_ 136 _ leagues from there, and so they were immediately called, and also the Barnegais, to whom they were subject. The Barnegais is the name of an official in that land who is a kind of captain, a marshal or a commander, and his jurisdiction extended from the town of Arguico to the city of Suakin, which was sixty leagues away, and he was a vassal of the Prester. He was continuously at war with a Moorish King of that country called Comarcan. All this was ordered to be explained to the governor, who meantime went to see the island of Massawa in order to distribute the many tanks of drinking water among the ships of the fleet which he had been told were there. He found there were forty-nine of these, all full and locked with a key for use at the time of need. When he had shared them out to ensure the watering of the ships, he took a look at the landscape of the island in case at some time he might want to order a fortress to be built there. He saw that it had a good harbour with deep water. The part of the island where the water tanks were was rocky and the rest looked as if it had been reclaimed from the sea, when he ordered measurements to be made, he found that it was one thousand two hundred bracas in circumference and elongated. In the middle, where it was narrowest, it had a width of two hundred and forty bracas,
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