THE GARA TRIBE
We left Al Hafa on December 29, after waiting six days for camels. There
was much difficulty in getting a sufficient quantity, and never before
had camels been hired in this manner. It was hard to make the people
understand what we meant or wished to do.
When at length the camels were assembled, they arrived naked and bare.
There were no ropes of any kind, or sticks to tie the baggage to, no
vestige of any sort of pack saddle, and we had to wait till the following
day before a few ropes could be procured. A good many of our spare
blankets had to be used as saddle-cloths, that is to say under the
baggage; ropes off our boxes, straps, raw-hide _riems_ that we had used
in South Africa, and in fact every available string had to be used to tie
it on, and the Bedouin even took the strings which they wear as fillets
round their hair, to tie round the camels' necks and noses to lead them.
There was great confusion over the loading, as all that ever yet had been
done to camels in that country was to tie a couple of sacks of
frankincense together and hang them on. The camels roared incessantly,
got up before they were ready, shook off their loads, would not kneel
down or ran away loaded, shedding everything or dragging things at their
heels. Sometimes their masters quite left off their work to quarrel
amongst themselves, bawling and shouting. Though we were ready at seven,
it was after midday before we were off, though Wali Suleiman himself
superintended the loading.
Camels in Dhofar are not very choice feeders, and have a predilection for
bones, and if they saw a bone near the path they would make for it with
an eager rush extremely disconcerting to the rider. Fish, too, is dried
for them and given them as food (called _kei_ by the Gara and _ohma_ by
the Arabs), as also is a cactus which grows in the mountains, which is
cut into sections for them. They are fine sturdy animals, and can go up
and down hill better than any camels I have ever seen. The fertile Gara
range is a great breeding place for camels, but as there is no commerce
or communication with the interior, the Bedouin do not make much use of
them themselves, but sell them to their neighbours, who come here to
purchase.
My husband, Imam Sherif and I had each a seat on a separate loaded camel,
with our _rezais_ or _lahafs_--thick cotton quilts--on the baggage; six
of the servants rode in pairs while one walked, all taking turns. We went
about eight miles westward the first day and considered it a wonderfully
good journey. We stopped at the edge of the plain, about half a mile from
the sea at Ras Risout, where some very dirty water was to be obtained
under a rock.
We passed some ruins with columns four miles west of Al Hafa at Aukad.
The approach to the mountains is up narrow gulleys full of
frankincense-trees.
We had a stormy and quarrelsome start next day, after a delay caused by
my husband's camel sitting down constantly and unexpectedly, and a
stoppage because two possible enemies being descried it was deemed
needful to wait till all the camels came up that we might keep together.
When they arrived we waited so long that we got up, told them that we did
not want to be kept all day on the road, and began to mount our camels,
saying we would return to the wali at Al Hafa. In the end they began
quarrelling with each other and made peace with us, and next we set off
to a place farther north than they had before intended, where there was
good water in a small amphitheatre of mountains. We went up a lovely
gorge with ferns, trees, and a running stream, as different as possible
to the aridity of the Hadhramout.
January 1, 1895, began with a wild-goose chase after some ruins
consisting of a circular wall of loose stones about a foot in height,
very likely only a sheep pen.
The camels were much quieter and the Bedouin very friendly. We only
travelled an hour and a half, having gone round some spurs and found
ourselves in a round valley, back to back with that we had left, and
about half a mile distant from our last camp. It was surrounded by some
very high and some lower hills, and we were just under a beetling cliff
with good water in a stream among bulrushes, reeds, and tropical
vegetation.
There was a Bedou family close by with goats; they sold us milk at an
exorbitant price and asked so much for a kid that we stuck to our tinned
meat.
The Gara, in whose country we were now, are a wild pastoral tribe of the
mountains, travelling over them hither and thither in search of food for
their flocks. They are troglodytes of a genuine kind and know no home
save their ancestral caves, with which this limestone range abounds; they
only live in rude reed huts like ant hills, when they come down to the
plain of Dhofar in the rainy season for pasturage. There is a curious
story connected with the Gara tribe, which probably makes them unique in
Arabia, and that is, that a few years ago they owned a white sheikh.
About the beginning of this century an American ship was wrecked on this
coast, and all the occupants were killed save the cabin boy, who was kept
as a slave. As years went on his superior ability asserted itself, and
gained for him in his later years the proud position of sheikh of all
the Garas. He lived, married, and died amongst them, leaving, I believe,
two daughters, who still live up in the mountains with their tribe. The
life and adventures of this Yankee boy must have been as thrilling and
interesting as any novelist could desire, and it is a great pity that the
white sheikh could not have been personally interviewed before his death,
which occurred over twenty years ago.
