THROUGH WADI KASR

When we reached the foot of the hill on which Hagarein stands we dismounted; there was tremendous work to get out the sword of the oldest soldier; he had used it so much as a walking-stick that it was firmly fixed in the scabbard. The scabbards are generally covered with white calico. A very steep, winding, slippery road led us to the gate, where soldiers received us and conducted us to a courtyard, letting off guns the while. There stood the Sultan Abdul M’Barrek Hamout al Kaiti, a very fat, evil-looking man, pitted by smallpox. After shaking hands he led us down the tortuous streets to his palace, and then took us up a narrow mud staircase, so dark that we did not know whether to turn to the right or left; we sometimes went one way and sometimes the other. At length we reached a small room with some goat-hair carpets and we and the sultan, the soldiers (his and ours), the Bedouin and my groom, M’barrek, all seated ourselves round the wall, and after a long time a dirty glass of water was handed round as our only entertainment. As we had had nothing to eat since sunrise, and it was about two o’clock, we did not feel cheerful when the sultan abruptly rose and said he must pray. Praying and sleeping are always the excuses when they want to get rid of guests or say ‘not at home,’ and indeed the sleeping excuse prevails in Greece also.

Some time after, our four chairs were brought, so we sat till near four o’clock homeless, and getting hungrier and hungrier, when the sultan reappeared, telling my husband all our things were locked up in a courtyard and giving him a great wooden key. We hastened to our home, up a long dark stair, past many floors, all used as stalls and stables, only the two top floors being devoted to human habitation. Each floor consisted of one fair-sized room and one very tiny den, a kitchen. The whole Indian party had the lower room, and three of our soldiers the den. I cannot think how they could all lie down at once, and they had to cook there besides. Above that, we had the best room, the botanist and naturalist the den, and Matthaios made his abode on the roof, where he cooked. The Bedouin, having unloaded the camels in the courtyard across the street, refused to help us, and, as no one else could be got, my husband and all his merry men had to carry up the baggage, while I wrestled with the beds and other furniture in our earthy room. The instant the baggage was up the Bedouin clamoured for payment, and it was trying work opening the various packages where the bags of money were scattered, and to begin quarrelling when we were so weary and hungry. We had been told that our journey to Hagarein would take twenty days, whereas it only took thirteen, and that we must take two camels for water, which had proved unnecessary; besides the camels had been much loaded with fish and other goods belonging to the Bedouin. My husband said he would pay for the twenty days and they would thus have thirty dollars as bakshish. But, in the end, the soldiers from Makalla said we must pay bakshish: it would be an insult to their sultan if we did not and they would go no further with us. The local sultan also insisting, fourteen more dollars had to be produced. Our own soldiers soon came shouting and saying they must have half a rupee a day for food, which my husband thought it wise to give, though the wazir at Makalla had said he was to give nothing.

They were hardly gone when the sultan came back personally conducting two kids and saying we need think of no further expense; we were his guests and were to ask for what we wished. All my husband asked for was daily milk. We got some that day, but never again. My groom, M’barrek, then came, saying he must have food money; that being settled, he returned saying the sultan said he must have half a rupee a day for my horse, which became very thin on the starvation he got.

All this time we could get no water, so not till dark could Matthaios furnish us with tea, cold meat, bread, and honey.

We were fortunate in having plenty of bread. We had six big sacks of large cakes of plain bread dried hard, and of this we had learnt the value by experience. We kept it sheltered, if there was any fear of rain, as in Abyssinia, for instance, and before a meal soaked it in water, wrapped it in a napkin a few minutes, and then dried it up to the consistency of fresh bread. We were often obliged to give it to the horses, for the difficulty as to forage makes them unfit to travel in such barren places.

We also took charcoal and found that, with it and the bread, we had our meals long before the Indian party, who had a weary search for fuel before they could even begin with ‘pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man.’ The making of chupatties also causes delay in starting. As to the honey it is most plentiful and tastes like orange flowers, but really it is the date-flower which imparts this flavour. It is much more glutinous than ours. It is packed, for exportation and to bring as tribute, in large round tin boxes, stopped up round the edges with mud. It is used in paying both taxes and tribute.

