As we had been unable to penetrate into the Mahri country, though we had attempted it from three sides, we determined to visit the offshoot of the Mahri who dwell on the island of Sokotra.
Cast away in the Indian Ocean, like a fragment rejected in the construction of Africa, very mountainous and fertile, yet practically harbourless, the island of Sokotra is, perhaps, as little known as any inhabited island on the globe.
Most people have a glimpse of it on their way to India and Australia, but this glimpse has apparently aroused the desire of very few to visit it, for the Europeans who have penetrated into it could be almost counted on the fingers of one hand. During recent years two botanical expeditions have visited it, one under Professor Balfour, and one under Dr. Schweinfurth, and the results added marvellously to the knowledge of quaint and hitherto unknown plants.
We passed two months traversing it from end to end, with the object of trying to unravel some of its ancient history so shrouded in mystery, and learn something about its present inhabitants.
Mariette Bey, the eminent Egyptologist, identifies Sokotra with To Nuter, a place to be bracketed with the land of Punt in the pictorial decorations of the temple of Deir el Bahri, as resorted to by the ancients for spices, frankincense, and myrrh; and he is probably correct, for it is pretty certain that no one given spot in reach of the ancients could produce at one and the same time so many of the coveted products of that day—the ruby-coloured dragon's blood (Draco Kinnabari of Pliny), three distinct species of frankincense, several kinds of myrrh, besides many other valuable gum-producing trees, and aloes of super-excellent quality.
It is referred to by the author of the 'Periplus' as containing a very mixed and Greek-speaking population drawn together for trading purposes, trafficking with Arabia and India. Abu'lfida, Africanus, and other writers, Arabic and otherwise, mention Christianity as prevailing here, and Theodoret, writing in the beginning of the fifth century, speaks of the great missionary Theophilus as coming from the island of Diu to teach Christianity in India.
Cosmas Indicopleustes calls the island Dioscorides. He visited it in the sixth century, and accounted for the Greek-speaking population he met with by saying that they had been placed there by the Ptolemies. El Masoudi considered the Greek a purer race in Sokotra than elsewhere.
As far back as the tenth century Sokotra was a noted haunt of pirates from Katch and Gujerat Bawarij, from a kind of ship called barja.[13]
Traders came from Muza Lemyrica (Canara) and Barggaza (Gujerat).
Ibn Batuta gives an account of a certain Sheikh Said of Maskat being seized by Sokotran pirates, who sent him off empty-handed to Aden.
Marco Polo describes the catching of whales for ambergris. El Masoudi[14] says the best ambergris comes from the sea of Zinj in East Africa: 'The men of Zinj come in canoes and fall upon the creature with harpoons and cables, and draw it ashore and extract the ambergris.'
In the inscription of the Nakhtshe Rustam, near Persepolis, which we saw when in Persia in 1889, thirty countries are named which were conquered by Darius, the Akhemenid, amongst them Iskuduru, i.e. Sokotra.
Though it is Arabian politically, Sokotra geographically is African. This is the last and largest of a series of islands and islets stretching out into the Indian ocean, including the little group of Abdul Kerim. Some of these are white with guano.
Darzi, Kal Farun, Sambeh, and Samboyia are the names of some of the smaller ones. Sokotra itself is situated about 240 miles from Cape Guardafui, and is about 500 miles from Aden.
The latitude of the island is between 12° 19' and 12° 42', and the longitude between 53° 20' and 54° 30'. It is 72 miles long from east to west, and 22 miles wide from north to south. There is a coral reef nearly all the way from Africa to beyond Ras Momi.
According to the Admiralty charts the water between the islands and the mainland is 500 fathoms deep, but among the islands nowhere is it deeper than 200 fathoms.
It is an island that seems to be very much in the way as far as navigation is concerned, and many shipwrecks have been occasioned by its being confused with the mainland, one being taken for the other. The wreck of the Aden, and the great loss of life resulting from it, which took place so soon after we were there, is still fresh in our memories.
Our party consisted of Mr. Bennett, who was new to Eastern life, our old Greek servant, Matthaios, and two young Somali, Mahmoud and Hashi. They could talk a little English, but generally talked Arabic to us and Matthaios. We were told before starting that Mahri, or Mehri, was the language most in use, and we nearly committed the serious error of taking a Mahri man from Arabia, who could also speak Arabic, as an interpreter, but fortunately we did not do so, as he would have been quite useless, unless he could also have talked Sokoteriote.
We found it no easy matter to get there. First we were told we should, if we attempted to go by sailing-boat, have to coast to Ras Fartak, on the Arabian coast, and let the monsoon blow us to Sokotra, and this seemed impracticable. Finally we arranged with a British India steamer, the Canara, that it should 'deviate' and deposit us there for a consideration.
