SOBEH TO YERIM.
With this descent to the level of the valley commenced the most dangerous
and difficult part of the whole journey. The surrounding country was
thickly inhabited, and dotted with villages, capture by any one of which
meant the destruction of our caravan, if not of ourselves. A long march
yet lay before us until a place of tolerable safety could be reached,
and there remained only a few hours more of night. It would mean a fast
and difficult walk at any time, but now especially so in the midst of so
many dangers. The road had not been traversed even by Arab traders or
members of strange tribes for more than three months. For this period the
district had remained closed, and I could not help feeling, as once more
our head-man enjoined the strictest silence, that I was rather foolhardy
in attempting to be the first to open it again.
Leaving the track, we struck into the thick brushwood in order to avoid
as much as possible approaching the villages. One, however, we were
obliged, by nature of the country, to pass much nearer than was pleasant.
This was Sobeh, the principal stronghold of the Owd tribe. How silently
we crept on! But sure-footed as were our little mules, they could not
help now and again making a false step, and rattling the stones with
which our path was strewn. When this happened we would all stand still
for a second, holding our breath to listen. Once a dog barked, others
took it up, and presently it seemed as though a hundred yelping curs,
intent on our discovery, were doing their utmost to give warning of
our proximity. Happily they did not leave the village, but, after the
custom of Arab dogs, barked from the shelter of their masters’ homes.
Nevertheless, the noise was loud enough to wake a man, who shouted to
another, and a conversation took place. Seizing me by the wrist, my men
dragged me into a thick cluster of bamboos, whence we could see a light,
evidently a lantern, flickering in the village only a few hundred yards
away. It was an anxious moment; but at length the dogs ceased their
barking, and the light disappeared. Waiting to make sure that all was
quiet, we stole on again, thankful at our narrow escape.
Then the moon rose, but the cold was too intense, and I was too tired
to admire the lovely mist-swathed valley and the broken mountain-peaks.
Once or twice more we awoke the dogs, and once again, too, a man shouted
to know who was passing; but we did not hide this time, as dawn was
approaching, and my men whispered to me that even as it was it would be
a mere chance if the sun did not rise to find us still in the enemy’s
country.
At length it came, cold steely-grey dawn; then the sky flushed crimson
and pink, and we put on our final spurt, driving the mules before us with
sharp cuts from bits of rope, and hurrying as fast as our feet would
carry us. The sun was nearly up when one of the men pointed out to me,
a long way ahead, a solitary tower standing on the edge of a precipice
overlooking the river. “Once there,” he whispered, “we are safe; they
are friends of ours.” At length we almost ran. The sun would be up in a
quarter of an hour, and the cold grey mist which at present helped to
conceal us would rise.
A little before the great gold orb appeared over the mountains to the
east, we forded the icy-cold river and scrambled up to our looked-for
goal, Beit en-Nedish.
This village, standing on the very edge of high precipices, presents
a most picturesque appearance. In the centre rises a high tower, the
largest of these solidly built Arab _burj_ we had as yet come across, it
being six storeys in height, as far as one could judge from the windows.
The summit seemed to be unfinished, and only half roofed in. Around it
stood a few low stone houses with flat roofs, while a little farther
from the precipice was a mosque, and a larger part of the village. A
graveyard surrounded the whole on the mountain-side. Near the tower were
a few shady trees, adding not a little to the picturesqueness of this
strange spot.
[Illustration: _Beit en-Nedish._]
A yelping and barking of dogs welcomed us, but we paid no heed to them,
but straightway lit a fire by which to thaw our chilled limbs; and
setting some coffee in a rough earthen pot to brew, I rolled myself
up in my carpet, and was soon fast asleep. When I awoke a warm sun
was streaming down upon us. A crowd of laughing, chattering Arabs had
gathered round us, and were seated in a semicircle anxiously waiting
for me to awake. When I did so I was stiff and sore, and without more
ado, pulling out some clean clothes from my sack of baggage, ran down to
the river and bathed in the cool fresh stream, after which I joined the
circle, whose centre of interest was myself—a thing the like of which
they had never seen before. Meanwhile breakfast was ready, and inviting
a few of the throng to join us, we said “Bismillah”—“In the name of
God”—and dipped our fingers into the rough earthen pan.