We were quite worn out with this day. The sultan received a present next morning of silk for a robe, a turban, some handkerchiefs, two watches, some knives, scissors, needle-cases, and other things, but he afterwards sent Saleh to say he did not like his present at all and wanted dollars. He got ten rupees and was satisfied.

We again visited him with our servants and soldiers and were given tea while we talked over the future, and all seemed fair. Later the sultan came to visit us and talk about the escort. He said we must take five soldiers, bargained for their wages, food, and bakshish, and obtained the money. My husband inquired about some ruins near Meshed, three hours by camel from Hagarein, and said that if the sultan would arrange that we should dig safely, he should have forty dollars, and he settled to go with my husband next day to see the place. Accordingly next day the sultan came with eight soldiers, singing and dancing all the way, and some men of the Nahad tribe as siyara, as we were then in their land.

The sultan showed us two letters in which it was said that we were to have been attacked between Sief and Kaidoun, and we remembered having seen a man on a camel apparently watching for us, but instead of coming forward he galloped away; and thus it appears we got past the place from which they meant to set upon us, before the attacking party could arrive.

During the days we were at Hagarein several weddings were celebrated. To form a suitable place for conviviality they cover over a yard with mats, just as the Abyssinians do, and the women, to show their hilarity on the occasion, utter the same gurgling noises as the Abyssinian women do on a like occasion, and which in Abyssinia is called ululta. From our roof we watched the bridegroom’s nocturnal procession to his bride’s house, accompanied by his friends bearing torches, and singing and speechifying to their hearts’ content.

On our return from the ruins near Meshed, Taisir (our soldier) came to us and was very indignant about the price the sultan charged for his soldiers. He was given ten rupees to attach himself to us, as an earnest of the good bakshish he would get at the coast, as he said all the other soldiers would go back from Shibahm, and really in that case I think he would have been glad of our escort.

Then Saleh, who had 100 rupees a month and ate with everyone, came to demand half a rupee a day for food; this was granted, as we thought it could come off his bakshish, and he soon appeared to make the same request for Mahmoud, the naturalist. Matthaios was furious, as Mahmoud ate partly with him, and no one was angrier with him than Saleh. It was settled that we should give him tea, bread, and four annas, and they all went off bawling. Afterwards we heard Saleh had said, ’Mr. Bent is giving so much money to the sultan, why should we not have some?’

We really thought at first that we should be able to encamp at Meshed and dig, for there was a seyyid who had been in Hyderabad and was very civil to us, but this happiness only lasted one hour. The sultan said it would really not be safe unless we lived in Hagarein, so we had to give it up as it was an impossibility to dig in the heat of the day, with six hours’ journey to fatigue us; besides we must have paid many soldiers and we were told no one would dig for us. So much was said about the dangers of the onward road that Saleh was sent with the letters for Shibahm and Sheher and told to hold them tight, and say that if we could not deliver these in person we should return to the wali of Aden and say that the sultan of Hagarein would not let us go on. This frightened him, so he made a very dear bargain for fifteen camels, and we were to leave next day.

We were glad enough to depart from Hagarein, which is so picturesque that it really might be an old, mediaeval, fortified town on the Rhine, built entirely of mud and with no water in its river. All the houses are enormously high, and have a kitchen and oven on each floor. The bricks of which they are built are about one foot square and with straw in them. They have shooting holes from every room and machicolations over the outer doors and along the battlements, and what makes the houses seem to contain even more stories than they do, is that each floor has two ranges of windows, one on the ground so that you can only see out if you sit on the floor, and another too high to see out of at all; below every lower window projects a long wooden spout. The narrow lanes are mere drains, and the whole place a hotbed of disease; the people looked very unhealthy: when cholera comes they die like flies. As a wind up to this last evening Mahmoud came into our room and soon began to say his prayers; we could not make out why, but it turned out he had no light in his room.