The ss. Canara promised to await the arrival of the P. and O. steamer before leaving Aden, and would, for one thousand rupees (62l.), take us to Sokotra and remain four hours. After that we were to pay thirty rupees an hour, and in no case would she tarry more than twenty-four hours. If landing were impossible, we were to be carried to Bombay.
We were landed in a lifeboat, through the surf at the town of Kalenzia, which lies at the western end of the island. It is a wretched spot, a jumble of the scum of the East; Arab traders, a Banyan or two, a considerable Negroid population in the shape of soldiers and slaves, and Bedouin from the mountains, who come down with their skins and jars of clarified butter, to despatch in dhows to Zanzibar, Maskat, and other butterless places.
Butter is now the chief product and almost the sole export of the island, and Sokotra butter has quite a reputation in the markets along the shores of Arabia and Africa. The sultan keeps a special dhow for the trade, and the Bedouin's life is given up to the production of butter. Nowhere, I think, have I seen so many flocks and herds in so limited a space as here.
Kalenzia (the place has been spelt in so many ways that we took the liberty of spelling it phonetically as we heard it pronounced) has an apology for a port, or roadstead, facing the African coast, which is the most sheltered during the prevalence of the north-east monsoon. Separated from the shore by a bar of shingle is a lagoon, fed by the waters coming down from the encircling mountains, which reach an altitude of 1,500 or 2,000 feet. The lagoon is very prettily embowered with palms and mangroves, and the waters are covered with wild duck, but it is a wonder that all the inhabitants do not die of fever, for the water is very fetid-looking and they drink from nothing else. I believe this is the water which is supplied to ships. The shore is rendered pestiferous by rotting seaweed, and the bodies of sharks, with back fin cut out and tail cut off, which are exposed to dry on the beach. We preferred the brackish water from a well hard by our camp until we discovered a nice stream under the slopes of the mountains, about three miles away, to which we sent skins to be filled. This stream is under the northern slope of the Kalenzia range, and near it are the ruins of an ancient town, and as the water trickles on towards the lagoon it fertilises the country exceedingly, and its banks are rich in palms and other trees. The abandoned site of this old town is infinitely preferable to the modern one, and much healthier.
We were received in a most friendly way by the inhabitants, and hoped that, as we were English and the island was to some extent under British protection, we should be able to proceed inland at once. Our nationality, however, made not the slightest difference to them, and we were told we must encamp while our letters were taken to the sultan, who lives beyond Tamarida, and await his permission to proceed farther. The eight days we had to remain here were the most tedious of those we spent on the island.
One of our amusements was to watch boat-building accomplished by tying a bundle of bamboos together at each end and pushing them out into shape with wooden stretchers.
They have enormous lobster-pots, 6 feet to 8 feet in diameter, made of matting woven with split bamboo, in patterns something like the seats of our chairs. The men often wear their tooth-brushes tied to their turbans; a sprig of arrack serves the purpose.
Whilst at Kalenzia we must have had nearly all the inhabitants of the place at our tent asking for a remedy for one disease or another; they seemed to be mostly gastric troubles, which they would describe as pains revolving in their insides like a wheel, and wounds. The Sokotra medical lore is exceedingly crude. One old man we found by the shore having the bowels of a crab put on a very sore finger by way of ointment. A baby of very tender age (eleven months) had had its back so seared by a red-hot iron that it could get no rest, and cried most piteously.
The poor little thing was wrapped in a very coarse and prickly goat-hair cloth, and its mother was patting its back to stop its cries, quite ineffectually, as you may well imagine. I spread some vaseline on a large sheet of grease-proof paraffin paper and applied it most gently. Its whole family then wrapped it up in the goat-hair cloth in such a way as to crush and put aside the dressing, and the mother laid it on its back, though I had warned her not to do it, on her knees, and jumped it up and down. The baby was none the better, but all around seemed pleased, and I could only sadly think that I had done my best. I find the grease-proof paper most valuable to spread ointment for man and beast where rags are scarce.
One old lady, with an affection of the skin, would only have the 'bibi' as her doctor, so she came to me with a good many men to show her off, but would have nothing to do with my husband. I said the first treatment must consist in a thorough washing all over with warm water and soap: but behold! I heard there was no soap in the island, so halves and quarters of cakes of Pears' soap as well as whole ones, were distributed as a precious ointment.
They have no soap, no oil, no idea of washing or cleansing a wound, and cauterisation with a hot iron appears to be their panacea for every ailment.
A favourite remedy with them here, as in Arabia, is to stop up the nostrils with plugs fastened to a string round the neck to prevent certain noxious scents penetrating into it; but, as far as we could see, they make no use whatsoever of the many medicinal herbs which grow so abundantly on the island.
