sir_ by observations twice verified is in lat. 26 deg.15' N. being 136
leagues beyond _Swakem_. The port is a large bay quite open to the
eastern winds, which on this coast blow with great force. Right over
against the town there are some small shoals on which the sea breaks,
between which and the shore is the anchorage for frigates and ships
coming here for a loading. The town is very small and perhaps in the
most miserable and barren spot in the world. The houses are more like
hovels for cattle, some built of stone and clay, and others of sod,
having no roofs except a few matts which defend the inhabitants from the
sun, and from rain if any happen now and then to fall as it were by
chance, as in this place it so seldom rains as to be looked upon as a
wonder. In the whole neighbouring country on the coast, fields,
mountains, or hills, there groweth no kind of herb, grass, tree, or
bush; and nothing is to be seen but black scorched mountains and a
number of bare hillocks, which environ the whole place from sea to sea,
like an amphitheatre of barrenness and sterility, most melancholy to
behold. Any flat ground there is, is a mere dry barren sand mixed with
gravel. The port even is the worst I have seen on all this coast, and
has no fish, though all the other ports and channels through which we
came have abundance and variety. It has no kind of cattle; and the
people are supplied from three wells near the town, the water of which
differs very little from that of the sea.

[Footnote 307: In Purchas, Al Kossir is named Alcocer. Don John thinks
this place to be the _Philoteras_ of Ptolomy; but Dr Pocock places it
2 deg.40' more to the north, making Kossir _Berenice_, which is highly
probable, as it is still the port of _Kept_, anciently Coptos, or of
_Kus_ near it, both on the Nile, as well as the nearest port to the Nile
on all that coast, which _Berenice_ was. Dr Pocock supposes old Kossir
to have been _Myos Hormos_: but we rather believe it to have been
Berenice.--Ast.]

The most experienced of the Moors had never heard of the name of
Egypt[308], but call the whole land from _Al Kossir_ to Alexandria by
the name of _Riffa_[309], which abounds in all kinds of victuals and
provisions more than any other part of the world, together with great
abundance of cattle, horses, and camels, there not being a single foot
of waste land in the whole country. According to the information I
received; their language and customs are entir