OUR DEPARTURE INTO THE INTERIOR
Never shall I forget the confusion of our start. Mokaik and ten of his
men appeared at seven in the morning of the day before in our rooms, with
all the lowest beggars of Makalla in their train, and were let loose on
our seventy packages like so many demons from Jehannam, yelling and
quarrelling with one another. First of all the luggage had to be divided
into loads for twenty-two camels, then they drew lots for these loads
with small sticks, then they drew lots for us riders, and finally we had
a stormy bargain as to the price, which was finally decided upon when the
vizier came to help us, and ratified by his exchanging daggers with
Mokaik, each dagger being presented on a flat hand. In the bazaars
bargains are struck by placing the first two fingers of one contractor on
the hand of the other. All that day they were rushing in and weighing,
and exhorting us to be ready betimes in the morning, so we were quite
ready about sunrise.
We felt worn and weary when a start was made at two o'clock, and our cup
of bitterness was full when we were deposited, bag and baggage, a few
hundred yards from the gate, and told that we must spend the night amidst
a sea of small fish drying on the shore, and surrounded on all sides by
dirty Bedou huts. These fish, which are rather larger than sardines, are
put out to dry by thousands along this coast. Men feed on them and so do
the camels; they make lamp-oil out of them; they say the fish
strengthens the camel's back, and they consider it good for camels to go
once a year to the sea. Large sacks of them are taken into the interior
as merchandise; they are mixed with small leaves like box, and carried in
palm-leaf sacks, about 3 feet wide and 1½ feet high, and the air
everywhere is redolent of their stench.
At this point we had the first of many quarrels with our camel-men; we
insisted on being taken two miles farther on, away from the smells;
nothing short of threats of returning and getting the sultan to beat them
and put them in prison enabled us to break through the conventional Arab
custom of encamping for the first night outside the city gates. However,
we succeeded in reaching Bakhrein, where white wells are placed for the
benefit of wayfarers, and there beneath the pleasant shade of the
palm-trees we halted for the remainder of the day and recovered from the
agonies of our start. Among the trees was a bungalow belonging to the
sultan where we had hoped to have been able to sleep, but it was pervaded
by such a strong smell of fish that we preferred to pitch our tents.
Between this place and Makalla all is arid waste, but near the town, by
the help of irrigation, bananas and cocoanut trees flourish in a shallow
valley called 'the Beginning of Light.' There are numerous fortresses
about Bakhrein, so the road is now quite safe for the inhabitants of
Makalla; the sultan has done a good deal to repress the Bedouin who used
to raid right into the town. He crucified many of them.
We took a couple of hours over our start next day, the Bedouin again
quarrelling over the luggage, each trying to scramble for the lightest
packages and the lightest riders. They tried to make me ride a camel and
give up my horse to my husband. As he was so tall, he could obtain
neither a horse nor a donkey, so had perforce to ride a camel.
He had been able to buy a little dark donkey for Imam Sharif and the
sultan gave me a horse, but all the rest were on camels. I thought I
should enjoy riding by the camels and talking to everyone, but my hopes
were not carried out.
The difficulty of passing the strings of camels was enormous. The country
was so very stony that if you left the narrow path it took a long time to
pick your way.
I used to start first with Imam Sharif, and then my horse, at foot-pace,
got so far ahead that the soldiers said, 'We cannot guard both you and
the camels.' I had then to pull in the horse with all my might. Sometimes
I went on with Imam Sharif, one soldier and a servant carrying the
plane-table. He used to go up some hill to survey, and I, of course, had
to climb too for safety. I had to rush down when I saw our _kafila_
coming and mount, to keep in front. If I got behind, the camels were so
terrified that they danced about and shed their loads, and I was cursed
and sworn at by their drivers.
We stopped three hours at Basra (10 miles), where there are a few houses,
water, and some cultivation, and where the camels were suddenly unloaded
without leave, and there was a great row because we moved the soldiers'
guns from the tree, the shade of which we wished to have ourselves. We
again threatened to return, but at last, as Taisir fortunately could
speak Hindustani, he could make peace, and they ended by kissing hands
and saying salaam (peace).
The sun was setting when we reached a sandy place called Tokhum (another
5 miles on), where we camped near some stagnant water. We had to wait for
the moon, to find our baggage and get out the lantern. We had travelled
over almost leafless plains save that they had little patches of
mesembryanthemum, and the inevitable balloon-shrub (_madhar_). Rising and
starting by moonlight on Christmas morning, we stopped in Wadi Ghafit
(_madhar_), a very pretty side valley, with warm water and palm-trees,
and what looked like a grassy sward near the water, but which really
consisted of a tiny kind of palm. The camel-men wanted to pass this place
and camp far away on the stones, sending skins for water, but somehow my
husband found this out after we had passed Wadi Ghafit, and managed to
carry off the camels, tied tail after tail to his own camel, so the
Bedouin had to follow unwillingly. We gave them some presents, saying it
was not an everyday occurrence, but that this was a great feast with us;
so we made friends.