The women of Kalenzia use turmeric largely for dyeing their faces and their bodies yellow, a custom very prevalent on the south coast of Arabia; they wear long robes, sometimes dyed with indigo, sometimes of a bright scarlet hue. The pattern of their dress is the same as that worn in the Hadhramout, i.e. composed of two pieces of cotton cloth wide enough to reach the finger-tips and with a seam down each side. The front piece is longer than in the Hadhramout, coming down to within a foot of the ground, but the train is also very much longer, and must lie more than a yard and a half on the ground. These ladies get good neither from the length nor the breadth of their dresses, for as the train evidently incommodes them, they twist the dress so tightly round their bodies that the left side seam comes straight or rather lop-sidedly behind and one corner of the train is thrown over the left shoulder all in a wisp. There is nothing to keep it up, so down it comes continually, and is always being caught up again. I never saw a train down, except once for my edification.
Their hair is cut in a straight fringe across the forehead and is in little plaits hanging behind. They wear a loose veil of a gauzy nature, with which they conceal half their faces at times. Silver rings and bracelets of a very poor character, and glass bangles, complete their toilet, and the commoner class and Bedou women weave a strong cloth in narrow strips of goat-hair, which they wrap in an inelegant fashion round their hips to keep them warm, sometimes as their only garment. They do not cover their faces. From one end of Sokotra to the other we never found anything the least characteristic or attractive amongst the possessions of the islanders, nothing but poor examples of what one finds everywhere on the south coast of Arabia and east of Africa.
Many weddings were going on during our residence at Kalenzia, and at them we witnessed a ceremony which we had not seen before. On the morning of the festive day the Sokotrans, negro slaves being apparently excluded, assembled in a room and seated themselves round it. Three men played tambourines or tom-toms of skin called teheranes, and to this music they chanted passages out of the Koran, led by the 'mollah'; this formed a sort of religious preliminary to a marriage festival; and in the evening, of course, the dancing and singing took place to the dismal tune of the same tom-toms, detrimental, very, to our earlier slumbers. The teherane would seem to be the favourite and only Sokotran instrument of music—if we except flutes made of the leg-bones of birds common on the opposite coast, and probably introduced thence—and finds favour alike with Arab, Bedou, and Negro.
The people here did not torment us by staring at and crowding round us. They came only on business, to be doctored, to sell something, or to bring milk wherewith to purchase from us lumps of sugar.
The houses are pleasantly shaded amongst the palm groves, and have nice little gardens attached to them in which gourds, melons, and tobacco grow; and in the middle of the paths between them one is liable to stumble over turtlebacks, used as hencoops for some wretched specimens of the domestic fowl which exist here, and which lay eggs about the size of a plover's.
Though a poor-looking place it looks neat with its little sand-strewn streets.
It contains a single wretched little mosque, in character like those found in third-rate villages in Arabia; Kadhoup or Kadhohp possesses another, and Tamarida no less than two; and these represent the sum total of the present religious edifices in Sokotra, for the Bedouin in their mountain villages do not care for religious observances and own no mosques.
Owing to the scarcity of water in the south-western corner of the island we were advised not to visit it; the wells were represented to us as dry, and the sheep as dying, though the goats still managed to keep plump and well-looking. Perhaps the drought which had lately visited India may have affected Sokotra too; and we were told before going there that a copious rainfall might be expected during December and January, for Sokotra gets rain during both monsoons; but during our stay on the island we had little rain, except when up on the heights of Mount Haghiers.
One day we two went some distance in the direction of the mountains, and came on a large upright rock with an inscription upon it, evidently late Himyaritic or Ethiopic, and copied as much of it as was distinguishable. Not far off was the tidy little hamlet of Haida. The walls of the yards there are circular.
Farther on, behind the village of Kissoh, are the ruins of an ancient village with a long, well-built, oblong structure in the middle, possibly a tomb; and it was behind this again that we found the good water that we drank afterwards.
There must once have been a large population, to judge by the way the hills are terraced up by walls, and the many barren, neglected palm-trees about among the old fields.
The Kalenzia range of mountains is quite distinct from Haghier, and is about 1,500 or 2,000 feet high. We could find no special name for it. They call it Fedahan, but that is the generic Sokoteriote word for mountain.
The highest peak is called MÀtala.
We were very glad when a venerable old sheikh named Ali arrived bringing us a civil letter from the sultan and saying he had been sent to escort us to Tamarida.
[13] Elliot, i. 65.
