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Southern Arabia

<h3>CHAPTER XIII</h3> <h4>FAREWELL TO THE SULTAN OF SHIBAHM</h4> Our departure from Al Koton on February 12 was almost as serious an affair as our start from Makalla. Sultan Salàh, with the instincts of true hospitality, not only refused to receive remuneration for our entertainment, but loaded us with presents of food for the way and fodder for our animals, intimating that 'bakshish' to some of his dependents would not be altogether unacceptable. With the object of receiving rewards for their services, the grand viziers, the mounshi (a scribe), the hall-porter, the water-carriers, the slaves who had waited on us, were all brought in a bare-faced manner to our room; as we descended the stairs, expectant menials lined the passages; we had to remember the grooms, the soldiers, and the gardeners. Never again will the irksome custom of tipping be half so appalling as when we left the palace of Sultan Salàh. The sultan wished to fire off seven guns at our departure, but this we declined. He came about a mile with us, and then went to Shibahm, to send an answer to the letter from the Tamimi, saying, 'On their eyes they would meet us at Sa'ah.' He also determined to stay away a few days, as he should find his house very dull when we were gone. It had been such a great break in the monotony of his life having us, and he had so much enjoyed the society of Imam Sharif that he was always promising him houses, wells, lands,[163] slaves, and wives if he would only return and settle down in the Wadi Hadhramout. An old and confidential relation of his was to accompany us all the way, and the Wazir Salim-bin-Ali came as far as our first camp, two hours off, in the Wadi Hadira. Here we could plainly see the formation of these valleys, abrupt at the end and like a circus, not made by streams descending, but like creeks and bays of a gigantic fiord. There is not much cultivation in the little valley. This is the road to Sheher. There are two approaches to the akaba, one by the Wadi Hadira and one by the Wadi bin Ali, which is the way to Sheher. We had to enter the Wadi bin Ali sideways by climbing over the akaba from Wadi Hadira, owing to the opposition of the Kattiri, who hold the mouth of Wadi bin Ali. The wazir departed in the morning with a Martini-Henry rifle which my husband sent to the sultan. This gave rise to the report which we heard afterwards 'that we were distributing arms, of which we had five hundred camel-loads.' That day we had a very tiresome adventure. Starting off early before our caravan with several Jabberi, we intended to ascend to the plateau before the heat of midday came on. 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. Consequently we were regretfully obliged retrace our steps, having spent three hours and much toil, but glad of having[164] had an opportunity of following one of these valleys to its bitter end. It appeared that our supposed guides had never been there in their lives. We scrambled down this wadi, and into the wadi to our right; the way truly was difficult, the valley narrowing and nearly blocked up by perfectly perpendicular cliffs. Our caravan and servants were anxiously awaiting us at a curious spot called Mikadèh, about a quarter of the way up the cliff, where the road which we had missed goes through a natural tunnel about twenty yards long, from lovely pools of rain-water preserved in its recesses, with which we eagerly refreshed ourselves. The rest of the ascent to the plateau was marvellously steep. The camels had to be unloaded, and two fell down. 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. Just at the end everything had to be unloaded again, and the camels literally dragged up to the top, while we sat dangling our legs over the cliff. Such yelling and shrieking I never heard among the Bedouin, our soldiers and our servants all calling each other rascals, and no one doing more than he could help; and inasmuch as we had about five Salehs, four Umbarreks, and other duplicated names amongst our men, the shouts of 'So-and-so, son of so-and-so,' made us fully realise the clumsiness of Arab nomenclature. When we clambered up on to the akaba it looked dreary and lifeless, silent and lonely and stony, but it soon became lively enough, for we were a large kafila, about fifty people[165] and twenty-four camels. We had by very good fortune a great deal of cloud that day, but also some tremendous sun. We sat eagerly counting the camels as they came into view, and had great anxiety about eight of them, and were obliged to send two soldiers back to search for them. We meant to proceed farther as water was two hours on, and some of the first-arrived camels were reloaded; but, after all, we felt we must wait for those eight camels, and send back to Mikadèh for water. We could not encamp very comfortably, for the camel which had fallen and hurt his chest had our bedding and night-clothes and Imam Sharif's tent-poles, and besides this our kitchen-box was missing and we had had no luncheon. So another camel was sent down to fetch those necessaries. It was dreadfully windy, much dust blowing, and so stony that we