Mariette Bey, the eminent Egyptologist, identifies Sokotra with To Nuter, a place to be bracketed with the land of Punt in the pictorial decorations of the temple of Deir el Bahri, as resorted to by the ancients for spices, frankincense, and myrrh; and he is probably correct, for it is pretty certain that no one given spot in reach of the ancients could produce at one and the same time so many of the coveted products of that day--the ruby-coloured dragon's blood (_Draco Kinnabari_ of Pliny), three distinct species of frankincense, several kinds of myrrh, besides many other valuable gum-producing trees, and aloes of super-excellent quality. It is referred to by the author of the 'Periplus' as containing a very mixed and Greek-speaking population drawn together for trading purposes, trafficking with Arabia and India. Abu'lfida, Africanus, and other writers, Arabic and otherwise, mention Christianity as prevailing here, and Theodoret, writing in the beginning of the fifth century, speaks of the great missionary Theophilus as coming from the island of Diu to teach Christianity in India. Cosmas Indicopleustes calls the island Dioscorides. He visited it in the sixth century, and accounted for the Greek-speaking population he met with by saying that they had been placed there by the Ptolemies. El Masoudi considered the Greek a purer race in Sokotra than elsewhere. As far back as the tenth century Sokotra was a noted haunt of pirates from Katch and Gujerat Bawarij, from a kind of ship called _barja_.[13] Traders came from Muza Lemyrica (Canara) and Barggaza (Gujerat). Ibn Batuta gives an account of a certain Sheikh Said of Maskat being seized by Sokotran pirates, who sent him off empty-handed to Aden. Marco Polo describes the catching of whales for ambergris. El Masoudi[14] says the best ambergris comes from the sea of Zinj in East Africa: 'The men of Zinj come in canoes and fall upon the creature with harpoons and cables, and draw it ashore and extract the ambergris.' In the inscription of the Nakhtshe Rustam, near Persepolis, which we saw when in Persia in 1889, thirty countries are named which were conquered by Darius, the Akhemenid, amongst them Iskuduru, _i.e._ Sokotra. Though it is Arabian politically, Sokotra geographically is African. This is the last and largest of a series of islands and islets stretching out into the Indian ocean, including the little group of Abdul Kerim. Some of these are white with guano. Darzi, Kal Farun, Sambeh, and Samboyia are the names of some of the smaller ones. Sokotra itself is situated about 240 miles from Cape Guardafui, and is about 500 miles from Aden. The latitude of the island is between 12 deg. 19' and 12 deg. 42', and the longitude between 53 deg. 20' and 54 deg. 30'. It is 72 miles long from east to west, and 22 miles wide from north to south. There is a coral reef nearly all the way from Africa to beyond Ras Momi.