CHAPTER XXX
ERIOSH AND KADHOUP
After four days waiting for camels, and the usual wrangling over the price and casting lots for us, which here they do with stones instead of wood as in Arabia, we started late on Christmas Day, going of course only a short way. As all were mounted on the baggage we could trot all the way; the camels were not tied in strings. The first night we stopped at IsÈleh, an interesting place at the entrance of Wadi GÀhai below Mount LÈhe Diftom, about two hours from Kalenzia, whence at night we could see the numerous fires of troglodytes high up on the sides of the mountains; and were able next day to ride nearly all the way, except over a pass to Lim Ditarr, a depression in the hills sometimes filled with water, though there was none for us. A little was fetched, but we had to keep the water from our evening wash to serve next morning. This depression had in former times been used as a reservoir, for we could detect the remains of a stone embankment, a good deal despoiled for Moslem tombs.
Our onward journey took us past a lovely creek, called Khor Haghia, running two miles inland, with silted mouth and overhanging yellow and white rocks. The bright blue water and green mangroves made a brilliant picture.
About a quarter of a mile inland there is a deep pot of salt water, evidently left behind by the ocean when it receded from the shores of Sokotra; it is about 200 feet across, and has its little beach and seaweeds all complete, with its trees and bushes in its cliffs.
We lunched at the brackish well of Dia, and at sunset reached the hideous plain of Eriosh, or Eriush, which has a flat surface of rock, about a quarter of a mile in extent and partly covered with dried mud, and of such soft stone that we could easily cut into it with pebbles. It is covered with purely Ethiopic graffiti, almost exactly similar to those we saw on the steps of the church and on the hillsides around Aksum in Abyssinia—long serpent-like trails of Ethiopic words, with rude drawings interspersed of camels, snakes, and so forth. Riebeck, who went inland from Itur, says these are Greek. Conspicuous amongst them are the numerous representations of two feet side by side, frequently with a cross inserted in one of them; there are many separate crosses, too, on this flat surface—crosses in circles, exactly like what one gets on Ethiopic coins. We met with another inscribed stone to the east of the island, bearing similar lettering.
Hard by this flat, inscribed surface are many tombs of an ancient date. These tombs, which are found dotted over the island, bear a remarkable resemblance to the tombs of the Bedja race, once dwelling on the shores of the Red Sea to the north of Sawakin, and subject to the Ethiopian emperor; they consist of enormous blocks of unhewn stone, inserted in the ground to encircle and cover the tombs, and this forms another link connecting the remains on the island with Abyssinia.
THE PLAIN OF ERIOSH, SOKOTRA.
The Plain of Eriosh, Sokotra
When the Abyssinian Christian monarchs conquered Arabia in the early centuries of our era, and Christianised a large portion of that country, they probably did the same by Sokotra, and, inasmuch as this island was far removed from any political centre, Christianity probably existed here to a much later period than it did in Arabia. Marco Polo touched here, and alludes to the Christians of the island.
In speaking of two isles near Greater India, inhabited respectively by men and women, he adds: 'They are Christians, and have their bishop, subject to the Bishop of Socotora. Socotora hath an archbishop not subject to the Pope, but to one Zatuli, who resides at Baldach, who chooseth him.'
F. Xavier said among other things 'that each village had a priest called kashi. No man could read. The kashis repeated prayers in a forgotten tongue, frequently scattering incense. A word like Alleluia often occurred. For bells they used wooden rattles. They assembled in their churches four times a day, and held St. Thomas in great veneration. The kashis married, but were very abstemious. They had two Lents, and fasted from meat, milk, and fish.'
When Padre Vincenzo the Carmelite visited the island in the seventeenth century he found the last traces of Christianity. 'The people still retained a perfect jumble of rites and ceremonies, sacrificing to the moon, circumcising, and abominating wine and pork. They had churches called moquame, dark and dirty, and they daily anointed with butter an altar. They had a cross, which they carried in procession, and a candle. They assembled three times a day and three times a night; the priests were called odambo. Each family had a cave where they deposited their dead. If rain failed they selected a victim by lot and prayed round him to the moon, and if this failed they cut off his hands. All the women were called Maria.' Of this there is now no trace. Both Sacraments had died out.
This debased form of Christianity existed as late as the seventeenth century. The island was one of the places visited by Sir Thomas Roe in 1615.
It is needless to say that all ostensible traces of our cult have long ago been obliterated, and the only Sokoteri religious term which differs in any way from the usual Mohammedan nomenclature is the name for the Devil; but we found, as I have already said, the carved crosses on the flat surface at Eriosh, and we found a rock at the top of a hill to the east of the island which had been covered with rude representations of the Ethiopic cross. Scattered all over the island are deserted ruined villages, differing but little from those of to-day, except that the inhabitants call them all Frankish work, and admit that once Franks dwelt in them of the cursed sect of the Nazarenes. We felt little hesitation in saying that a branch of the Abyssinian Church once existed in Sokotra, and that its destruction is of comparatively recent date.
