MENAKHA TO HODAIDAH.
The road from Menakha to the coast leads one for the first few miles
along the mountains on the southern side of the valley, gradually
ascending the while, until, an hour or so after leaving the town, an
altitude of eight thousand feet above the sea-level is reached. At this
spot a spur in the mountain is crossed, near to which is the remarkable
village of Kariat el-Hajra, a rock crowned with tall stone houses,
many of which are built in the strange fashion of towers. A precipice
surrounds the village on every side, the lower slopes of which are
cultivated in terraces. The place has the appearance of being a large
and important one, and from its position must be exceedingly strong. The
country immediately surrounding this spot is very beautiful, there being
an abundance of water and no lack of trees, while the terraces and fields
were, at the time of my visit, green with young grass and crops, and
gorgeous with wild-flowers. Leaving Hajra on the right, the road begins
to descend, and soon another village, more extraordinary than that we
had already passed, came into sight. This is Attara. From an expanse of
terraced slope rises a single pinnacle of rock some hundreds of feet in
height, split perpendicularly into two divisions. On the very summit,
on which there is only just room for it to stand, is a large building,
apparently a house and tower. Although unable to see the track by which
this, to the eye, apparently unscalable position is reached, my men
informed me that there is a stairway cut in the solid rock, by means
of which the inhabitants ascend and descend. Close nestling under the
pinnacle is the rest of the village, built tier above tier on the steep
mountain-side. The path by which we were descending zigzags down until
one arrives in a sort of amphitheatre, of which the village forms an
apex. The ground here is richly cultivated with coffee-trees and bananas,
growing upon terraces. In one place the jungle seems to have gained
possession of what was originally cultivated land, and appears in a mass
of euphorbiæ and other strange trees and plants. Here, too, jasmine
grows in wonderful abundance, the whole air being filled with its sweet
fragrance.
Zigzagging down the mountain-side, we arrived before mid-day at the
_café_ of Wisil, wonderfully perched on the very edge of the precipice.
The place is poor enough, but a few shady huts of grass and mats have
been erected round a little terraced garden, over the wall of which one
gazes far down into the valley beneath. Here under a shady tree we spread
our carpet and refreshed ourselves, revelling in the magnificence of our
surroundings. This resting-place was situated at an elevation of a little
over four thousand five hundred feet above the sea-level, so that since
the morning we had descended some three thousand feet.
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE OF EL-HAJRA.]
From this spot is obtained perhaps the most extraordinary view of the
terraced mountains we had as yet obtained. These surrounding ranges are
celebrated for their coffee, principally Jibel Masar and Safan, both of
which lie to the north of the road. Away above the terraces the mountains
rise in perpendicular precipices, and nearly every peak is crowned with
one of the curious towers already described.
The view from Wisil was the last we were to see of its kind, for we
were fast leaving the mountains behind and descending to the plains, or
Teháma, and even from here the change to the country was appreciable, for
far away to the west the great mountains became lower, and the horizon
was bounded with rough barren hills, very like those we had seen around
Jibel Menif, when we left the desert beyond Lahej. A weird old lady
served us with coffee and food at our resting-place—a parchment-skinned
grinning old hag, half clothed in torn dark-blue rags, with a lot of what
looked like dirty bandages wound round her head; but she was a cheery old
gossip, and Saïd took advantage of her to exhibit his wit and sarcasm,
much to her amusement as well as our own.
[Illustration: _View near Wisil._]
Poor Saïd! The wear and tear of the last month had worn him a bit.
Fever had paled his skin, and left him thinner than he was when he had
started from Aden; but no weariness, no fever, had caused him to pay
less attention to his personal charms than before, and his curly locks
were as soft and silky and glossy as ever, although his loin-cloth and
sash told tales of travel. Still, in all our hardships he had been ever
bright and gay, and as we neared civilisation once more, and there seemed
some chance of his seeing his paradise—Aden—again, his eyes regained
their former twinkle, and his laugh grew more cheery than ever. With
Abdurrahman it was different, and the strain and exertion he had been
through had told on his more delicate constitution. Brought up in the
bracing mountains of Morocco, where frosts are common, and even in the
daytime the heat is never oppressive, he had felt severely the sudden
changes of the tropics. All his gaiety had left him, and he scarcely
spoke. It was with difficulty that we could rouse his spirits, try
hard as we did, Saïd and I. Almost every evening, in spite of arsenic
and quinine, fever would seize him, and he would lie awake of a night,
tossing and moaning in a way that was pitiful to see and hear.
