DAHALAC is the largest island in the Red sea, and is placed by Mr Bruce, who has given a minute description of it, between 15. 27. and 15. 54. N. Lat. It is a low, flat island, with a sandy soil, mixed with shells, and in summer destitute of every kind of herbage, excepting a small quantity of bent grass, which is barely sufficient to feed a few antelopes and goats. In many places the island is covered with extensive plantations of acacia trees, which rarely exceed eight feet in height, spreading wide, and turning flat at top, probably from the influence of the wind, which blows from the sea. No rain falls in Dahalac from the end of March to the beginning of October; but in the intermediate months there are heavy showers, during which the water is collected in a great number of artificial cisterns, to serve the inhabitants during the ensuing summer. Of these cisterns, which are said to be the work of the Persians, or, as some suppose, of the first Ptolemies, 370 yet remain, cut out of the solid rock.

The inhabitants of Dahalac are a simple, fearful, and inoffensive people. It is the only part of Arabia where no one is furnished with arms of any kind. After the rains fall, the grass springs up with great luxuriance, and then the goats give the inhabitants a copious supply of milk, which in winter is the principal part of their subsistence. The poorer sort live entirely on shell and other fish. The sole employment of the inhabitants is to work the vessels which trade to the different parts of the coast. Dahalac contains 12 villages or towns, each of which is surrounded with a plantation of doom trees. Of the leaves of this tree, which are of a gloomy white when dried, the inhabitants make baskets of great beauty and neatness. This seems to be the only thing like manufacture in the island. Dahalac, as well as the other islands of the Red sea, is dependent upon Mafah. Each of the 12 villages furnishes a goat monthly to the governor, and every vessel putting in there for Mafah, pays him a pound of coffee, and every one from Arabia a dollar. These are his principal revenues. In the time of the Ptolemies, the pearl fishery in the vicinity of Dahalac flourished greatly, as well as another valuable fishery, namely, that of tortoises.