What a glorious morning it was, and how fresh and lovely everything
looked! The dew still sparkled on the green trees and grass, the mist
still hovered in the valley beneath, and the hot sun was tempered with a
gentle breeze. It was like a spring day in England. How cheery we were,
too, after our night’s dangers and fatigues, all laughing and joking in
the exhilaration of high spirits! But our hopes for a day’s rest were
soon dashed to the ground, for my men received timely warning that it
would be safer for us to proceed, and a few hours later saw us on the
way again.
We had entered Arabia Felix! On all sides of us were tiny streams,
splashing and tumbling through fern-covered banks over pebbles and
stones. One does not realise what music there is in the sound of running
water until one has travelled, as the writer has once or twice in his
life, over deserts where the muddy pools are two and three days apart.
But the deserts and rocky valleys were all forgotten now—they seemed
merely the imaginings of the past. Everywhere were green fields in which
the young barley showed promise of rich crops, everywhere great shady
trees and jungle covered the slopes. The sun was hot, but at that great
altitude the freshness of the air compensated for it. My men went merrily
on, singing and laughing, and now and again running races and brandishing
their spears—and yet we had rested only two or three hours after our
march of nearly twelve hours, during which we had covered some thirty
miles of road, and what a road!
[Illustration: MAN AND WOMAN OF THE HIGHLANDS OF THE YEMEN.]
Here we came in contact for the first time with the mountaineers, a
much finer people than those of the plains. They are, as a rule, taller
and better built, their limbs being freer in action and their legs more
gracefully formed, no doubt owing much to the fact that they are great
walkers. Like the people of the plains, the men wear their hair long,
shaving their upper lip but allowing a small beard to grow on the
points of their chins. As well as the dark-blue loin-cloth, stuck full
of daggers, they wear a thick sheepskin coat, the wool on the inside,
the rough skin being coarsely embroidered in black thread. This forms a
very necessary precaution against the cold, to which these high altitudes
expose them. The women, like their sisters of the plains, wear dark-blue
skirts, embroidered round the neck and sleeves and on the breasts in
coloured silks, and now and again in gold or silver thread. Their heads
they cover with dark-blue hoods, often richly but coarsely embroidered.
While the men are often almost divinely handsome, the women are just
the contrary, being generally thickly built. No doubt the hideous tight
blue trousers and the oil and paint on their faces tends not a little to
disfigure them. In the cold early mornings the oil on their hair hangs
in little solid drops on the points of their fringes; but as the heat
of the day increases it trickles down their faces, washing away the
red-lead-coloured powder, with which they so thickly smear their faces,
in long streaks.
From Beit en-Nedish we proceeded on a three hours’ ride, and crossing the
river at a ford that might have been in the upper waters of the Tay, we
ascended the opposite bank to Beit Saïd, a large and prosperous-looking
village, situated on the west bank of the river amidst groves of shady
trees.
Before reaching this spot two large villages have to be passed, one on
each side of the river. They are respectively on the left bank Nadir,
above which the Turks had built a fort, and on the right bank Ghadan—both
large and flourishing villages, well and handsomely built of stone. The
fort was now in possession of the Arabs, as, in spite of its commanding
position, the Turks had found it untenable, and deserted it on the
breaking out of the rebellion. With the exception of Ismail Pasha’s camp
and the custom-house at Kátaba, this was the first sign we had as yet
seen of the occupation of the Yemen by the Turks.
The land, carefully terraced to allow of more cultivation, presented
from a distance an appearance of a great flight of steps, so evenly was
this immense work carried out. Although at this spot the terracing was
comparatively simple compared with many other places, owing to the slope
being gentler, it showed signs of an enormously laborious task. But,
compared to places that we afterwards saw in the Yemen it was _nil_. At
one spot I counted one hundred and thirty-seven of these terraces on the
side of a mountain, one above another, and each and every one, as far
as one could judge, higher than it was wide; that is to say, the stone
wall supporting the small strip of cultivated land was perhaps nine feet
in height, while the supported strip was only six! This is particularly
noticeable in the coffee-growing districts. However, as it was in this
valley of the Wadi el-Banna that we first came across this process of
cultivating the soil, although it was well known to me in the Atlas
Mountains, Madeira, and many parts of Europe, it struck one as showing
not only a propensity for hard work not usually found amongst Arab
peoples, but also no little amount of skill and engineering.