Leaving Wisil, the road descends, by a zigzag track, the steep
mountain-side. Here were apparent one at least of the advantages of
the Turkish occupation of the Yemen, for the road was wide and in good
repair, supported by a stone embankment, and planted on either side with
mimosa-trees, which no doubt help in some degree to prevent the floods
which the heavy rainfalls occasion from washing the stones away, and
which will eventually prove no small advantage to the traveller by their
shade. At length the bed of the water-course was reached, down which the
road proceeds, roughly and unpleasantly, over great boulders and stones
that tired our poor little mules, and necessitated our proceeding on
foot. Thick vegetation, principally trees of the mimosa type, fringe the
edge of the river-bed, which, except for an occasional pool or spring,
contained no water.
On and on, until the gorge narrows and enters a defile, merely the
water-course and walls of rock on either hand, some eighty feet perhaps
in height. Here was a sight that caused us an hour or so of amusement
and laughter, for the precipices were the haunt of hundreds of apes and
monkeys, which scampered away at our approach, and sat chattering and
grinning at us from their perches. So tame many of them were, that we
were able to approach within fifteen or twenty yards of them before they
would seek refuge in the nooks and crannies of the rocks. My men were
eager to shoot one or two, but I would not allow it, as it was a real
pleasure to watch the funny creatures in their antics, and to listen
to their squeaking and chattering. In some cases the larger apes were
carrying their young in their arms, and handling them as carefully as a
woman does her child. Even Abdurrahman awoke from his melancholy, and
laughed heartily at the strange creatures, which bounded from rock to
rock, or showed their rows of chattering white teeth from some hole in
the cliff.
Continuing along the bottom of the valley for some little way farther, we
turned eventually from the water-course, and climbed a bare rocky hill to
the north of the river, and, crossing a small plateau, descended to the
village of Hojaila, which we reached an hour or two before sunset.
At this point we had said farewell to the mountains, for although the
foot-hills extend farther into the Teháma, beyond Bajil in fact, we
were to see no more of the greater ranges. But not only is Hojaila the
finishing spot of the mountains, but the people entirely change, becoming
from that point Arabs of the plains, dwelling in mud and thatch houses,
and different in appearance and habits.
We had passed during the day’s march through a part of the country
the inhabitants of which need investigation, and about which I,
unfortunately, can say but little here. These are people of a religious
sect who called themselves Makarama, but of the origin of which, except
that their belief is said to be of Indian extraction, I have found it
impossible to discover anything. These Yemenis are in language and
appearance like their Moslem neighbours, although several names in the
vicinity tell of India. Principal amongst them is the “Dar el Hinoud,” or
Indians’ monastery or house, farther on in the Teháma. Of their belief
but little was to be ascertained. It is summed up, however, in two lines
of poetry, of which I was able to obtain the translation:—
“God is indiscoverable, by day or by night.
Do not worry about anything, there is neither heaven nor hell.”
Professing these strange tenets, there is this sect on the highroad from
Hodaidah to Sanaa. As to their observances, the only man of their belief
I met with would say but little, while the Moslems, although uninfluenced
by the fanaticism one would expect to find, are careless. They have, I
was told, the old Judaic observance of the scapegoat, and a particular
night in the year in which they shut themselves into their houses, and
are said to practise incest. This, however, may be possibly the Moslem
idea of what really takes place. Were this to be absolutely depended
upon, the fact might point to a Karmathian origin, for Ibn Fadl allowed
the drinking of wine and this practice; but then it is scarcely likely
that a Karmathian superstition should survive in a belief which is in
direct contravention to Islam. It is known that in certain Phœnician
rites incest was allowed, and the practice of a certain nightly annual
feast in which the houses are illuminated might point to the worship
of Adonis, certain remains of which, I am informed, are found amongst
the mountaineers of the Himalayas. My information on this sect of the
Makarama continues that they are at times visited by natives of India,
who prize the charms that they are in the habit of writing; and most
probably their origin may be found in that country, for Hodaidah has
always been largely frequented by Indian traders.
[Illustration: TURKISH CAMP OF HOJAILA.]
Hojaila is but a small place, more a collection of huts than a town,
as it is elsewhere described, though at the time I passed through it
was augmented by a large Turkish camp, pitched near the _jimerouk_, or
custom-house. There seems, with the exception of this building, a large,
low, square place, to be no other of importance, though the Sheikh
resides in a house two storeys in height, painted red and white in bands,
which stands a curious landmark on the edge of a steep incline leading
down to the river-bed. A few trees are scattered about the place, and
under these were lolling Turkish soldiers, while the tents, and sentries
passing and repassing, gave quite a martial appearance to the otherwise
dreary scene; for, with the exception of these trees and the oleanders in
the river-bed, the country was dull and sun-dried.