could only have a peg in each corner of our tents. Rain was threatening, so the baggage was all stacked under the outer fly of our tent. The soldiers behaved most helpfully and the brave and bold Jabberi had not yet once mentioned bakshish in our hearing and were most polite. They were better-looking men than others we had seen, all tall, slight, wiry, and very muscular, a higher type than the Khailiki and much more dressed. The three principal ones wore turbans, red and yellow. They said they were so very sorry for losing the way that 'none of them felt quite well when they thought of our inconvenience.' I could not sleep that night, so I got up and put on my dressing-gown and sat near the door with my head out, and so was fortunately ready to slip out when I heard a trailing picket, and found Zubda rushing up and down, looking for water I suppose. We were so short of it that we had washed in a very little without soap, and one horse had drunk that, and the other the water the chickens were washed in. I caught him, but as I could not possibly drive[166] in the picket, I tied him to a packing case, and then had to collect his food, which was blown all over the place, and take it there for him. On February 14, in consequence of the want of water, great was the hurry to start; we were off about half-past six, and travelled till one o'clock without stopping or getting water; the horses only had half a pint each, that we had washed in. We should not have been so extravagant as to wash that much if we had not wanted to let the horses drink. The plateau here offered features that were new to us. It is as it were in two stories. From the bottom of a wadi you reach first a slope or talus of loose stones, then a cliff, then another slope of loose stones and a cliff, and next comes the main akaba, and on this again a great deal more of the upper story is left than we had hitherto seen. The upper part is from 80 to 100 feet above the lower; sometimes it is in the form of an isolated flat-topped hill, larger or smaller, and sometimes like a kind of centipede, and in the gullies between the legs of these centipedes are to be found whatever remain of frankincense trees, for vegetation is very sparse on the akaba. Showered about everywhere are small bits of black basalt. We had several ups and downs, and passed wadis running in close to us before we began to descend by what must have been a fearful road for the camels, down the two precipices and the two flights of rolling stones, into the Wadi bin Ali. The way was far better than that of the day before; the very Jabberi never saw such a road as that, they said. When we started descending we saw the village of Bazahel below us—the Jabberi capital. It has a picturesque modern fort, built on old Himyaritic foundations. When we reached it the soldiers fired guns, and we were very kindly received by the inhabitants, who led us to a house[167] they had prepared for us. We excused ourselves from inhabiting it, saying it was better not to have our baggage carried up, but we would gladly rest in it. The house seemed very clean—it was of mud of course; the walls of it and the stairs had all been scraped into furrows and curves, and also the dados of the staircase and room were decorated with a kind of basket pattern, and the floors were also in a raised pattern. Carpets were spread, water brought, and with great kindness they locked us in that we might not be disturbed. Only our own party were in this room, the soldiers in another. Matthaios had joined himself to the vanguard to see what happened to us, so my husband shared his horse with him; he had been terrified the day before at the fear that we had been carried off. The Indian servants and the botanist joined us just as coffee with ginger and other spices were brought. Our host had long wrestling with the lock before he could open the door, and after this we were desired to bolt it on the inside. We had a pleasant camp, with palm-trees to shade each cooking fire, no starers being allowed. A woman here joined our kafila for protection for a few stages. Even I never saw her face: she always wore her mask and her hat, and looked a most ungainly object. I dare say I looked the same to her. The sultan of Shibahm had sent a man on horseback up that dreadful wadi to our last camp to thank us for the gun, and to warn us by all means to keep on the highlands for fear of the hostile Kattiri. At Bazahel, Abdullah Mareh-bin-Talib-bin-Said, chief of the Jabberi, welcomed us to his own house later in the day, a most unwonted piece of hospitality. He is much stained with indigo, a very elastic and naked sovereign, who bends his fingers back in a way horrible to behold when he wishes to emphasise his remarks, as he did when he spoke of the Kattiri and his wars with them, and his constantly losing[168] men in raids, as is also the case in his fights with the Hamoumi. As we sat around drinking his coffee, he boasted of his direct descent from Jabber of Hiyal, the friend and councillor of Mohammed, and told us that his family pedigree was safely kept at Terim, with those of all the surrounding tribes of Arabs. Somehow or other we did not care for