The Bedouin were very unruly about the packing. We could not get our most
needful things kept handy, and they liked to pack our bread with their
fish, and the waterskins anywhere among our bedding.
Mokaik did not seem to have much authority over the various owners of the
camels, and they were always quarrelling among themselves, robbing each
other of light loads and leaving some heavy thing, that no one wished
for, lying on the ground; this often occasioned re-packing. They had for
each camel a stout pair of sticks with strong ropes attached, and having
bound a bundle of packages to each stick, two men lifted them and wound
the ropes round the sticks over a very tiny pack-saddle and a mass of
untidy rags. When we arrived they liked to simply loose the ropes from
the sticks and let the baggage clatter to the ground and lead away the
camels. As they would not be persuaded to sort the things, and as
twenty-two camels cover a good deal of space, it was like seeking the
slain on a battlefield when we had to wander about having every bundle
untied.
Three days' camel-riding up one of the short valleys which lead towards
the high table-land offered little of interest beyond arid, igneous
rocks, and burnt-up, sand-covered valleys, with distorted strata on
either side. Here and there, where warm volcanic streams rise out of the
ground, the wilderness is converted into a luxuriant garden, in which
palms, tobacco, and other green things grow. One of the scrub trees which
clothe the wilderness is called by the Arabs _rack_, and is used by them
for cleaning their teeth. It amused us to chew this as we went along: it
is slightly bitter, but cleans the teeth most effectually.
There is also a poisonous sort of cucumber, called by the Arabs
_madakdak_. They clean out the inside and fill the skin with water, which
they drink as a medicine. At Sibeh, which we reached after a very hot
ride of twelve or thirteen miles, we found water with scores of camels
lying round it, for there were two or three other _kafilas_, or caravans,
beside our own. It was dreadfully cold that night, and we could not get
at our bag of blankets.
Next we entered the narrow, tortuous valley of Howeri, which ascends
towards the highland, in which the midday heat was intense; and at our
evening halts we suffered not a little from camel-ticks, which abound in
the sand, until we learnt to avoid old camping-grounds and not to pitch
our tents in the immediate vicinity of the wells.
We encamped in a narrow, stony river-bed, between walls of rock, near a
little village called Tahiya. There is a good deal of cultivation about.
The closeness of the situation made the smell of the dried fish we
carried for the camels almost unbearable.
These sacks are stretched open in the evening and put in the middle of a
circle of camels, their masters often joining in the feast. One of the
men was attacked by fever, so he was given quinine, and his friends were
told to put him to bed and cover him well. When we went to visit him
later we found him quite contented in one of these fish sacks, his head
in one corner and his legs all doubled up and packed in; only a bare
brown back was exposed, so we had a few of the camel's rags thrown on
his back, and he was well next day.
We went on ten miles to Al Ghail, rising to an altitude of 2,000 feet
above the sea-level. This word _ghail_ begins with the Arabic _ghin_,
which is a soft sound between _r_ and _g_.
There are two villages near the head of the Wadi Howeri, where there is
actually a _ghail_--that rare phenomenon in Arabia, a rill or running
stream. Here the Bedou inhabitants cultivate the date palm, and have
green patches of lucerne and grain, very refreshing to the eye.
We had come up one of the narrowest of gorges, but with hundreds of
palm-trees around Al Ghail, the first of the two villages, which is in
the end of the Wadi Howeri. It is an uninteresting collection of stone
huts, with many pretty little fields, and maidenhair fern overhanging the
wayside. There are little enclosures with walls round them, and small
stones in them, on which they dry the dates before sending them to Aden.
The rocky river-bed itself is waterless, the _ghail_ being used up in
irrigation.
At Al Bat'ha, which is just above the tableland, we actually encamped
under a spreading tree, a wild, unedible fig called _luthba_ by the
Arabs, a nickname given to all worthless, idle individuals in these
parts. Bedou women crowded around us, closely veiled in indigo-dyed
masks, with narrow slits for their eyes, carrying their babies with them
in rude cradles resembling hencoops, with a cluster of charms hung from
the top, which has the twofold advantage of amusing the baby and keeping
off the evil eye. After much persuasion we induced one of the good ladies
to sit for her photograph, or rather to sit still while something was
being done which she did not in the least understand.
There is very good water at Al Bat'ha, and so much of the kind of herbs
that camels like that we delayed our departure till eight, shivering by
a fire and longing as ardently for the arrival of the sun as we should
for his departure. The road had been so steep and stony that the
camel-riders had all been on foot for two days. I am sure that, except
near a spring, no one dropped from the skies would dream he was in Arabia
the Happy. It is hard to think that 'the Stony' and 'the Desert' must be
worse.