reader will
please to consult the map, and keep it before him, which will remove
any difficulties he may have. It is for his instruction this map has
been made, not for that of the learned prelate284 to whom it is
inscribed, much more capable of giving additional lights, than in
need of receiving any information I can give, even on this subject.
The celebrated Montesquieu conjectures, that Ophir was really on
the coast of Africa; and the conjecture of that great man merits
more attention than the assertions of ordinary people. He is too
sagacious, and too enlightened, either to doubt of the reality of the
voyage itself, or to seek for Ophir and Tarshish in China. Uninformed,
however, of the particular direction of the monsoons upon the coast,
first very slightly spoken of by Eudoxus, and lately observed and
delineated by Dr Halley, he was staggered upon considering that the
whole distance, which employed a vessel in Solomon’s time for three
years, was a thousand leagues, scarcely more than the work of a
month. He, therefore, supposes, that the reason of delay was owing
to the imperfection of the vessels, and goes into very ingenious
calculations, reasonings, and conclusions thereupon. He conjectures,
therefore, that the ships employed by Solomon were what he calls
junks285 of the Red Sea, made of papyrus, and covered with hides or
leather.

Pliny286 had said, that one of these junks of the Red Sea was twenty
days on a voyage, which a Greek or Roman vessel would have
performed in seven; and Strabo287 had said the same thing before
him.

This relative slowness, or swiftness, will not solve the difficulty. For, if
these junks288 were the vessels employed to Ophir, the long voyage,
much more they would have been employed on the short one, to
and from India; now they performed this within a year, which was all
a Roman or Greek vessel could do, therefore this was not the cause.
Those employed by Solomon were Tyrian and Idumean vessels, the
best ships and sailers of their age. Whoever has seen the prodigious
swell, the violent currents, and strong south-westers beyond the
Straits of Babelmandeb, will not need any argument to persuade
him, that no vessel made of papyrus, or leather, could live an hour
upon that sea. The junks, indeed, were light and convenient boats,
made to cross the narrow gulf between the Sabeans and Homerites,
or Cushites, at Azab upon the Red Sea, and carry provisions from
Arabia Felix to the more desert coast of Azab. I have hinted, that the
names of places sufficiently demonstrate the great loss of men that
happened to the traders to Sofala before the knowledge of the
monsoons, and the introduction of the use of sails.

I shall now consider how far the thing is confirmed by the names of
places in the language of the country, such as they have retained
among them to the present day.

There are three Mochas mentioned in this voyage, situated in

countries very dissimilar to, and distant from, each other. The first is
in Arabia Deserta, in lat. 30° nearly, not far from the bottom of the
Gulf of Suez. The second is in lat. 13°, a small distance from the
Straits of Babelmandeb. The third Mocha is in lat. 3° south, near
Tarshish, on the coast of Melinda. Now, the meaning of Mocha, in
the Ethiopic, is prison; and is particularly given to these three places,
because, in any of them, a ship is forced to stay or be detained for
months, till the changing of the monsoon sets her at liberty to
pursue her voyage. At Mocha, near the bottom of the Gulf of Suez, a
vessel, wanting to proceed southward to Babelmandeb, is kept here
in prison all winter, till the summer monsoon sets her at liberty. At
Mocha, in Arabia Felix, the same happens to any vessel wanting to
proceed to Suez in the summer months; she may come up from the
Straits of Babelmandeb to Mocha Road by the accidental direction of
the head of the Gulf; but, in the month of May, the north-west wind
obliges her to put into Mocha, and there to stay till the south-easter
relieves her in November. After you double Gardefan, the summer
monsoon, at north-east, is carrying your vessel full sail to Sofala,
when the anomalous monsoon takes her off the coast of Melinda,
and forces her into Tarshish, where she is imprisoned for six months
in the Mocha there. So that this word is very emphatically applied to
those places where ships are necessarily detained by the change of
monsoons, and proves the truth of what I have said.

