There are neither horses, dogs, sheep, cows, nor any sort of quadruped, but goats, asses, a few half-starved camels and antelopes at Dahalac, which last are very numerous. The inhabitants have no knowledge of fire-arms, and there are no dogs, nor beasts of prey in the island to kill them; they catch indeed some few of them in traps. On our arrival at Dahalac, on the 14th, we saw swallows there, and, on the 16th, they were all gone. On our landing at Masuah, on the 19th, we saw a few; the 21st and 22d they were in great flocks; on the 2d of October they were all gone. It was the blue long-tailed swallow, with the flat head; but there was, likewise, the English martin, black, and darkish grey in the body, with a white breast. The language at Dahalac is that of the _Shepherds_; Arabic too is spoken by most of them. From this island we see the high mountains of _Habesh_, running in an even ridge like a wall, parallel to the coast, and down to Suakem. Before I leave Dahalac, I must observe, that, in a wretched chart, in the hands of some of the English gentlemen at Jidda, there were soundings marked all along the east-coast of Dahalac, from thirteen to thirty fathoms, within two leagues of the shore. Now, the islands I have mentioned occupy a much larger space than that; yet none of them are set down in the chart; and, where the soundings are marked thirty, forty, and even ninety fathom, all is full of shoals under water, with islands and sunken coral rocks, some of them near the surface, though the breakers do not appear upon them, partly owing to the waves being steadied by the violence of the current, and somewhat kept off by the island. This dangerous error is, probably, owing to the draughts being composed from different journals, where the pilot has had different ways of measuring his distance; some using forty-two feet to a thirty-second glass, and some twenty-eight, both of them being considered as one competent division of a degree; the distances are all too short, and the soundings, and every thing else, consequently out of their places. Whoever has to navigate in the Abyssinian side of the channel, will do well to pass the island Dahalac on the east side, or, at least, not approach the outmost island, Wowcan, nearer than ten leagues; but, keeping about twelve leagues meridian distance west of Jibbel Teir, or near mid-channel between that and the island, they will then be out of danger; being between lat. 15° 20´ and 15° 40´, which last is the latitude, as I observed, of Saiel Noora, and which is the northern island, we saw, three leagues off Ras Antalou, the northmost cape of Dahalac.