the Jabberi at all afterwards, and for the rest of our journey to the coast our quarrels with Talib, the son of Abdullah, and the difficulties he would throw in our way, were daily sources of annoyance to us. We left Bazahel at half-past six next morning with the intention of climbing up to the tableland again. The Wadi bin Ali is not very wide and the ground is bare, though there are many villages scattered about. At rather a large one, where the wadi forks, and which we reached at eight o'clock, we were to begin our ascent. To our dismay the camels were made to sit down and the camel-men said we must stay there the night, as there was no water up above. We declared we knew there was, and that we would go on; they must fill the twenty water-skins which we always carried. Some men were inclined to go on, but were overruled by the majority. After half an hour's contention we rode away with a good many people, leaving a few soldiers with the baggage, to show our determination to proceed, we being told that the others would be afraid to stay behind. We sat down once or twice in full view of the village, to survey the camels and wonder if they were coming, and much perplexed were we. We had expected to change camels the following day, and this was the last day with those men, who by delaying us wished to spin out another day's journey at twenty-five rupees. Those soldiers who were with us recommended us to push on round a corner, where the wadi ran in, and conceal ourselves behind rocks, which there stood up between the path and the village, that the camel-men might not[169] think there was any hesitation on our part; so men, and beasts, and I were carefully hidden, and one who peeped without his turban, reported that some camels were rising, and finally, eight starting. When we reached the tableland we had to go a long way round to avoid a good many little wadis which were all quite steep, before we reached the water. At the edge of the tableland are some little shelters used by hunters to shoot gazelle, which come down the gullies that to us appeared, inaccessible. Near the water the soldiers made us climb down to the first story of a small wadi, where we sheltered under a shelf of rock which overhangs the whole end of it. When I was cool, I clambered up and found a hollow or depression above our heads, with a few tufts of grass and some shrubs, so I took down some bits of shrubs as 'samples on appro' to the horses, and as they did approve, they were sent up to graze. We lay on our saddle-cloths till three, pretty hungry, when the eight camels came, and a good long time after the others arrived also the relation of the sultan Salàh joined us on a riding camel: an old man, Salem-bin-Mohammad by name. He said the camels had been changed, and the money paid in advance for this day, taken from those men. We had a cold, windy night at this place, Farash. No one had tents but our own party; even the sultan and other gentry lie in the open on journeys. Our horses were given a supper of dates, which are considered very strengthening, and which they much enjoyed. The tribe of Al Jabber possess the parallel Wadis Adim and Bin Ali, and the road between them across the akaba is much traversed and apparently an ancient one. We went across on the level, eight miles, and then descended by a narrow valley leading into the Wadi Adim. The way was made longer by its having to wind about to skirt the wadis, which cut into it like a fringe; sometimes we were only half[170] a mile from our former or future track. Once we heard a gun fired, and looking across, we saw a kafila of fifty camels, a much larger one than our own, slipping behind a hill to hide from us, and presently some men climbed up to peep. We—that is to say my husband, Imam Sharif, and I—with the three chief Jabberi, the Relation, and some soldiers and others, all gathered up together and stood at gaze, without returning the gun-fire, which was meant to find out if we had any bad intentions. Our own camels were very near the strange kafila, and that party was terribly frightened. I think the fright was mutual. When we had gone some distance, and were out of sight of the strange caravan, we were amused at seeing the soldiers and the Jabberi, all in line, running on at a double, firing guns, and shouting, 'Hohh! Hohh! Hohh!' My husband asked the Relation what chance we had of being robbed, as this seemed a convenient place, but he comfortingly said, 'We need not be much afraid, for we have the chief of the robbers with us.' This was really true. The place where we were to climb down into the Wadi Adim was tremendously steep. It really seemed very like trying to climb down the sides of a tea-cup, I wondered how we and the camels and horses would ever do it. However we all did, and the valley became first a crack and then a little wider, and the road then was not so very bad in its own wild way. As soon as the valley became a little flat the men wanted to stop and wait for the camels, but we said we would rather be in the village of Ghail Omr, which they said was only just round a near corner. So we went on, but for fully two miles, till the Wadi Adim crossed our path. It was