In other parts of the Mahammedan world the Arabs are exceedingly fond of
making and planting gardens, and even trying experiments in cultivation;
but whether failure or success awaits their efforts, they allow the whole
concern to fall into disrepair, and the fields and gardens to become
thick with weeds. It is not usually so much a want of experimenting as a
want of continuing that is the ruin of so many Arab peoples. I have known
Moors plant gardens which gave promise not only of beautiful surroundings
but of considerable profit; I have known them plant them with all manner
of fruit-trees, and build aqueducts to bring the water from some distant
spring, a work of by no means little expenditure, and a few months later
I have seen the place deserted, goats feeding on the young orange and
almond trees, and the place run to wreck and ruin. But not so in these
valleys of the Yemen. Here the supporting wall of every terrace was in
excellent repair, here every little artificial channel and aqueduct
brimmed over with water, and the whole surroundings wore not only the
appearance of great laborious skill, but of the idea being present that
the people were aware of the necessity of maintaining the results of
their labours in a state of repair.
It was a trait of character I had never before met with in the Arab
people, and I was immensely struck with it. In the Atlas Mountains, five
hundred miles in the interior of Morocco, I have seen on a small scale
the same industrious attention; but in that case the people are Berbers,
untainted with Arab blood. In the country of the Gallas surrounding the
city of Harrar one finds much the same; but again, however nearly the
Somalis may be related to the people of the Yemen, the Gallas are no
doubt a perfectly distinct race. It may be argued that the necessities
of life and the nature of the country would render existence impossible
were the people not obliged to terrace and cultivate their lands in this
manner; but I have passed in many parts of the world where the same
argument would apply, and found an entirely different state of things
existing. I rather believe this attention to cultivation, and especially
the growing of coffee, &c., to be due to the existence of true Yemeni
blood in the veins of the people, apart from their mixed Arab pedigrees.
There is little doubt that this system of fixed abodes and attention to
agriculture could not have been introduced in the Arab invasions of the
Yemen, but was existent there long before the time of the introduction
of Islam. All the historical records point to this effect, and it was
probably owing as much to this as to the natural wealth and beauty of the
country that the province obtained the name of Arabia Felix.
[Illustration: MOSQUE AT BEIT SAÏD.]
We found the village of Beit Saïd to be by far the most flourishing we
had as yet entered. A large open space divided a pretty little white
mosque, half covered by trees, from the rest of the village. The houses
were well built of stone, one especially fine, being of two storeys in
height, with arched doorways and heavy wooden doors. This we found to be
the caravanserai and house of a cousin of the Sheikh Besaisi of Kátaba,
to whom my men were well known, and who quickly made us welcome in an
upper chamber of the house, to which an outside stone stairway led. The
room was small but cool, and we quickly unpacked our baggage and stored
it away, settling in for a much-needed rest.
A crowd watched our operations,—a gathering of men, women, children,
and dogs, who, open-mouthed and open-eyed, watched the strange little
caravan arrive, whispering their criticisms to one another. However, they
were quite polite, the presence of El-Besaisi no doubt keeping them at a
distance; for, like his cousin at Kátaba, he was no small personage here.
We found the people of Beit Saïd extremely pleasant; in fact, the callers
almost crowded us out of our room, they were so many, a constant crowd
watching with the greatest interest the strange visitor. The rest was
a welcome one, and we hoped not only to spend the day here, but to
obtain, for the first time for many days, a night’s repose; but fate was
against us. Having turned in about eight P.M. in a portion of the big
store, where, except for the rats, I felt I should be quieter than in
the guest-room, I was soon asleep, weary with all the anxiety and travel
which we had accomplished.
I had been asleep only an hour or two when I felt myself quietly shaken.
I asked who was there. A voice whispered in my ear, “Hush! do not speak.”
I struck a light, and as a wild long-haired creature leant over me to
blow it out, I had just time to see that the man was a stranger. “Get
up,” said the voice again; “you are in danger. Not a word, mind. Give me
your bedding and carpet.” In the dark I hurried into my clothes, while
the unknown seized my carpet and such baggage as I possessed, and left. I
waited for a few moments, when he returned. “Your mules are already being
laden,” he continued; then seizing me by the hand, added, “Follow me.” I
followed him out into the quiet moonlit streets, and keeping under the
shadows of the houses, left the village. Here I was surprised to find my
mules already laden. No one was stirring, and in the bright moonlight we
passed silently away from the place without disturbing a soul. Our road
was a difficult and a steep one: at many places the track, under two
feet wide, was cut into the side of a precipice, far down which we could
see the white mists hovering over the damp valley.