Only a short rest was allowed me here, although we had been travelling,
almost without interruption, since the early morning. However, as I was
entirely in the hands of the Turkish guards who had been sent to see
me to Hodaidah, any attempt at expostulation was out of the question.
Another advantage, too, was to be gained by pushing on—namely, the
moonlight night.
We had left behind us now the high elevations and watered valleys, and
nothing but plain and desert lay between us and Hodaidah, some eighty
miles distant, over which, although the month was February, travelling by
day is torment. So an hour or two was all the time we spent in the _café_
at Hojaila, and as soon as the sunset glow was dying away we loaded our
little mules again and set off.
From sunset until near dawn we plodded on over the plain, the broken
rocky hills showing up on either side in the clear moonlight, which was
sufficiently bright to allow us to see that a considerable portion of the
country we were passing through was under cultivation.
How balmy and warm the night was! and had it not been that one was tired
and weary with the long ride from Menakha, it would have proved most
enjoyable. As it was, one could not help admiring the loveliness of the
still moonlight, and the silence, broken only by the thud of our mules’
feet upon the sand and the humming of the insects in the air. Every now
and then we would pass a caravan of camels, slow-gaited and patient,
which seemed to grow out of the moonlight like spectres, only to vanish
again into the darkness.
As dawn grew near we reached Bohay, situated to the north of Jibel Damir.
It is a poor little place; but the rest in a mat _café_ was inexpressibly
refreshing, for out of the last twenty-four hours we had been nearly
twenty on the road.
Stretching ourselves upon the string couches, which do not seem to be
in use anywhere out of the Teháma and the southern plains, we were soon
wrapped in sleep. But at sunrise my guards woke me, and we made a start
again. But our march was happily to prove only a short one, and three
hours later we drew in sight of Bajil, where at length I was promised a
well-earned rest.
Bajil is quite a little town, its population numbering probably some
3000 souls. Except for a large Turkish fort, built for the most part of
squared stones, and a few houses of the same material, it consists of
mud-and-thatch and mat houses, enclosed by high hedges of dry mimosa and
acacia thorns in the form of zarebas. The place is prettily situated,
lying at the foot of Jibel Obaki, the surrounding plain being cultivated
with millet of two varieties, the _dokhn_ and the _durra_; while a good
water-supply allows of the growth of a considerable number of trees,
principally acacias, which render the place a veritable oasis.
The _café_ here, except for those of the towns and that at Waalan, was
the best we had come across; for although it only consisted of a series
of mat-huts built round a large yard, everything was so clean and so tidy
that it was a real pleasure to rest in the shade, all the more so as by
this time the rays of the sun had become fierce in their heat.
We engaged one of these mat-houses for our private use, and unloading
our mules, settled in for the day. What rendered our stay at Bajil more
refreshing than it otherwise would have proved was the presence of an
excellent _masseur_, under whose skilful hands one’s limbs lost all their
weariness.
As soon as the cool of the afternoon allowed, I sauntered out for a
stroll through the little town. There was but little to see, it is true;
but a Yemen village always presents sights which, if not exactly pretty,
are generally of interest. A wedding-party was in full swing, guns were
being fired off, tomtoms rendered the air hideous with their sound, and
shrill pipes added to the confusion. The crowd of women who filled the
open spaces between the zarebas, that answered for streets, were attired
in holiday garments, and a gay throng they were; for, in spite of their
dull-blue clothing, they had succeeded in tying themselves up with
handkerchiefs and scarves of all colours, until they resembled rainbows.
Here, as elsewhere, it seems to be the lot of womankind to do the hard
work, and I stood for a time to watch them filling their pitchers from
the wells. The manner in which the water is drawn is the following. A
framework of wood is built over the mouth of the well, a solid beam
passing from side to side; over this cross-beam runs the rope, to the
end of which is fastened a bucket. Owing to the great depth to which the
wells have to be sunk, these ropes are necessarily of enormous length,
and the only means by which the weight can be supported is by a couple
of the women harnessing themselves to the end and running at a gentle
trot until the bucket has reached the surface, where it is emptied by a
third. One well, the length of the track passed over to draw the bucket
to the surface I measured, was only a few feet under two hundred in
depth. The labour is a severe one, but the women seem to take it as a
matter of course. In southern Morocco, where much the same system is in
use, camels or donkeys are harnessed in their place.
The only building of any size or importance in Bajil is the Turkish
fort. It is a great square place, with circular towers jutting out here
and there, and is built almost entirely of cut stone and bricks. Though
useless against artillery, it would prove impregnable to Arab hordes,
armed only with spears and matchlock-guns. A few ill-dressed Turks were
lying about under the shade of some acacia-trees, and half-a-dozen
field-guns, none too well kept, stood near the door; but the place
offered no other signs of things military, and wore the weary appearance
of orientalism.
