J. Theodore Bent

“ For some distance around Manamah all is arid desert, on which grow a few scrubby plants, which women cut for fodder with sickle-like saws, and carry home in large bundles on their backs. Sheikh Esau's summer palace is in the centre of this desert—a fortress hardly distinguishable from the sand around, and consisting, like Eastern structures of this nature, of nothing but one room over the gateway for his majesty, and a vast courtyard 200 feet long, where his attendants erect their bamboo huts and tents. Around the whole runs a wall with bastions at each corner, very formidable to look upon. ”

“ We wanted to go right along the Wadi Hadhramout and to see Bir Borhut or Barahout, a solfatare as far as we could make out, but Masoudi in the tenth century speaks of it as the greatest volcano in the world, and says that it casts up immense masses of fire and that its thundering noise can be heard miles away. On the heights near is much brimstone, which the Bedouin find useful for gunpowder. They consider this place is the mouth of hell and that the souls of Kafirs go there. ”

“ I never saw a place so void of architectural features as the town of Maskat itself. The mosques have neither domes nor minarets—a sign of the rigid Wahabi influence which swept over Arabia. This sect refuse to have any feature about their buildings, or ritual which was not actually enjoined by Mohammed in his Koran. There are a few carved lintels and doorways, and the bazaars are quaintly pretty, but beyond this the only architectural features are Portuguese.
All traces of the Portuguese rule are fast disappearing, and each new revolution adds a little more to their destruction. ”

“ To the south the descent is abrupt and rocky to the plain of Dhofar and the Indian Ocean, and the horizon line on either side is remarkably similar, for in the far, far distance the sandy desert becomes a straight blue line like a horizon of water. To the east and west the arid barrenness of Arabia soon asserts itself, whereas the undulating Gara range, like the Cotswold, is fertile, and rounded with deep valleys and ravines running into it full of rich tropical vegetation. ”

“ Though many of our camps on Mount Haghier and the expeditions therefrom were very delightful, I think this one, called Yehazahaz, was decidedly the prettiest. It was low down on the southern slope of Mount Haghier; our tents were pitched in a grove of palm-trees at the meeting of two rushing streams; tangled vegetation hung around us on every side, and whichever way we looked we had glimpses of granite peaks and rugged hill-sides clad with dragon's-blood. ”

“ We assured them that we had landed in Sokotra (which they pronounce Sakoutra) to see the island, and not to circumnavigate it. Others could pass, so we could.
Their last hope was in my hoped-for faintheartedness. They watched till I was alone in the tent, and, having recounted all the perils over again, said:
'Let the men go over the mountain, but you, O Bibi! will go in a boat, safely. You cannot climb, you cannot ride the camel, no one can hold you; the path is too narrow, and you will be afraid.'
That being no good, old Sheikh Ali came. ”

“ Slavery is inherent in the Arab; he does as little work as he can himself, and if he is to have no slaves nothing will be done, and he must die. In other parts of South Arabia—Yemen, the Hadhramout, the Mahra country, and Dhofar—slavery is universal; and there is no doubt about it the slaves are treated very well and live happy lives; but here in Oman, under the very eye of India, slavery must be checked. Our gunboat, the Sphinx, goes the round of the coast to prevent this traffic in human flesh, and frequently slaves swim out to the British steamer and obtain their liberty. ”

“ Where are we going? I also am an Arab and a Moslem, and I swear by my Koran and my religion, that we will give you forty dollars, and spend two days in Ghail Babwazir, during which you will have your eleven dollars a day; and we will engage you on to Sheher, and give you good bakshish, and a good character to the sultan and two nice turbans.'
We gasped in amazement at this.
'Oh!' said Saleh, 'I only read them something from the preface of the Koran! We are not bound at all. If I had to swear falsely on the Koran, I should have to be given a great many guineas! ”

