Note note 27 — APPENDIX. No. III.

(27.) The explanation which I have given of this passage appears to me the only reasonable one. I do not find the term of Ras Hofra applied to the Cape of Guardafui by the Arabian geographers, who usually call this promontory Djebel Mandeb. But I find in Edrisy a passage that supports my opinion of this cape being designated here by the name of Ras Hofra. He says (Geog. Nub. i. 6.) in speaking of the Djebel Mandeb: “on the back of this mountain is a cave, which if once entered, none comes out again, on account of some beast that devours him, or on account of pits (Hofer, the plural of Hofra), into which he falls.”[194]