Altogether we had not a reposeful time in Hagarein. We were told early next day that fourteen men of the Nahad tribe had come as our siyara, though we had been told two would be sufficient; so we had to agree to take four. Then we were asked to pay those who had come unbidden. The sultan came himself about it, and his children came to beg for annas. At last the sultan, who had often said he felt as if he were our brother, obtained twelve rupees which he asked for to pay his expenses for the kids and honey, and said my horse had eaten the worth of twice as much money as he had asked before.

When we finally got off we found the old rascal had only sent half the Nahadi and had only sent two soldiers, and so had really made forty dollars out of us over that one item. The Nahad men had ten dollars each. They are not under the sultan of Makalla, but independent. The Nahad tribe occupy about ten miles of the valley through which we passed, and the toll-money we paid to this tribe for the privilege of passing by was the most exorbitant demanded from us on our journey. When once you have paid the toll-money (siyar), and have with you the escort (siyara) of the tribe in whose territory you are, you are practically safe wherever you may travel in Arabia, but this did not prevent us from being grossly insulted as we passed by certain Nahad villages. Kaidoun, where dwells the very holy man so celebrated all the country round for his miracles and good works, is the chief centre of this tribe. We had purposely avoided passing too near this town, and afterwards learnt that it was owing to the influence of this very holy seyyid that our reception was so bad amongst the Nahad tribe.

All about Hagarein are many traces of the olden days when the frankincense trade flourished, and when the town of Doan, which name is still retained in the Wadi Doan, was a great emporium for this trade. Acres and acres of ruins, dating from the centuries immediately before our era, lie stretched along the valley here, just showing their heads above the weight of superincumbent sand which has invaded and overwhelmed the past glories of this district. The ruins of certain lofty square buildings stand upon hillocks at isolated intervals; from these we got several inscriptions, which prove that they were the high ‘platforms’ alluded to on so many Himyaritic inscribed stones as raised in honour of their dead. As for the town around them, it has been entirely engulfed in sand; the then dry bed of a torrent runs through the centre, and from this fact we can ascertain, from the walls of sand on either side of the stream, that the town itself has been buried some 30 feet or 40 feet by this sand. It is now called Raidoun. The ground lies strewn with fragments of Himyaritic inscriptions, pottery, and other indications of a rich harvest for the excavator, but the hostility of the Nahad tribe prevented us from paying these ruins more than a cursory visit, and even to secure this we had to pay the sheikh of the place nineteen dollars, and his greeting was ominous as he angrily muttered, ’Salaam to all who believe Mohammed is the true prophet.’

We were warned ‘that our eyes should never be let to see Meshed again;’ we might camp before we got there, or after, as we wished, so were led by a roundabout way to Adab, and saw no more of the leprous seyyid who told such wondrous tales about the English king who once lived in Hagarein, and how the English, Turks, and Arabs were all descended from King Sam. Also he told the Addite fable of how the giants and rich men tried to make a paradise of their own, the beautiful garden of Irem, and defied God, and so destruction came upon the tribe of Ad, the remnant of whom survive at Aden on Jebel Shemshan, in the form of monkeys. This is the Mohammedan legend of the end of the Sabaean Empire.

We were much amused with what Imam Sharif said to this seyyid. Imam Sharif is himself a seyyid or sherif, a descendant of Mohammed, his family having come from Medina, so he was always much respected. He said to him: ’You think these English are very bad people, but the Koran says that all people are like their rulers; now we have no spots or diseases on our bodies, but are all clean and sound, which shows plainly that our ruler and the rest of us must be the same. Now you, my brother, must be under the displeasure of God, for I see that you are covered with leprosy.’ This was not a kind or civil speech, I fear, but not a ruder one than those addressed to us. This leprosy shows itself by an appearance as if patches of white skin were neatly set into the dark skin.