The reason of our flight I was at a loss to understand, yet never for a
moment did I doubt that there was a reason. I somehow, without knowing
why, trusted the man who had warned me. He was a stranger, and as far as
I could remember, as I watched him leading our little caravan over the
awful road, I had never seen him before. Once in my life already I had
been saved by a stranger, who had risked his own to save mine—an Arab
too, but in a land far away from the Yemen. I need not tell the story
here: sufficient that I arrived at his house weary, by night, my bare
feet bleeding with the stones and thorns, pursued by men who had vowed to
take my life; and that he, good noble fellow, found me and took me in,
bathed my blood-stained ankles, and tore up his own clothes to bind them
in, and, after keeping me in hiding for two days, escorted me in safety
out of the country. He died a few months later, foully murdered in a
blood-feud. Perhaps it was the recollection of this that imbued me with
so much confidence and trust in my new-found friend. That I was not wrong
the sequel will show.
Sometimes a stone loosened by our animals’ hoofs would fall, and,
bounding from rock to rock, disappear into the darkness. At each of these
occurrences our guide would utter a guttural sound of disapproval. Once
or twice I ventured to ask him the reason of our sudden flight, but
was always met with a sharp “Silence!” in reply. On and on, until some
three hours after leaving Beit Saïd our path commenced to descend, and,
slipping and sliding down slopes of sand and stones, we entered the large
village of Seddah, now wrapt in sleep; then on through the village of
Mundah, and out into the open country again. The dogs barked a little,
and one or two men, armed with spears, accosted us, but, after a few
words whispered with our men, we passed on again. It is at Seddah that
the valley turns to the west, and here the Wadi Thuba flows into the Wadi
Banna. This latter river has a direction almost north and south, and
although the Banna is the main stream, the other continues the general
direction of the valley.
An hour later, leaving the valley and mounting a steep ascent, we crossed
an elevated plateau, finally arriving at the village of Sôk el-Thuluth.
I had been given no idea of whither we were going or where our new guide
considered it safe for us to rest; and when, on nearing the village,
he told me that I might stay there as long as I liked, it was a most
pleasant surprise. The streets of the little place were deserted except
by the dogs; but after knocking long and loudly at a door, we succeeded
in awakening a woman, who turned out to be the proprietress of the small
_café_ and caravanserai of the place. She was a good kindly soul,
and did not grumble at being turned up at one A.M. on a cold morning.
Admitting us into a cave-like room with a stone arched ceiling, reeking
with the pungent odours of strong tobacco and coffee—not to mention the
odours of its Arab occupants, who lay sleeping about the door rolled up
in their dirty sheepskin coats—she lit a fire, put water on to boil, and
then commenced by violently kicking the Arabs in order to awake them,
calling to them to turn out and make room for a more honoured guest.
I persuaded her to leave them in peace,—more out of regard, it must
be said, for my own slumbers than for theirs; and calling to Saïd and
Abdurrahman to make up my bed on the roof, was soon asleep.
When I awoke it was dawn. What a sight met my eyes! Never had I
before, and I think never since, seen such a view as lay before me.
Sôk el-Thuluth, or “Tuesday market,” as its name implies, is situated
above the junctions of the Wadi Banna and Wadi Thuba, on a spur of the
mountains of the main valley. Below me lay the great valley up the
straight course of which we had been travelling for the last two nights.
Over its green fields floated a transparent hazy mist, through which
I would watch the river sparkling and flashing like a silver serpent,
as it passed on its way to the desert and the sea. Along its banks the
dark-foliaged trees stood out clear and defined. On either side of this
silver streak lay terraced fields, rising step by step from the water’s
edge to where the mountain-slopes became too steep for cultivation.
Here they were covered with thick jungle undergrowth, while above rose
precipice upon precipice, crowned, thousands of feet in the pink morning
sky, by broken crags and pinnacles of rock, touched with snow. At my
very feet, for I was on the house-top, the villagers, rejoicing in the
glorious morning, were passing out to their labours, and the flocks and
herds bleated as they sought their pasturage. Women carrying beakers
wended their way to the spring; while the men, spears in hand, their
long glossy locks tumbling in unrestrained glory over the shoulders,
added a fierce element to a scene of the most perfect peace and beauty.
It was worth all the desert travel and all the dangers of our night
marches to see what I saw then. This was Arabia Felix! As I gazed the
mists rose, every detail in the valley became distinct: little villages
far below, crowning the rocky mounds on which the Arabs of the Yemen
so love to build, stood out from the green fields all grey and severe,
each a fortress in itself, with its battlements and towers. Around the
pink-and-gold crags hovered little fleecy clouds, attracted by the small
patches of snow—now hiding, now disclosing the grandeur of the mountain
pinnacles.