full of palms on the far side, so we went over there, but were made, whether we would or no, to return to the mouth of our little wadi again; they said on account of food for the camels. There was a fearful[171] row when we crossed the valley, to make us go back, there were daggers out and loud shouts that my husband and I were rascals (harami) and Imam Sharif a dog, and Matthaios and the rest of the servants were in great alarm. We were now in much anxiety and perplexity, for we were told the Tamimi had not come, and they were to have been at Ghail Omr before us, to fetch us to Bir Borhut. We ourselves were not at the appointed place, for we were kept pent into the little wadi. We were told that two men had been murdered on the way to Sheher, but we never made out who they were; also that a seyyid and a lot of the Amri tribe had come, so the Relation took my horse and went off to investigate them. Next morning we thought it well to be ready and to look undismayed; the seyyid with the ten Amri joined us, and we all turned into the Wadi Adim to our right and south. The valley is most fruitful and well worth seeing; there are miles of palm woods; it is about 100 feet higher than Wadi bin Ali, the slope is greater and the mountains lower; it is the most frequented caravan route from Sheher to the Hadhramout. We passed plenty of people coming up, and one day we met a caravan of 150 camels from Sheher with Hadhrami merchants returning from India to enjoy the fruits of their rascality, and end their days on the sacred soil of Arabia. There were little tents on the camels for women, and they seemed to us to have very few armed men. The stream Ghail Omr is the first running one we saw since Al Ghail. It comes from the small Wadi Loban and is very considerable. Wadi Adim is quite the gem of the valleys that we explored. There is a ziaret or place of pilgrimage, which attracts many people, to the tomb of a seyyid Omr, called after Omar, one of the four successors to Mohammed. The Jabberi seem, in spite of possessing this[172] rich valley, to be a poor tribe. There is a large population scattered in small homesteads. They have slaves, who live in little huts made of palm branches, with the interstices plastered with mud. Ten more Jabberi joined us, so when we reached Sa'ah in two hours and a half, we were more than eighty people, with twenty-five camels, two horses, and three donkeys. We dismounted in a dense crowd, in a field of dry earth cut up into squares with hard ridges, so our floors were most uncomfortable. Naturally we dared do no damage by having them dug smooth. On our arrival at our camping ground and while we were waiting for our tents to be ready, always a weary, irksome time to the wayworn traveller, I was surrounded by women all masked. They seemed highly astonished at a safety-pin I was taking out, so I gave, or rather offered it, to an old woman near me. She wanted to take it, but several men rushed between us and roared at us both, and prevented my giving it to her. I stood there holding it out and she stretching out her hand, and one or two men then asked me for it for her, so I put it down on a stone and she took it away and seemed pleased, but a man soon brought it back to me on the end of a stick, saying 'they did not know these things and were afraid of them.' There was no news of the Tamimi and many told us they would not come, but we still kept up our vain hopes, as they had promised to come and wait a day or two for us, bringing with them a siyara of the Minhali and of the Hamoumi. However, we were never allowed to get to the trysting-place, as we afterwards thought, because the Jabberi wanted to keep the fleecing of us in their own hands. Not one of our party, with the exception of Imam Sharif, wished to go to Bir Borhut, and they all encouraged each other in discouraging us.[173] About a mile before reaching Sa'ah we saw an old fortress on a spur jutting out of the precipice, with a cut road leading to it, so of course we determined to visit it. We accordingly set out about two o'clock, my husband and I, Saleh on the donkey, some soldiers, some of our siyara of Jabberi, and my camera. But we came to a standstill when first four, then nine, and at last fourteen men were seen on the top of the ruins, pointing guns at us. They said they would not let us advance without paying, and we feared to come to terms as our Jabberi first said they were Amri, and then a tribe of Jabberi with whom they were at war. In this uncertainty we had to turn back and my husband complained to the sheikh of Sa'ah, who said that this blackmailing had been planned by one of our three best Jabberi, Seid-bin-Iselem, who went with us, and that he would send men of his own with us in the morning. In the morning they came, sure enough, and first asked for a dollar 'to buy coffee,' but my husband said 'No; he would give bakshish if he found writing, but if he found no writing he would give nothing, and in any case, nothing till we returned.' As we heard no more of them after they had retired to think over it, we were sure there could be no inscription. Besides we had seen that the corner-stones were the only cut ones; the others