At Adab they would not allow us to dip our vessels in their well, nor take our repast under the shadow of their mosque: even the women of this village ventured to insult us, peeping into our tent at night, and tumbling over the jugs in a manner most aggravating to the weary occupants. The soldiers had abandoned us and gone to sleep in the village.

A dreary waste of sand led past Kerren to Badorah. I arrived first with Imam Sharif, a servant, and a soldier. We dismounted, as there was some surveying to be done. The people were quite friendly, we thought, though they crowded round me shouting to see the ‘woman.’ I went to some women grouped at a little distance, and we had no trouble as long as we were there. We had left before the camels came and heard that the rest of the party had been very badly received, stones were thrown, and shouts raised of ’Pigs! Infidels! Dogs! Come down from your camels and we will cut your throats.’ We attributed this to Saleh Hassan, for he made enemies for us wherever we went. At this village they were busy making indigo dye in large jars like those of the forty thieves. We were soon out of the Nahad country.

Our troubles on the score of rudeness were happily terminated at Haura, where a huge castle, belonging to the Al Kaiti family, dominates a humble village, surrounded by palm groves. Without photographs to bear out my statement, I should hardly dare to describe the magnificence of these castles in the Hadhramout. That at Haura is seven stories high, and covers fully an acre of ground beneath the beetling cliff, with battlements, towers, and machicolations bearing a striking likeness to Holyrood; but Holyrood is built of stone, and Haura, save for the first story, is built of sun-dried bricks, and if Haura stood where Holyrood does, or in a rainy climate, it would long ago have crumbled away.

Haura is supposed to be the site of an ancient Himyaritic town. We were told that the sultan of Hagarein is not entirely under Makalla, but that he of Haura is.

The castle of the sultan is nice and clean inside, and it was pleasant, after some very reviving cups of coffee and ginger, and some very public conversation, to find our canvas homes all erected on a hard field a pleasant change from our late dusty places. Mahmoud obtained a fox, which was his first mammal, saving a bushy-tailed rat. We were sent a lamb and a box of honey, and soon after the governor arrived to request a present. He asked thirty rupees but got twenty, and the new soldiers in place of the Nahadi men were to have five rupees on arrival at Koton. We were now nearing the palace of Sultan Salah-bin-Mohammad al Kaiti of Shibahm, the most powerful monarch in the Hadhramout, who has spent twelve years of his life in India, and whose reception of us was going to be magnificent, our escort told us.

As we were leaving Haura, just standing about waiting to mount, I felt something hard in one finger of my glove which I was putting on. I thought it was a dry leaf and hooked it down with my nail and shook it into my hand. Imagine my terror on lifting my glove at seeing a scorpion wriggling there. I dropped it quickly, shouting for Mahmoud and the collecting-bottle, and then caught it in a handkerchief. This was the way that Buthia Bentii introduced himself to the scientific world, for he was of a new species. It turned out that the ‘oldest soldier’ was father to the sultan of Haura. He went no farther with us.

The next day, three miles after leaving Haura, we quitted the Wadi Kasr and at last, at the village of Alimani, entered the main valley of the Hadhramout. It is here very broad, being at least eight miles from cliff to cliff, and receives collateral valleys from all sides, forming, as it were, a great basin. Hitherto our way had been generally northward, from Makalla to Tokhum, north-east, and then north-west; now we turned westward down the great valley, though still with a slight northward tendency.

We passed Ghanima, Ajlania on a rock to the right, and Henan and the Wadi Menwab behind it on our left. Wellsted, in his list of the Hadhramout towns, mentions Henan as Ainan, and as a very ancient town, on the hill near which are inscriptions and rude sculptures.