The last Cape on the Abyssinian shore, before you run into the
Straits, is Cape Defan, called by the Portuguese, Cape Dafui. This
has no meaning in any language; the Abyssinians, on whose side it
is, call it Cape Defan, the Cape of Burial. It was probably there
where the east wind drove ashore the bodies of such as had been
shipwrecked in the voyage. The point of the same coast, which,
stretches out into the Gulf, before you arrive at Babelmandeb, was,
by the Romans, called Promontorium Aromatum, and since, by the
Portuguese, Cape Gardesui. But the name given it by the
Abyssinians and sailors on the Gulf is, Cape Gardesan, the Straits of
Burial.

Still nearer the Straits is a small port in the kingdom of Adel, called
Mete, i. e. Death, or, he or they are dead. And more to the
westward, in the same kingdom, is Mount Felix, corruptly so called
by the Portuguese. The Latins call it Elephas Mons, the Mountain of
the Elephant; and the natives, Jibbel Feel, which has the same
signification. The Portuguese, who did not know that Jibbel Feel was
Elephas Mons, being misled by the sound, have called it Jibbel Felix,
the Happy Mountain, a name to which it has no sort of title.

The Straits by which we enter the Arabian Gulf are by the

Portuguese called Babelmandeb, which is nonsense. The name by
which it goes among the natives is Babelmandeb, the Gate or Port of
Affliction. And near it Ptolemy289 places a town he calls, in the Greek,
Mandaeth, which appears to me to be only a corruption of Mandeb.
The Promontory that makes the south side of the Straits, and the
city thereupon, is Diræ, which means the Hades, or Hell, by
Ptolemy290 called Δηρη. This, too, is a translation of the ancient
name, because Δηρη (or Diræ) has no signification in the Greek. A
cluster of islands you meet in the canal, after passing Mocha, is
called Jibbel Zekir, or, the Islands of Prayer for the remembrance of
the dead. And still, in the same course up the Gulf, others are called
Sebaat Gzier, Praise or Glory be to God, as we may suppose, for the
return from this dangerous navigation.

All the coast to the eastward, to where Gardefan stretches out into
the ocean, is the territory of Saba, which immemorially has been the
mart of frankincense, myrrh, and balsam. Behind Saba, upon the
Indian Ocean, is the Regio Cinnamonifera, where a considerable
quantity of that wild cinnamon grows, which the Italian druggists call
canella.

Inland near to Azab, as I have before observed, are large ruins,

some of them of small stones and lime adhering strongly together.
There is especially an aqueduct, which brought formerly a large
quantity of water from a fountain in the mountains, which must have
greatly contributed to the beauty, health, and pleasure of Saba. This
is built with large massy blocks of marble, brought from the
neighbouring mountains, placed upon one another without lime or
cement, but joined with thick cramps, or bars of brass. There are
likewise a number of wells, not six feet wide, composed of pieces of
marble hewn to parts of a circle, and joined with the same bars of
brass also. This is exceedingly surprising, for Agatharcides291 tells us,
that the Alileans and Cassandrins, in the southern parts of Arabia,
(just opposite to Azab), had among them gold in such plenty, that
they would give double the weight of gold for iron, triple its weight
for brass, and ten times its weight for silver; that, in digging the
earth, they found pieces of gold as big as olive-stones, but others
much larger.

This seems to me extraordinary, if brass was at such a price in

Arabia, that it could be here employed in the meanest and most
common uses. However this be, the inhabitants of the Continent,
and of the peninsula of Arabia opposite to it, of all denominations
agree, that this was the royal seat of the Queen of Saba, famous in
ecclesiastical history for her journey to Jerusalem; that these works
belonged to her, and were erected at the place of her residence; that
all the gold, silver, and perfumes came from her kingdom of Sofala,
which was Ophir, and which reached from thence to Azab, upon the
borders of the Red Sea, along the coast of the Indian Ocean.

It will very possibly be thought, that this is the place in which I

should mention the journey that the Queen of Saba made into
Palestine; but as the dignity of the expedition itself, and the place it