were all rough. After dinner we and Imam Sharif had another serious council, finding ourselves in a regular fix. We determined to stay on one more day at Sa'ah to give the Tamimi a chance to join us, for if we were baffled in getting from here to Bir Borhut, we must get to Sheher as quickly as possible and try from there to reach Bir Borhut. We wished to dismiss our camel-men, but they said they would not let us do so, nor allow anyone else to take the loads. They said they would take us for one rupee a day each camel, but we did not know how many days[174] they would take; they had also said that they would stop where we pleased, or go on all day if we liked, but we had had experience which led us to doubt this. They had now been asked to name their stages; kafilas can go in seven or eight days. We determined that our next attempt to go to Bir Borhut should be with fewer camels. It is a great mistake for explorers in dangerous countries to have collectors with them. They are a great drag and an extra anxiety. The preparations they can make are necessarily all made by guesswork, as no one can tell what is to be found in an unknown country. If we had known we should never have carried the huge spade and fork, which were hated all the way by everyone, or the quantities of cases of spirits of wine and receptacles for large animals, and the dozens of gins, snares, and traps of every description for things that we never found. Of course, in the case of our expedition, there are certain plants and reptiles which would not yet have emerged from their primeval obscurity, and it is a great consolation to feel that something was accomplished in that way. For everyone who is added to such an expedition, the leader has one more for whose life and health he feels a responsibility, one more whose little idiosyncrasies must be studied by all the rest, and who may endanger the safety of all by his indiscretions with regard to the natives, and one more who must be made to pack and be ready in time, or willing not to stray away in times of danger. Mere servants do not so much matter, as they are under control, though the fewer of them the better, as they are human beings who must be fed and carried; but those above them, and who, though not entitled to a seat in the council, feel free to make comments, are the hardest to deal with. Before we went to bed that night, Haidar Aboul, the second interpreter, came and swore on the Koran that the[175] Relation had promised the camel-men two rupees each; still we lay down happy in the assurance that we should be at Sheher in seven days, but after a night much disturbed by guns for a wedding, the first news that greeted us was that those camel-men wished to leave us. They were told that they could not do so: they were bound to take us to Sheher. They then said they would not go in seven days—who had arranged such long stages? They were told their sheikh had. Then we agreed to go in eight days, hoping that in the end they, finding they would lose no money, would allow us to gain time. Some hours after the little crooked sheikh sent to say that if those men would not take us in seven days he would get others. The Relation was not of much good to us. There is here no law, order, authority, honour, honesty, or hospitality, and as to the people, I can only describe them as hateful and hating one another. It must be an awful life to live for ever unable to stir without siyara even a few miles. The rude Carinthian Boor cannot have been as bad as these Arabians. After this they came and said we should go in thirteen days. Later the sheikh sent to say he would send twenty soldiers, and make them take us in eight days. This my husband declined, as we knew he had no power, even in his own village. Then the brother of the sheikh came to ask for a present for him, which was refused, and the sheikh said afterwards we could not trust that brother, he was a liar. At last another list of different stages was brought, and they swore by God and upon the Koran that they would take us in seven days. All the time we were in Sa'ah we had to remain in our tent, tightly tied in, for if we did not we were quite deprived of air by the crowd, which became thicker and thicker, driving the foremost nearly into the tent headlong. I[176] sewed strings to the extreme edges of our doors, which lapped half a yard, and this extension of size was very welcome. We afterwards found these strings useful and pleasant, but we always called them the 'Jabberi strings' in remembrance of these tormentors. If, thinking the crowd had dispersed, we ventured to open the tent, a scout proclaimed the fact, and we were again mobbed. Our tent was 7 feet 6 inches square, and we found this quite large enough when it had to be pitched on a slope, or on a narrow, rocky ledge, when trees had to be cut down to make room in a forest, or when it was among the boulders of a river bed. Imam Sharif's tent was larger, and though it looked more stately in a plain, he sometimes had not room to pitch it, and had to sleep with his servants. <hr /> [177] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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