If we consider that the ordinary village churches in Abyssinia are of the flimsiest character—a thatched roof resting on a low round wall—we can easily understand how the churches of Sokotra have disappeared. In most of these ruined villages round enclosures are to be found, some with apsidal constructions, which are very probably all that is left of the churches.
Near Ras Momi, to the east of the island, we discovered a curious form of ancient sepulture. Caves in the limestone rocks have been filled with human bones from which the flesh had previously decayed. These caves were then walled up and left as charnel-houses, after the fashion still observed in the Eastern Christian Church. Amongst the bones we found carved wooden objects which looked as if they had originally served as crosses to mark the tombs, in which the corpses had been permitted to decay prior to their removal to the charnel-house, or κοιμητἡρια, as the modern Greeks call them.
We stayed two days at Eriosh to study the graffiti and tombs.
Water had to be fetched from DiahÀmm, which we afterwards passed. It was brackish. I have heard riho said for water, but diho was mostly used, and certainly the names of many water-places began with Di. I remember my husband answering the question where we should camp by calling out in Arabic 'Near the water.' This was echoed in Sokoteri, 'Lal diho.'
We took five days in getting from Kalenzia to Tamarida, and found the water question on this route rather a serious one until we reached Mori and Kadhoup, where the streams from the high mountains began. Mori is a charming little spot by the sea, with a fine stream and a lagoon, and palms and bright yellow houses as a foreground to the dark-blue mountains.
Kadhoup is another fishing village built by the edge of the sea, with a marshy waste of sand separating it from the hills; it possesses a considerable number of surf-boats and canoes, and catamarans, on which the fishermen ply their trade. Just outside the town women were busy baking large pots for the export of butter, placing large fires around them for this purpose. The Sokotrans are very crude in their ceramic productions, and seem to have not the faintest inclination to decorate their jars in any way. There were quantities of flamingoes on the beach.
We encamped at the foot of the hills, with a watery and sandy waste between us and the village.
There are the foundations of some curious unfinished houses near Kadhoup, also assigned to the Portuguese; but there appears to me to be no reason whatsoever for ascribing these miserable remains to the builders of the fine forts at Maskat, the founders of Ormuz and Goa, and the lords of the East up to the seventeenth century.
The mountains here jut right out into the sea, forming a bold and rugged coast line, and the path which connects the two places is as fine a one to look upon as I have ever seen.
We had read a very awe-inspiring account of this path by Lieutenant Wellsted, and so were quite disposed to believe all our camel-drivers told us of the awful dangers to be encountered. They had formed a plan whereby their Kadhoup friends might come in for some of our rupees. We were not only to pay for camels, but also for a boat. Some, at least, of the camels were sure, they said, to fall into the sea from the cliffs, and our possessions, if not our lives themselves, might be lost. They said that we ought to send our baggage by boat, even if we risked the mountain path ourselves.
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. He was anxious, poor old man, to be spared the exertion, and eventually rode all the way, except when there was no room. He said I should go in a boat with him; he would take care of me and give me musk (which he called misk) when we reached Hadibo. He often promised misk, but I never got any; and here I may remark that I have frequently heard MaskÀt pronounced MÌskit in Arabia amongst the Bedouin of the East.
We really did feel very adventurous indeed when we started. I rode my camel a quarter of a mile to the foot of the ascent. No one else thought it worth while to mount, but I was comfortably carried over a muddy creek.
The Kadhoupers did get some rupees, for we were attended by twelve men carrying bamboo poles 10 or 12 feet long.
It really was a stiff climb, but we had a good deal of shade, and when we reached our highest point there was a pretty flat bit with scattered trees and grass, about half a mile, I think. The twelve men had to carry the baggage slung on the poles for a quarter of a mile or so, where the overhanging rocks made the path too narrow for loaded camels. It was quite high enough for their heads, and we had plenty of room. It was marvellous to see the camels struggling along this road, and awful to hear their groans and the shouts of the camel-men as they struggled up and down and in and out of the rocks; and the hubbub and yelling over a fallen one was simply diabolical.
We had the most tremendous clambering down soon after that, the baggage being again slung on the poles, and the camels came clattering down, with many stones, and looking as if they would rush over straight into the sea.
When we got near the sea, say about 50 feet above it, we, on foot, diverged from the camel-track, which goes more inland, and followed a very, very narrow, washed-away path. This I think must have been the one described by Wellsted, for we were never, till we reached this part, near the sea, though possibly had we fallen we might have rolled over down a slope.
The views inland up the rugged yellow crags, covered with verdure and studded with the quaint gouty trees, are weird and extraordinary, and below at our feet the waves dashed up in clouds of white spray. Though we had heard much of the difficulties of this road and the dangers for foot passengers, and we were told of the bleaching bones of the camels which had fallen into the abyss below, we experienced none of these hardships. We certainly saw the bones of one camel below us, but none of ours followed its example; and we revelled in the beauty of our surroundings, which made us think nothing of the toilsome scramble up and down the rocks.