This was all that there was to be seen in Bajil, so I retraced my steps
to the _café_, where I found our mules being loaded preparatory to
a start. A number of Turkish officers from Sanaa had arrived during
my absence, and we instantly struck up an acquaintance, as we were
proceeding over the same road to Hodaidah. They had been invalided from
the steamy Teháma, and had been in hospital at Sanaa. Their recovery told
a tale of the magnificent climate of that place, for they assured me that
they had left Hodaidah a couple of months before almost dead of fever.
At four o’clock we made a start, our two little caravans uniting. The
road continues over the desert, which is here dotted with mimosa-bushes
and tufts of long grass. It was the delight of the Turkish officers to
throw matches into the latter, and as night came on we left a track
behind us of fiery stars and heaps of black ashes. There was no danger
of the fire taking too large dimensions, as the tufts of grass were
sufficiently far removed from one another to prevent the flames spreading.
It was the last of our desert marches. A glorious night, the sky a blaze
of myriads of stars, the desert like a silver sea. Quietly and quickly
our little mules glided on. Every now and again a caravan of slouching
camels would pass by us with a dozen or so wild Bedouins in charge, on
the heads of whose spears the moonlight played and flashed, but they
soon vanished into the night. One could scarcely believe that this cool
plain, fragrant with the sweet scent of mimosa, its fragrance increased
by the heavy dew, was in the daytime a howling desert, where the sun
scorched everything to death save the thorny bushes and the coarse grass
tufts, and the camels and their Bedouin drivers; but even they scarcely
ever travel by day. Wonderful as were the sights and the grandeur of the
mountains of the Yemen, I think these night-rides over the desert have
fixed themselves more upon my memory. Tired as we often were, one could
not but wonder at the glories of the starlit heavens, and revel in the
fragrance of falling dew and mimosa.
[Illustration: GATE OF A WALLED VILLAGE IN THE YEMEN.]
Before midnight we reached a _café_, merely a few little huts in the
desert, but welcome nevertheless, and with shouts and cries we woke the
owner, who lit a lamp and showed us into his best accommodation, a roof
of grass supported on long canes. However, one could need no more; for it
kept off the chill of the dew, and allowed the breeze, which every now
and again stirred, to cool the hot night air.
I shall never forget that last night in the desert,—Turks, Arabs, Moors,
and Englishman squatting on carpets, sharing a common pipe in a dimly lit
_café_ in the desert. Coffee and supper were cooking, and one could hear
the bubbling of the coffee-husks in the earthen pot that was preparing
for our men. And then they brought our supper, a couple of desert fowls
that tasted as though they had tramped a century over the sand, so tough
they were. A rest of an hour or two was all we were allowed, and long
before daylight we were off again. The desert here takes the form of
sand-dunes, in parts covered with scanty scrub, in parts bare yellow
sand, broken only by the hideous lines of crooked telegraph-posts. There
were no signs of a road, not even a track in the sand, for the slightest
breeze destroys the marks left by those who have gone before. But our
men knew the way well, and just a little after seven o’clock, when we
were beginning to suffer severely from the intense rays of the sun, a cry
proceeded from our foremost man, who stood spear in hand, a silhouette
against the burning sky.
Hodaidah! There it was at last, dancing in the shimmering heated air
of the desert,—turned, and twisted, and indistinct, but Hodaidah
nevertheless! As we neared the town the scene became quite picturesque.
Here an old Turkish fort, half in ruins, stood out yellow from the white
sand; there the remains of some aqueduct in which no water flowed. Then
we entered palm-groves, whose greenness after the desert was refreshing,
under the shade of which nestled the clean grass-and-mat huts and zarebas
of the Arab and Indian inhabitants.
Still on; past many a pretty country-house of the Arab merchants,
surrounded by gardens, until at length we emerged into the great
market-place that lies without the walls of the town proper, above which
rise the houses snowy white, tier upon tier in strange disorder.
Passing under a great gateway, the upper part of which served as
barracks, we proceeded by narrow streets to our destination, a large
_café_ kept by a Greek. Here I engaged a room, and sending my Arabs and
Turkish guards to forage for themselves until I had rested, we carried
our scanty baggage to an upper chamber, the windows of which looked
out on one side to the sea, and on the other to the principal street I
settled myself in.
But the fatigue of my march from Sanaa had been too much for me, and
in an hour my fever had returned, and I was lying, almost unconscious,
tossing from side to side. Saïd and Abdurrahman likewise were attacked,
and suffered as much perhaps as I did. But our journey was over, we had
finished with the mountains and plains of the Yemen, and our goal was
reached.