“ The view from the hills above—about 2,500 feet—is splendid, all the Yafei mountains and the Goddam range ending at Haide Naab, and giving place to the higher mountains of Rekab and Ghiuda. We descended, but not much, into the lovely Wadi Hadda, full of trees smothered with a kind of vine with thick glossy indiarubber-like leaves; then we went on straight up Akaba Hadda to the huge plain of Mis'hal, full of villages, but ill-supplied with water. There are only some very bad wells for the cattle, and they have to fetch drinking-water from afar, from Ghenab and Lammas. ”

“ We were accompanied by a few soldiers, who it turned out did not know the way, and having ridden for an hour and a half up a narrow gorge with wild figs, wild date, and fan palms growing around us, and really magnificent cliffs 700 to 800 feet high on either side of us, reddish in colour and with fossils in the limestone strata, a truly fearful and awe-inspiring place, we suddenly came to an abrupt termination of our valley, having wormed ourselves along, chiefly on foot, and found that unless Sindbad's roc came to our assistance we could not possibly get out of it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Monday's market is filled with quaint countryfolk, bringing in baskets of fruit and wearing the upper garment of red cotton and the large white girdle and turban.
At El Matra live most of the richest merchants, and it is the point from which all the caravan roads into the interior start; it, too, has a Portuguese castle, and presents a much more alluring frontage than Maskat. ”

“ In time of war the Fadhli sultan comes and occupies one of these dars. We met sheikhs walking with little battle-axes on long poles—weapons in war, and in peace used for chopping wood, at all times emblems of their rank. The plain at length broke away, and we got into the narrow, and not very deep, wooded Wadi el Mimin. It has very precipitous sides of basalt, brown in colour, and making a very untidy attempt at being columnar. Bir Lammas is a great, and I must add, very dirty, halting-place for caravans going to Shukra, on the Tarik el Arkob, to El Kaur and the Wadi Hadhramout. ”

“ The gardens are all cultivated, with irrigation, and look surprisingly green and delicious in contrast with the barren, arid rocks which surround them; the wells are dug deep in the centre of the valley, in the bed of what elsewhere would be a river, and are worked by a running slope and bullocks who draw up and down skin buckets, which, like those in Bahrein, empty themselves automatically into tanks connected with the channels which convey the water to the gardens. ”

“ After walking for a mile or two up this valley all traces of life and cultivation cease, and amidst the volcanic rocks and boulders hardly a trace of vegetable life is to be seen. It is a veritable valley of desolation, and there are many such in waterless Arabia.
By ascending paths to the right or to the left of the valley, the pedestrian may reach some exquisite points of view; all the little cols or passes through which these paths lead are protected at the summit by walls and forts—not strong enough, however, as recent events have shown, to keep off the incursions of the Bedouin. ”

“ The slave population of Shibahm is considerable; many slaves have houses there, and wives and families of their own. The sultan's soldiers are nearly all slaves or of slave origin, and one of them, Muoffok, whose grandfather was a Swahili slave, and who had been one of our escort from Makalla, took us to his house, where his wife, seated unveiled in her coffee corner, dispensed refreshments to quite a large party there assembled, whilst Muoffok discoursed sweet music to us on a mandoline, and a flute made out of the two bones of an eagle placed side by side. ”

“ The natives hunt them with dogs of a breed said to be peculiar to these parts.
Our camp in Wadi Ambaya was a delicious spot, amid fantastic boulders and rich vegetation. On climbing up the gorge beyond us we came across a stream with running water, forming deep green pools among the rocks, and to us, after the arid deserts we had passed through, this spot was perfectly ideal; and the people, too, who dwell up in the higher ground, look infinitely healthier—lithe, active men, who leap like goats from rock to rock, each with a sword and shield. ”

“ He had filled his house, to which he took us, with all sorts of baubles—gilt looking-glasses hanging on the walls; coloured glass balls in rows and rows up to the [35] ceiling, each on a little looking-glass; lovely pillows and carpets, Zanzibar date baskets, Bombay inlaid chests, El Hasa coffee-pots, and a Russian tea-urn—a truly marvellous conglomeration of things, which produced on us a wonderful sense of pleasure and repose after the bareness of our host's abode. ”