As we left the mountain side and approached the plain of Tamarida, we passed close by what would seem to have been an ancient ruined fort on the cliff above the sea, evidently intended to guard this path.
CHAPTER XXXI
TAMARIDA OR HADIBO
Certainly Tamarida is a pretty place, with its river, its lagoon, and its palms, its whitewashed houses and whitewashed mosques, and with its fine view of the Haghier range immediately behind it. The mosques are new, and offer but little in the way of architectural beauty, for the fanatical Wahhabi from Nejd swept over the island in 1801, and in their religious zeal destroyed the places of worship; and the extensive cemeteries still bear testimony to the ravages of these iconoclasts, with their ruined tombs and overturned headstones.
We encamped on the further side of a good-sized stream or little river, having it between us and the town of Tamarida or Hadibo; and this was really a protection to us at night, for the inhabitants of that neighbourhood are terribly afraid of certain jinni or ghinni, which abide in the stream, and will not go near it at night. Indeed, we remarked that it was considered by Hashi and Mahmoud, the two Somali servants, a wise precaution to draw all the water and bring up the washing, which was drying, in good time of an afternoon.
They had heard such fearful stories that they were very much afraid of being bewitched while in the island, though I doubt whether I and my camera were not nearly as alarming.
They had heard how a Sokotran man had turned a woman of Maskat into a seal and forced her to swim over to Sokotra in that shape. We were told that this story is perfectly true!
This evil reputation of the islanders is very persistent. Marco Polo says: 'The Sokotrans are enchanters, as great as any in the world, though excommunicated by their prelates therefor; and raise winds to bring back such ships as have wronged them, till they obtain satisfaction.'
It is only just to say we had no need to fear such honest and friendly people.
Sultan Salem of Sokotra, the nephew of old Sultan Ali of Kishin, the monarch of the Mahri tribe, whom we had visited two years before on the south coast of Arabia, governed the island as his uncle's deputy. He had a castle at Tamarida of very poor and dilapidated appearance, which he rarely inhabited, preferring to live in the hills near Garriah, or at his miserable house at Haula, some eight miles along the coast from Tamarida. Haula is as ungainly a spot as it is possible to conceive—without water, without wood, and invaded by sand—quite the ugliest place we saw on the island, its only recommendation being that during the north-east monsoons the few dhows which visit the island anchor there, since it affords some sort of shelter from the winds in that direction, and Sultan Salem has a keen eye to business.
His Majesty came to visit us, shortly after our arrival at Tamarida, from his country residence, and favoured us with an audience in the courtyard of his palace, with all the great men of the island seated around him. He was a man of fifty, with a handsome but somewhat sinister face; he was girt as to his head with a many-coloured kefieh, and as to his waist with a girdle supporting a finely inlaid Maskat dagger and a sword. His body was enveloped in a clean white robe, and his feet were bare.
His conversation, both then and when he returned our visit at our camp, on which occasion he received a few presents, was solely about the price of camels and how many we should need. He did not ask us one other question. He talked little Arabic, being of the Mahri tribe.
We gave him an Enfield carbine of 1863.
On the plain behind Tamarida there is a conical hill about 200 feet high called Hasan, which has been fortified as an Acropolis, and was provided with cemented tanks. These ruins have also been called Portuguese, but they looked to us more Arabic in character.
When one has seen the very elaborate forts erected by the Portuguese on the coasts of the Persian Gulf and East Africa one feels pretty confident in asserting that they took no steps to settle themselves permanently in Sokotra; in fact, their occupation of it only extended over a period of four years, and the probability is that, finding it harbourless, and worth little for their purposes of a depÔt on the road to India, they never thought it worth their while to build any permanent edifices.
In the neighbourhood there is a hill where the English are said to have encamped, and where there are traces of a more ancient civilisation, probably Portuguese. There are walls of small stones, cased with cement, and, inside them, a tank with conduits.
Opposite to this hill, and across the stream, is a ruined village, only one house of which is still inhabited; it has circular walls and a circular paddock adjoining it for cattle.
It is, perhaps, annoying to have to add another to the list of the many tongues spoken in the world, but I think there is no room for doubt that Sokoteri must be added to that already distracting catalogue.
Though Sokotra has been under Mahri rule probably since before our era—for Arrian tells us that in his day the island of Dioscorida, as it was then called, was under the rule of the king of the Arabian frankincense country, and the best days of that country were long before Arrian's time—nevertheless, the inhabitants have kept their language quite distinct both from Mahri and from Arabic. Of course it is naturally strongly impregnated with words from both these tongues; but the fundamental words of the language are distinct, and in a trilingual parallel list of close on 300 words, which my husband took down in the presence of Mahri, Sokoteri and Arabic speaking people on the island, we found distinctly more in the language derived from an Arab than from a Mahri source.
