The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

OPIA.—BEEGHEL.4Uhowever, the numher of buyers of these goods is greatly reduced ; nor is muchbusiness any longer done in slippers and matting, the other staple industries ofthis district. The future of Magdoshu will depend not so much on its localproducts as on the movement of exchanges between foreign markets and the "\Yebibasin as far as the Galla territories in Harrar and Ethiopia.Magdoshu is separated by a distance of scarcely 24 miles from its fluvial port,Gelidi, a town composed of latticed cone-shaped huts, where the explorer, Kinzclbich,was poisoned in the year 18G9. The mediaeval Arab writers speak of thewatercourse flowing to the west of Magdoshu as of another IS^ile, comparable tothat of Egypt itself. Yet this river at present is scarcely more than a hundredfeet broad at Gelidi, where the natives cross it in little ferry-boats held togetherby cordage made of creeping plants.The last point on the Somali coast going northwards, the possession of which isstill claimed by the Sultan of Zanzibar, is the village of Wanhek (Warrishir),whose harbour is inaccessible during the prevalence of high winds. Beyond thisplace stretches the domain of the Somali coast tribes, who were till recentlyindependent, but over whom Germany now claims dominion in virtue of sometreaty concluded with the Sultan of Opia, an obscure princelet now put forward asthe " chief of all the Somali people." His very existence is unknown to the vastmajority of the nation, as is theirs to him. This village, or rather camping-groundof Opia, which has been thus suddenly promoted to the dignity of a capital, issituated on a headland between the territory of the Ilawiyas and that of theMijcrtiu tribe. But even diplomatists will never be able to make it the centre ofanv large population, for the surrounding country is a waterlesssteppe, while theneighbouring seaboard is absolutel}- destitute of harbours.Ai.Lri..\.—BossAssA.The Mijcrtins, the most powerful branch of all the Hashiya nation, inhabit thewhole of the northern section of the coast as far as the shores of the Gulf of Aden.The point of the seaboard where they arc concentrated in the largest numbers is inthe neighbourhood of the Ran-el-Khoil, or " ITorse Cape," near an inlet where thewaters of the Wady Xogal are discharged during the rainy season.According toGraves, as many as twelve thousand Somali are occasionally attracted to the fair ormarket of Ras-el-Khail. The half-Arab, half- Portuguese name of Bender d'Agoa("water haven") indicates the point where the small coasting craft finds mostconvenient anchorage.At the time of M. R^voil's visit in 1881, the sultan of the Mijcrtin nation hadhis residence at Berghel, a hamlet of some forty inhabitants, which is sheltered onthe north by the sandj- slopes and lofty spurs of the Jebel Karoma, terminatingeastwards in Cape Guardafui. In the neighbourhood of this modest little capitalof the Mijertins are seen some ancient sepulchral mounds and the remains of afortified camp.The section of the Somali seaboard which skirts the south side of the Gulf of