[Illustration: A GARA FORGE]
Sprenger (§ 449) supposes that the tribal name Gara or Kara corresponds
to the ancient Ascites whom Ptolemy places on this coast; but as the
Ascites were essentially a seafaring race, and the Gara are a pastoral
tribe of hill Bedouin, the connection between them does not seem very
obvious. It is more probable that they may correspond to the Carrei
mentioned in the campaign of Aelius Gallus as a race of Southern Arabia,
possessing, according to Pliny, the most fertile country.
As for weapons, the Gara have three, and every male of the tribe carries
them. One is a small shield (_gohb_) of wood or shark's skin, deep, and
with a wooden knob at the centre, so that when they are tired and want a
rest they can turn it round and utilise it as a stool; the second is a
flat iron sword with a wooden handle, actually made in Germany, for we
saw a dhow arrive from Zanzibar whilst we were at Dhofar which brought a
cargo of such swords; the Bedouin purchased them with avidity, and were
like children with a new toy for some time after, bending them across
their naked shoulders, and measuring them with their neighbours, to see
that they were all equally long; handing them safely about by their
blades. These swords are simply flat pieces of iron, made narrower at the
top to leave a place for the hand to grip them; there is no form of hilt
of any kind. They are used to cut down trees, split logs, scrape sticks,
and cut meat into joints. They have scabbards covered with white calico,
which are not always used, and there are no straps to attach the sword to
the person. The third weapon is a wooden throw-stick, made of a specially
hard wood called _miet_, which grows in the mountains; it is about a yard
long, and pointed at both ends; it is called _ghatrif_. The Gara are
wonderfully skilful at hurling it through the air, and use it both in
battle and for the chase with admirable precision. They have hardly any
guns amongst them, and what they have are only of the long matchlock
class; in fact, they do not seem to covet the possession of firearms, as
our friends in the Hadhramout did the year before. Every man clutched the
sword and ghatrif in one hand very tightly as there was nothing to
prevent their slipping, being both pointed.
The little pipes which they use are of limestone, soft when cut and
hardening in the air. They are more like cigarette holders than pipes.
The thorn-extractors used by the Gara tribe are like those used by most
of the other Bedouin: a knife, a sort of stiletto, and tweezers. They sit
down on the wayside and hack most heartily at their feet, and then prod
deeply with the stiletto before pulling the thorn out with the tweezers.
Certainly black skins are not so sensitive as white, and though, of
course, I do not approve of slavery, I do think a great deal of unneeded
pity has been wasted on slaves by people who took it for granted that
being men and brothers they had the same feelings as ourselves, either in
mind or body. No one with the same feelings as we could go so readily
through the burning cure (_kayya_). In Mashonaland I have seen people
walking on narrow paths only suited to people who have never learnt to
turn out their toes, all overhung with thorny bushes which not only tore
our clothes but our skins. The black people only had white scratches as
if they were made of morocco leather. If by any chance a knock really
brought a bit of flesh or skin off, and blood annoyed them by streaming
down, they would clutch up a handful of grass with a dry leaf or stick,
and wipe the wound out quite roughly.
We had never put ourselves into the charge of such wild people as the
Garas--far wilder in every way than the Bedouin of the Hadhramout,
inasmuch as they have far less contact with civilisation. The Bedou of
Southern Arabia is, to my mind, distinctly of an aboriginal race. He has
nothing to do with the Arabs, and was probably there just as he is now,
centuries before the Arabs found a footing in this country. He is every
bit as wild as the African savage, and not nearly so submissive to
discipline, and is endowed with a spirit of independence which makes him
resent the slightest approach to legal supervision.
When once away from the influence of Wali Suleiman, they paid no heed to
the orders of the soldiers sent by him, and during the time we were with
them we had the unpleasant feeling that we were entirely in their power.
They would not march longer than they liked; they would only take us
where they wished, and they were unpleasantly familiar; with difficulty
we kept them out of our tents, and if we asked them not to sing at night
and disturb our rest, they always set to work with greater vigour.
Seventeen of these men, nearly naked, armed as I have described, and
wild-looking in the extreme, formed our bodyguard, and if we attempted to
give an order which did not please them, they would independently reply,
'We are all sheikhs, we are not slaves.' At the same time they paid the
greatest deference to their chief, the old Sheikh Sehel, and expected us
to do the same.