All our dangers were over; from here our road was safe. We were soon to
enter the great plateau of the central Yemen, now safely once more in
the hands of the Turks, though woe betide the Osmanli soldier who found
himself alone and without protection. As I looked upon that glorious
valley, more glorious than ever now that the sun had risen, I could not
realise how exciting a time we had experienced in passing through it, so
lovely, so quiet, so peaceful it seemed.
Calling to Saïd, I told him to send me the man who had led us to Sôk
el-Thuluth the night before.
He had gone!
Never a word of thanks, never a reward! He had left me sleeping, and gone
back to his own affairs and to his own life. Like the character in some
play that appears but once, so had this Arab come and gone. My men had
tried to stop him, had tried to keep him until I awoke, promising him
a reward, but he had laughed and shaken his raven curls, and, spear in
hand, girded up his loins and vanished. Strange good fellow! he saved my
life, and never even gave me the opportunity of thanking him!
We had left one of our men the night before behind us at Beit Saïd. He
had gone off in the evening to supper in the house of a friend, where he
had slept, unaware of our flight. In the early morning he had found us
gone, and followed us, not by the roundabout mountain-track we had come
by, but by the main road.
He solved the mystery of our flight, for but a few miles from Beit Saïd
he found the road held by some forty men, armed to the teeth, whose
object was my plunder. How little the poor fellows would have got! A few
dollars and a little shabby clothing, an old carpet and a mattress, and
that was about all. But they had imagined that I was a trader taking up
great sums of money, and had resolved my death—for life is cheap out
there—and the plundering of my goods. I asked our man what they had said
to him. He replied that they had asked after me, and that finding I
had been warned and escaped them, they went off laughing and swearing,
apparently rather amused at the whole episode.
Our rest had done us all good, and we set out with light hearts, knowing
that no probable dangers lay ahead.
The path leads one along the east side of the valley, at a great height
above the river, often, like that we had traversed the night before, only
a footway cut in the edge of the precipices. Here for the first time
we came across the coffee-plant, growing amidst tumbling waterfalls on
terraces built up against the steep mountain-side. Everywhere was water,
here in artificial channels, there in tiny streamlets. Wild flowers
abounded, and in places the walls of rock were green and white with
jasmine. A thousand feet below us were the villages, on to the roofs of
the houses of which we looked from above. It seemed but a step from us to
them. At one spot my men pointed out where a short time before a camel
and its load had fallen from an overhanging rock. It never touched the
precipice, they said, until it fell upon a ledge they pointed out to me
hundreds of feet below, and thence it bounded into the valley.
Rich in the extreme is this part of the country, owing to its everlasting
supply of water, and many are the tales the Arabs of the plains tell of
it. Beled el-Hawad they call it, of which Howra is the chief village,—a
place like a feudal castle built on a pile of rocks.
After a time the road turns to the right, and, following the course of
a small stream, ascends a valley. To the left of this valley, on the
very summit of a high mountain, is the village of Ofar, to reach which
necessitates a climb of a thousand feet or more from the road. At several
places one passes drinking-fountains, erected, like the great tanks we
were afterwards to meet with in the plateau, for the refreshment of man
and beast. They are simple affairs, but excellently built. In form they
are usually square, and domed, some six feet each way perhaps. A trough
on the outside supplies the water for the animals, while a hole in the
wall, large enough for one to insert one’s head through, is for human
beings. Within the water rises to the level of this hole, being carried
off by an overflow pipe into the trough below, so that the clear liquid
just reaches the level of one’s lips, while the roof above keeps it fresh
and cool. These fountains, common all over the Yemen, have been usually
erected by private philanthropists for the benefit of their fellow-men.
Unlike the custom in England, no flowery inscription tells the world the
name or the generosity of the builder—they are the memorials of anonymous
benefactors. Here, too, we came into contact for the first time with the
mountain camel—a very different beast from that of the Teháma and desert,
being a rough-haired, heavily-boned creature, usually black in colour
and the picture of ugliness. Those of Lahej and the surrounding country,
renowned throughout Arabia, are light in colour and remarkably finely
built, and often exceedingly pretty. To those who think that the camel is
essentially a creature of the desert, and incapable of traversing with
ease stony or rocky country, the fact that we were passing caravans of
camels nearly eight thousand feet above the sea-level, and on the worst
possible roads, must seem strange. It is well known, of course, that the
camel of Central Asia traverses mountainous country, but I doubt if many
are aware that it forms also the beast of burden in the extreme highlands
of the Yemen, travelling over roads which one would have thought
impassable almost for a mule. Yet so it is.
