The 4th To Mousa,[334] Seventeen Miles, Through A Barren Plain With Few Inhabitants.

Mousa is a small unwalled town, but very populous, standing in a moderately fertile plain, in which some indigo is made.

We departed from Mousa at midnight, and rested two or three hours at a church, or coughe house,[335] called Dabully, built by a Dabull merchant Our stop was to avoid coming to Mokha before day.[336]

[Footnote 334: Probably the same place called Mowssi on the journey inland. - E.]

[Footnote 335: It is not easy to reconcile this synonime of a coughe house or church, with the explanation formerly given, that coughe house means coffee-house; perhaps we ought to read in the text, a church or mosque, and a coughe or coffee-house. - E.]

[Footnote 336: The preceding journal gives fourteen stages, the estimated length of two of which are omitted. The amount of the twelve stages, of which the lengths are inserted, is 185 miles; and, adding thirty for the two others as the average, the whole estimated distance will be 215 miles. In these old times, the estimated or computed mile seems to have been about one and a half of our present statute mile, which would make the entire distance 322 statute miles; and allowing one quarter far deflexion and mountain road, reduces the inland distance of Zenau from Mokha to 242 miles, nearly the same already mentioned in a note, on the authority of our best modern maps. - E.]

We got there about eight in the morning, and were met a mile without the town by our carpenters and smiths, and some others who had remained at Mokha, all of whom had their irons taken off the day before, and were now at liberty to walk abroad.

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