Sheikh Sehel was the head of the Beit al Kathan, which is the chief of
the many families into which the Gara tribe is divided, and consequently
he was recognised as the chief of all the Garas. He was a wizened, very
avaricious-looking old man, who must have been close upon seventy, and
though he owned 500 head of cattle and 70 camels, he dressed his old
bones in nothing save a loin-cloth, and his matted grey locks were
adorned and kept together by a simple leather thong twisted several times
round his forehead. Despite his appearance he was a great man in his
limited sphere, and for the weeks that were to come we were completely in
his power.
He had the exclusive charge of me and my camel, which he led straight
through everything, regardless of the fact that I was on several
occasions nearly knocked off by the branches of trees; and if my seat was
uncomfortable, which it often was, as well as precarious--for we all sat
on luggage indifferently tied on--we had the greatest work to make Sheikh
Sehel stop to rectify the discomfort, for he was the sheikh of all the
Garas, as he constantly repeated, and his dignity was not to be trifled
with.
The seventeen sheikhs got half a dollar a day each for food, their slaves
a quarter.
Our expedition nearly came to an untimely end a very few days after our
start, owing, as my husband himself confessed, to a little indiscretion
on his part; but as the event serves to illustrate the condition of the
men we were with, I must not fail to recount it. During our day's march
we met with a large company of the Al Khathan family pasturing their
flocks and herds in a pleasant valley. Great greetings took place, and
our men carried off two goats for an evening feast. When night approached
they lit a fire of wood, and piled stones on the embers so as to form a
heated surface. On this they placed the meat, cut in strips with their
swords, the entrails, the heads, and every part of the animal, until
their kitchen looked like a ghastly sacrifice to appease the anger of
some deity. I must confess that the smell thereof was exceeding savoury,
and the picture presented by these hungry savages, gathered round the
lurid light of their kitchen, was weird in the extreme. Daggers were used
for knives, two fingers for forks, and we stood at a respectful distance
and watched them gorge; and so excited did they become as they consumed
the flesh, that one could almost have supposed them to be under the
influence of strong drink. Several friends joined them from the
neighbouring hills, and far into the night they carried on their wild
orgy, singing, shouting, and periodically letting off the guns which the
soldiers sent by Wali Suleiman brought with them.
We retired in due course to our tent and our beds, but not to sleep, for
in addition to their discordant songs, in rushing to and fro they would
catch in our tent-guys, and give us sudden shocks, which rendered sleep
impossible. Exasperated at this beyond all bearing, my husband at length
rushed out and caught a Bedou in the very act of tumbling over a guy.
Needless to say a well-placed kick sent him quickly about his business,
and after this silence was established and we got some repose.
Next morning, however, when we were prepared to start, we found our
Bedouin all seated in a silent, solemn phalanx, refusing to move. 'What
is the matter?' my husband asked, 'why are we not ready to start?' and
from amongst them arose a stern, freezing reply. 'You must return to Al
Hafa. We can travel no more with you, as Theodore has kicked Sheikh
Sehel,' for by this time they had become acquainted with our Christian
names, and never used any other appellative.
We felt that the aspect of affairs was serious, and that in the night
season he had been guilty of an indiscretion which might imperil both our
safety and the farther progress of our journey. So we affected to take
the matter as a joke, laughed heartily, patted Sheikh Sehel on the back,
said that we did not know who it was, and my husband entered into a
solemn compact that if they would not catch in our guys again, he would
never kick his majesty any more. It was surprising to see how soon the
glum faces relaxed, and how soon all ill-feeling was forgotten. In a very
few minutes life and bustle, chattering and good humour reigned in our
camp, and we were excellent friends again.
It was on the third day after leaving Al Hafa that we passed through one
of the districts where frankincense is still collected, in a narrow
valley running down from the mountains into the plain of Dhofar. The
valley was covered for miles with this shrub, the trunk of which, when
punctured, emits the odoriferous gum. We did not see any very large
trees, such as we did in Sokotra. The Bedouin choose the hot season, when
the gum flows most freely, to do this puncturing. During the rains of
July and August, and during the cool season, the trees are left alone.
The first step is to make an incision in the trunk, then they strip off a
narrow bit of bark below the hole, so as to make a receptacle in which
the milky juice, the _spuma pinguis_ of Pliny, can lodge and harden. Then
the incision is deepened, and after seven days they return to collect
what are, by that time, quite big tears of frankincense, larger than an
egg.
