On the 14th they reached Dahalac, the largest island in the Red Sea, being thirty-seven miles in length and eighteen in breadth, but low, and so barren that several women and girls swam off to the vessel before it came to an anchor, begging for handfuls of rice, dora, or wheat. These miserable people are sometimes a whole year without tasting bread. Yet they are so strongly attached to their parched, barren, desolate home, that it is impossible to prevail on them to leave it. "This preference," says Bruce, "we must not call strange, for it is universal; from Lapland to the line you find it written precisely in the same character." On the 19th of September, 1769, a very important day in Bruce's life, his vessel came to anchor in the harbour of Masuah, the ancient port of Abyssinia. He was seventeen days in crossing the gulf, which is often done in three days; but much time had been spent in surveying the islands. Bruce's notes and observations during his voyages in the Red Sea, which we have passed over as being dry and uninteresting to the general reader, contain, nevertheless, facts and information of a very valuable description. Besides endeavouring to determine the currents, the bearings of the different islands, and the latitude and longitude of the principal points, Bruce surveyed a number of the harbours, and has given minute directions for ships to enter them; as also to navigate the gulf or channel. His collections of marine productions, and his observations on the natural history of the Red Sea, were also very extensive. "I suppose," he says, "I have drawings and subjects of this kind equal in bulk to the journal of the whole voyage itself." Not confining himself to useful, practical subjects, he directed his attention to questions of a more speculative nature: as to whether, for instance, the Red Sea is not higher, by some feet and inches, than the Mediterranean; where it was that the children of Israel passed the Red Sea; what is the origin of polygamy among Eastern nations; what causes the currents in the different parts of the gulf, &c., &c.