In subtlety of sound Sokoteri is painfully rich, and we had the greatest difficulty in transcribing the words. They corkscrew their tongues, they gurgle in their throats, and bring sounds from most alarming depths, but luckily they do not click. They have no word for a dog, for there is not a dog on the island; neither for a horse nor a lion, for the same reason; they seemed surprised at the idea that there might be such words in their language; but for all the animals, trees, and articles commonly found there they have words as distinct from the Arabic and Mahri as cheese is from fromage.
At Tamarida we annexed a respectable man called Ammar as interpreter. He was familiar with all the languages spoken in the island, and daily, when the camp was all pitched and arranged, my husband used to produce a long list of Arabic words, and Ammar used to sit on his heels and tell the Mahri and Sokoteri equivalents, the words, however, being for the most part shouted out in chorus by numerous bystanders. I have since added the English, and the vocabulary will be found in an appendix.
It was most difficult to get an answer as to anything abstract.
For instance, 'clothes' would be asked, and Ammar, after inquiring if white clothes were meant, or blue, or black, or red, and being answered 'any clothes,' would give a list of garments of various shapes.
'Age' was a question that caused a great awkwardness, I am sorry to say.
'Well,' answered Ammar, 'it might be anything—seven, fifteen, seventy—anything!'
After the greatest invention and planning on our part, we unhappily thought to put the question in this form:
'How do you say "What is your age?"'
'My age,' said Ammar, 'mine—well'—with evident annoyance and great hesitation—'I'm thirty-five—not old—not old at all.'
He is really quite fifty.
On such occasions there had to be a tremendous conversation with the bystanders.
THEODORE BENT MAKING THE VOCABULARY AT FEREGHET
Theodore Bent Making the Vocabulary at Fereghet
I will not say more of the language than that instead of our little word I the Sokoteri is hemukomÒn and the Mahri evomÚhshom.
I wish we could speak confidently about the origin of the so-called Bedouin, the pastoral inhabitants of the island, who live in the valleys and heights of Mount Haghier, and wander over the surface of the island with their flocks and herds.
It has been often asserted that these Bedouin are troglodytes, or cave-dwellers pure and simple, but I do not think this is substantially correct. None of them, as far as we could ascertain, dwell always or by preference in caves; but all of them own stone-built tenements, however humble, in some warm and secluded valley, and they only abandon these to dwell in caves when driven to the higher regions in search of pasturage for their flocks during the dry season, which lasts from November till the south-west monsoon bursts in the beginning of June.
Whilst we were on the island the season was exceptionally dry, and most of the villages in the valleys were entirely abandoned for the mountain caves.
The Bedou is decidedly a handsome individual, lithe of limb like his goats, and with a cafÉ-au-lait-coloured skin; he has a sharp profile, excellent teeth; he often wears a stubbly black beard and has beautifully pencilled eyebrows, and, though differing entirely in language, in physique and type he closely resembles the Bedouin found in the Mahri and Gara mountains. Furthermore, the mode of life is the same—dwelling in caves when necessary, but having permanent abodes on the lower lands; and they have several other striking points in common. Greetings take place between the Arabian Bedouin and the Sokotran Bedouin in similar fashion, by touching each cheek and then rubbing the nose. We found the Bedouin of Mount Haghier fond of dancing and playing their teherane, and also peculiarly lax in their religious observances; and though ostensibly conforming to Mohammedan practice, they observe next to none of their precepts; and it is precisely the same with the Bedouin whom we met in the Gara mountains. There is certainly nothing African about the Sokotran Bedouin; therefore I am inclined to consider them as a branch of that aboriginal race which inhabited Arabia, with a language of its own; and when Arabia is philologically understood and its various races investigated, I expect we shall hear of several new languages spoken by different branches of this aboriginal race, and then, perhaps, a parallel will be found to the proudly isolated tongue of this remote island.
The Bedou houses are round, and surrounded by a round wall in which the flocks are penned at night; flat-roofed and covered with soil, and inside they are as destitute of interest as it is possible to conceive—a few mats on which the family sleep, a few jars in which they store their butter, and a skin churn in which they make the same. The plan of those houses that are oblong is that of two circles united by a bit of wall at one side, the door being at the other. In one house into which my husband penetrated he found a bundle hanging from the ceiling, which he discovered to be a baby by the exposure of one of its little feet.