The shrub itself is a picturesque one, with a leaf not unlike an ash,
only stiffer; it has a tiny green flower, not red like the Sokotra
flowers, and a scaly bark. In all there are three districts in the Gara
mountains where the tree still grows; anciently, no doubt, it was found
in much larger quantities, but the demand for frankincense is now so very
limited that they take no care whatever of the trees. They only tap the
most promising ones, and those that grow farther west in the Mahri
country, as they produce an inferior quality, are not now tapped at all.
The best is obtained at spots called Hoye and Haski, about four days'
journey inland from Merbat, where the Gara mountains slope down into the
Nejd desert. The second in quality comes from near Cape Risout, and also
a little farther west, at a place called Chisen, near Rakhiout,
frankincense of a marketable quality is obtained, but that farther west
in the Mahri country is not collected now, being much inferior. The best
quality they call _leban lakt_, and the second quality _leban resimi_,
and about 9,000 cwt. are exported yearly and sent to Bombay. It is only
collected in the hot weather, before the rains begin and when the gum
flows freely, in the months of March, April, and May, for during the
rains the tracks on the Gara mountains are impassable. The trees belong
to the various families of the Gara tribe; each tree is marked and known
to its owner, and the product is sold wholesale to Banyan merchants, who
come to Dhofar just before the monsoons to take it away.
One must imagine that when this industry was at its height, in the days
when frankincense was valued not only for temple ritual but for domestic
use, the trade in these mountains must have been very active, and the
cunning old Sabæan merchants, who liked to keep the monopoly of this
drug, told wonderful stories of the phoenix which guarded the trees, of
the insalubrity of the climate and of the deadly vapours which came from
them when punctured for the gum. Needless to say, these were all false
commercial inventions, which apparently succeeded admirably, for the old
classical authors were exceedingly vague as to the localities whence
frankincense came. Merchants came in their ships to the port of Moscha,
which we shall presently visit, to get cargoes of the drug, but they
probably knew as little as we did of the interior of the hills behind,
and one of the reasons why Aelius Gallus was sent to Arabia by Augustus
on his unsuccessful campaign was 'to discover where Arabian gold and
frankincense came from.'
Early Arabian authors are far more explicit, and we gather from Makrisi,
Ibn Khaldun, and others, something more definite about Dhofar and the
frankincense trade, and of the prince of this district who had the
monopoly of the trade, and punished its infringement with death. These
writers, when compared with the classical ones, assist us greatly in
identifying localities.
The Portuguese knew about Dhofar and its productions, for Camoens, in his
Tenth Lusiad, 716, writes:
'O'er Dhofar's plain the richest incense breathes.'
But not until Dr. Carter coasted along here some fifty years ago was it
definitely known that this was the chief locality in Arabia which
produced the drug.
Myrrh, too, grows in large quantities in the Gara range, and we obtained
specimens of it in close proximity to the frankincense-tree. The gum of
the myrrh-tree is much redder than ordinary gum Arabic, whereas the
frankincense gum is considerably whiter. The commerce of Dhofar must have
been exceedingly rich in those ancient days, as is evidenced by the size
and extent of the Sabæan ruins on the plain. They are the most easterly
ruins which have been found in Arabia of the Sabæan period, and probably
owe their origin entirely to the drug trade.
For the first few days of our journey, we suffered greatly from the
unruliness of the camels. They danced about like wild things at first,
and scattered our belongings far and wide, and all of us in our turns had
serious falls, and during those days, boxes and packages kept flying
about in all directions. Imam Sharif had his travelling trunk broken to
pieces and the contents scattered right and left, and some treasured
objects of jewellery therein contained were never recovered. So scarce
did rope become during our journey, that the Bedouin had actually to take
the leather thongs which bound their matted locks together, to lead the
camels with, and rope was almost the only thing they tried to steal from
us while we were in their company. At length our means of tying became so
exhausted that we had to send a messenger back to buy rope from Wali
Suleiman, and obtained a large sackful for two reals.
Our new supply of rope was made of aloe-fibre, barely twisted in one thin
strand, and at every camp we had to set up a rope-walk to make ropes that
would not break. The Garas were always cutting off short bits to tie
round their hair or their necks. The servants, headed by Lobo, had to be
very sharp in picking up all the pieces lying about after unloading, or
we should soon have been at a loss again.
We originally understood that Sheikh Sehel was going to take us up to the
mountains by a valley still farther west, but for some reason, which we
shall never know, he refused; some said the Mahri tribe was giving
trouble in this direction, others that the road was too difficult for
camels. At any rate, we had partially to retrace our steps, and following
along the foot of the mountains, found ourselves encamped not so many
miles away from Al Hafa.