The Adaiel or Danakil population, which, including the Mudaito, extends as far as Arkeeko, entitles itself Afer, and claims to be descended from Arab invaders, who, in the seventh century of the Christian era, overran and colonised the low tract which forms a zone between the Abyssinian Alps and the coast of the Red Sea. To a certain extent the northern tribes are subject to the Nayib of Arkeeko, whose authority is recognised in much the same proportion as that of the feeble Sultan of Tajura by the southern clans; but although speaking the same language, they can hardly be said to constitute a nation, being so widely dispersed, that for many days together not a trace of man is to be discovered over the joyless deserts which form the lot of his inheritance, scorched by an ardent sun, and alive only with "moving pillars of sand." From time immemorial every individual has been his own king. Each marauding community is marked by a wild independence; and the free spirit of the whole is to be traced in the rapine, discord, and bloodshed which universally prevails. Theirs is "an iron sky, and a soil of brass," where the clouds drop little rain, and the earth yields no vegetation. It is no "land of rivers of water," nor have the "lines fallen in pleasant places." The desert stretches far on every side, strewed with black boulders of heated lava, and enveloped by a glowing atmosphere. In this country of perfidy and vindictive ferocity, the proprietors of the barren land murder every stranger who shall intrude; and the common benefits of water are an object of perpetual contest. Reprisal and revenge form the guiding maxim of all. Monsters, not men, their savage propensities are portrayed in a dark and baleful eye, and the avenger of blood is closely dogging the footsteps of one half the population. As laziness is the chief source of African misery at large, so is it with the Danakil in particular. They possess that "conceit in their misery" which induces them to despise the labours of the cultivator; and such is the characteristic want of water, that, excepting at Aussa, agriculture is unknown, even in its rudest form. A pastoral, itinerant, and belligerent people, divided into endless clans and ramifications, under divers independent chieftains, their mode of living entitles them to rank only one step in civilisation above the positive savage who depends for daily subsistence upon the chase and upon the spontaneous productions of nature.