For seven hours we travelled along the valley, which from its width was like a plain till we were within a mile of the castle of Al Koton, where the sultan of Shibahm resides. Thus far all was desert and sand, but suddenly the valley narrows, and a long vista of cultivation was spread before us. Here miles of the valley are covered with palm groves. Bright green patches of lucerne called kadhlb, almost dazzling to look upon after the arid waste, and numerous other kinds of grain are raised by irrigation, for the Hadhramout has beneath its expanse of sand a river running, the waters of which are obtained by digging deep wells. Skin buckets are let down by ropes and drawn up by cattle by means of a steep slope, and then the water is distributed for cultivation through narrow channels; it is at best a fierce struggle with nature to produce these crops, for the rainfall can never be depended upon. We had intended to push on to Al Koton, but Sultan Salah sent a messenger to beg us not to arrive till the following morning, that his preparations to receive us might be suitable to our dignity, as the first English travellers to visit his domains. So we encamped just on the edge of the cultivation, about a mile off, at Ferhud, where under the shade of palm-trees there is a beautiful well of brackish water, with four oxen, two at each side to draw up the water.

Outside the cultivation in its arid waste of sand the Hadhramout produces but little; now and again we came across groups of the camelthorn, tall trees somewhat resembling the holm oak. It is in Arabic a most complicated tree. Its fruit, like a small crab apple, is called b’dom, very refreshing, and making an excellent preserve; its leaves, which they powder and use as soap, are called ghasl, meaning ‘washing’; whereas the tree itself is called ailb, and is dearly loved by the camels, who stretch their long necks to feed off its branches.

We wondered what kind of reception we should have, for people’s ideas on this point vary greatly. In order not to offend the sultan’s prejudices too much, we determined to dissemble, and I decided not to wear my little camera, and Imam Sharif packed the plane-table out of sight. We settled that he should have the medicine chest in his charge and be the doctor of the party, and addressed him as Hakim. Even Saleh feared so much what the future might hold in store, that he removed his drawers and shoes, and advised Imam Sharif to do the same, as Mohammed had never worn such things. Imam Sharif refused to take these precautions, saying that if Mohammed had been born in Cashmere he would have assuredly worn both drawers and shoes. Imam Sharif wore a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers and a turban when on the march, but in camp he wore Indian clothes. However, we were soon visited by the sultan’s two wazirs on spirited Arab steeds: magnificent individuals with plaided turbans, long lances, and many gold mohurs fixed on their dagger handles, all of which argued well for our reception on the morrow by the sultan of Shibahm.

We were a good deal stared at, but not disagreeably, for all the soldiers were on their best behaviour. At Khaila and Sief we had to be tied up, airless, in our tents, as if we left them open a minute when the crowd, tired of seeing nothing, had dispersed, and one person saw an opening, the whole multitude surged round again, pressing in, shouting and smelling so bad that we regretted our folly in having tried to get a little light and air. We saw among others a boy who had a wound in his arm, and therefore had his nostrils plugged up; bad smells are said not to be so injurious as good ones. Some women came and asked to see me, so I took my chair and sat surrounded by them. They begged to see my hands, so I took off my gloves and let them lift my hands about from one sticky hand to another. They looked wonderingly at them and said ‘Meskin’ so often and so pityingly that I am sure they thought I had leprosy all over. Then they wished to see my head, and having taken off my hat, my hair had to be taken down. They examined my shoes, turned up my gaiters, stuck their fingers down my collar, and wished to undress me, so I rose and said very civilly, ‘Peace to you, oh women, I am going to sleep now,’ and retired.

Arab girls before they enter the harem and take the veil are a curious sight to behold. Their bodies and faces are dyed a bright yellow with turmeric; on this ground they paint black lines with antimony, over their eyes; the fashionable colour for the nose is red; green spots adorn the cheek, and the general aspect is grotesque beyond description.

We stayed in bed really late next morning, till the sun rose, and then prepared ourselves to be fetched.

The two young wazirs, Salim-bin-Ali and Salim-bin-Abdullah, cousins, came again at 7.30 with two extra horses, which were ridden by my husband and Saleh, as Imam Sharif stuck to the donkey which we named Mahsoud (Happy).