At length the end of the little valley was reached at an altitude of
only a little under nine thousand feet above the sea-level. A slippery
rocky path winds up the last few hundred yards of the ascent, which
is extremely difficult to surmount, both for man and beast, for the
constant traffic of centuries has polished the surface until it shines
like glass.
Here the beauty ends, for one has reached the plateau of central Yemen—a
vast plain lying at an average altitude of about eight thousand feet
above the sea, broken only by hideous ledges of black volcanic rock,
which crop up here and there from its level surface. It was too early yet
in the year for the young grain to show; and the scene that met our eyes,
as we rested ourselves and our mules after the steep climb, was a dreary
one—miles of yellow level plain, and black jagged rocks. A short but
steep descent brings one to the level of the plateau, over which, with
but little exception, the road passes from this spot as far as Sanaa, the
capital.
[Illustration: _Inscribed stone at Munkat, near Yerim._]
The natives have made use of the ledges of rock, which appear in every
direction, as sites for their villages, many of which are perched on the
extreme summits, while others lie on the slopes. At one of these—by name
Munkat—we stopped for a little while, to see the place and some curious
Himyaric remains still existing therein.
This is, I think, the first mention I have made of the strange people,
descendants of Himyar, who formerly inhabited the Yemen; but rather than
enter into any account of them and of other historical matters at this
point, I have reserved these questions for separate chapters, as I have
also done in the case of the geography, trade, and general description
of the Yemen. It has been my wish, as far as possible, to separate the
account of my journey from other and more important matter, so that each
may be taken separately. In all matters historical and geographical, I
have consulted, as far as has been in my power, the best authorities
upon the subject; but in the account of my own travels I have thought it
expedient, instead of breaking the narrative with incursions into more
serious subjects, to omit, except in cases in which it may illustrate and
explain more fully than would otherwise be the case, nearly all reference
to historical or political affairs.
Munkat is a walled village containing a considerable number of houses,
one of which, a kind of fort, is curiously perched on an enormous
boulder, and a pretty white mosque, surrounded by tanks of good water.
Built into the wall of the mosque are stones inscribed in Himyaric
characters, and some also in Kufic. Copies of the former were, I believe,
taken some years ago by Dr Glaser. In another part of the village is
a white marble column, some eight or ten feet in height, of Himyaric
origin, which is said by the villagers to have appeared suddenly at
this spot. The ignorance of the natives in this part of the country
is astonishing; for out of many stones they showed me, some were in
Arabic and some in the Himyaric character, but the inhabitants were
uncertain as to which was which. They seemed, however, to reverence
these remains to some extent, as they had carefully built them into the
walls. At one spot, over a doorway and in a prominent position, they
had carefully placed a marble stone containing the first chapter of the
Koran—“Bismillah Alrahman Alrahim,” &c.—upside down. When I told them of
their mistake, it was quite sad to hear their excuses. “We are only poor
people,” they said, “and we are terribly taxed. We have to till the soil
to feed ourselves and the Osmanli Pashas, and there is no time to learn
to read or write.” In many parts of the country to such an extent do they
have “to feed the Osmanli Pashas,” that they scarcely get ought to eat
themselves. It is the old tale of cruelty and oppression, of extortion
and corruption.
The regard shown by the poor villagers of Munkat for these inscribed
stones is not by any means uncommon, a great reverence for writing being
innate in all Arab peoples. I once had an Arab servant, himself perfectly
illiterate, who treasured a torn manuscript copy of the ‘Arabian Nights.’
Its contents he did not know, nor had he ever taken the trouble to find
out: that it was a _book_ was sufficient for him, and he carried it about
as a sort of talisman. In spite of its good luck, it did not keep him out
of prison, when one day he helped himself to things that weren’t his.
One of the most beautiful sights to be seen upon the plateau of the Yemen
are the lizards—little creatures of gorgeous metallic blue, now pale
turquoise, now transparent sapphire, as the sunlight dances on their
backs. In no other part of the world have I come across such gorgeously
coloured reptiles, although I have seen the same lizard, but less
brilliant in hue, in the mountains of the Zarahoun, to the north of the
road between Fez and Mequinez, in Morocco.
An hour or two more of winding path and we were in sight of Yerim, one of
the principal towns of the Yemen, which but a short time before had been
taken by the Arabs in the rebellion, and retaken by the very Ismail Pasha
whose camp we had seen at Kátaba.