“ The old weapons of the Bedouin Arabs are still in use in [6] Bahrein: the long lance which is put up before the tent of the chief when he goes about, the shield of camel-skin decorated with gold paint and brass knobs, the coat of mail, and other objects of warfare used in an age long gone by. Every other stall has dates to sell in thick masses, the chief food of the islanders. Then you may see locusts pressed and pickled in barrels; the poorer inhabitants are very fond of this diet, and have converted the curse of the cultivator into a favourite delicacy. ”

“ The town is governed by a wali chosen by the imam, and in the bazaars may be seen, in hopeless confusion, Banyans from India, Omani, Bedouin, Persians and Jews. These nationalities have each their separate wards for living in, walled off to keep them from perpetual brawls, and they only meet one another in the bazaars, where the eye of the bazaar-master is upon them, ready to inflict condign punishment on disturbers of the peace, in which cases the innocent more frequently suffer than the guilty. ”

“ All the baggage was carried by men, up crag after crag, and sometimes there was no sign of a path. I never could have imagined it possible for camels to ascend the roof-like slope of rock up which they had to clamber for the last 50 yards, and indeed, one poor animal did fall, and injured itself so that it had to be unloaded and taken back, whereupon those Bedouin who did not own it heartlessly regretted that it had not been killed, as they would have liked some of its flesh for supper. ”

“ Little did we dream when we left Mohammed Gol with our rather extensive caravan that behind that gigantic mountain, which though it only reaches an elevation of 7,500 feet, looks considerably higher from the sea as it rises almost directly out of the level plain, we were to find an ancient Egyptian gold-mine, the ruins in connection with which would offer us the first tangible comparison to the ruins which had exercised our minds so much in the gold-fields of South Africa. ”

“ The journey was delightful, nearly all the way by the edge of the sea, past miles and miles of little mounds thrown up by the crabs in making their holes: daily they make them, and they are daily washed away by the tide. They live in holes higher up, but these are refuges for the day while they are scavenging in the sea. They were nearly under the feet of the horses. Near Sheher we passed the mouth of the Arfa river, where there is water, and near it are horribly smelling tanks where they make fish oil. ”

“ There are many tiny villages dotted about here and there, recognisable only by their nest of palm trees and their strips of verdure. In the dim distance, to our left, arose the mountains of Arabia; beyond, the flat coast-line of El Hasa, encircling that wild, mysterious land of Nejd, where the Wahabi dwell—a land forbidden to the infidel globe-trotter. ”

“ On the surrounding desert a small gazelle is abundant. One day we came across a cavalcade of Bahreini sportsmen, who looked exceedingly picturesque in their flowing robes and floating red kaffiehs, and riding gaily caparisoned horses, with crimson trappings and gold tassels. Each had on his arm a hooded falcon and by his side a Persian greyhound. When the gazelle is sighted the falcon is let loose; it skims rapidly along the ground, attacks the head of the animal, and so confuses it that it falls an easy prey to the hounds in pursuit. ”

“ In the morning we packed, and the baggage was taken out to be tied in bundles, when Talib demanded the eleven dollars camel-hire for the day before. In vain was he told that all was packed, and he should have them at the next stage. No! he would not go away without his money; so at great inconvenience we had to pay on the nail.
We had not gone an hour before we stopped, unloaded, and changed our camels for Hamoumi camels. 'Now all is peace,' said Talib-bin-Abdullah, and in the same breath asked for two dollars for two extra camels, that we had had before we reached Sa'ah. ”

“ A long day's ride in this hot country, supposed to be almost, if not quite, within the Dervish sphere of influence, was not lightly to be undertaken, more especially as he had been on so many fruitless errands in search of ruins at suggestions of the Bedouin, and returned disgusted, and when he mounted his camel next morning, without any hope of finding anything, and sure of a fatiguing day, had a reasonable excuse offered itself, he would probably not have gone. ”