Everything is poor and pastoral. The Bedouin have hardly any clothes to cover themselves with, nothing to keep them warm when the weather is damp, save a home-spun sheet, and they have no ideas beyond those connected with their flocks. The closest intimacy exists between a Bedou and his goats and his cows; the animals understand and obey certain calls with absolute accuracy, and you generally see a Sokotran shepherdess walking before her flock, and not after it. The owners stroke and caress their little cows until they are as tame as dogs.
The cows in Sokotra are far more numerous than one would expect, and there is excellent pasturage for them; they are a very pretty little breed, smaller than our Alderney, without the hump, and with the long dewlap; they are fat and plump, and excellent milkers.
The Bedou does very little in the way of cultivation, but when grass is scarce, and consequently milk, he turns his attention to the sowing of jowari in little round fields dotted about the valleys, with a wall round to keep the goats off. In each of these he digs a well, and waters his crop before sunrise and after sunset; the field is divided into little compartments by stones, the better to retain the soil and water; and sometimes you will see a Bedou papa with his wife and son sitting and tilling these bijou fields with pointed bits of wood, for other tools are unknown to them.
We hired our camels for our journey eastwards from the Arab merchants who live at Tamarida or Hadibo; they are the sole camel proprietors in the island, as the Bedouin own nothing but their flocks; and excellent animals these camels are, too, the strongest and tallest we had seen. Of our camel-men, some were Bedouin and some were negroes, and we found them on the whole honest and obliging, though with the usual keen eye for a possible bakshish, which is not uncommon elsewhere.
The eastern end of Sokotra is similar in character to the western, being a low continuation of the spurs of Haghier, intersected with valleys, and with a plateau stretching right away to Ras Momi about 1,500 feet above the sea-level. This plateau is a perfect paradise for shepherds, with much rich grass all over it; but it is badly watered, and water has to be fetched from the deep pools which are found in all its valleys at the driest season of the year, and in the rainy season these become impassable torrents, sweeping trees and rocks before them; and the hillsides up to the edge of the bare dolomitic pinnacles of the Haghier range are thickly clothed with vegetation.
Three considerable streams run from southward of Mount Haghier, fertilising three splendid valleys, until the waters, as the sea is approached, lose themselves in the sand. To the north there are many more streams, and inasmuch as the sea is considerably nearer, they all reach it, or, rather, the silted-up lagoons already alluded to.
By the side of these streams innumerable palm-groves grow—in fact, dates form the staple food of the islanders. And out of the date-tree they get branches for their hedges, stems for their roofs; the leaf provides them with their sleeping-mats, and, when beaten on stones, with fibre, with which they are exceedingly clever in making ropes. Our camel-men were always at it, and produced, with the assistance of fingers and toes, the most excellent rope at the shortest possible notice. They also make strong girdles with this fibre, which the slaves, who are employed in fertilising the palm-trees, bind round their bodies and the trees so as to facilitate their ascent, and provide them with a firm seat when the point of operation is reached. They weave, too, baskets, or, rather, stiff sacks, in which to hang their luggage on either side of the camel.
A Sokotran camel-man is a most dexterous packer. He must first obliterate his camel's hump by placing against it three or four thick felt mats or nummuds, and on this raised surface he builds all his luggage, carefully secured in his baskets, with the result that we never, during any of our expeditions with camels, had so little damage done to our property, even though the roads were so mountainous and the box-bushes were constantly rubbing against the loads. The camels are very fine specimens of their race, standing considerably higher than the Arabian animal, and when mounted on the top of our luggage, above the hump thus unnaturally raised, we felt at first disagreeably elevated.
Whilst on the subject of camels and camel-trappings, I may add that each owner has his own mark painted and branded on his own property. Some of these marks consist purely of Himyaritic letters, whilst others are variants, which would naturally arise from copying a very old-world alphabetic original. I take these marks to be preserved by the steady conservatism of the Oriental; we copied many of them, and the result looks like a partial reproduction of the old SabÆan alphabet, and they may be seen in an appendix.
Scattered over Sokotra there are numerous villages, each being a little cluster of from five to ten round or oblong houses and round cattle-pens. I was informed by a competent authority on the island that there are four hundred of these pastoral villages between Ras Kalenzia and Ras Momi, a distance of some seventy odd miles as the crow flies; and from the frequency with which we came across them during our marches up only a limited number of Sokotra's many valleys, I should think the number is not over-estimated. If this is so, the population of the island must be considerably over the estimate given, and must approach twelve or thirteen thousand souls; but owing to the migratory nature of the inhabitants, and their life half spent in houses and half in caves, any exact census would be exceedingly hard to obtain. The east of the island is, however, decidedly more populous than the west, as the water supply is better. We were constantly passing the little round-housed villages, with their palm-groves and their flocks.
CHAPTER XXXII
WE DEPART FOR THE LAND'S END—i.e. RAS MOMI
After leaving Tamarida we spent a night at a place the name of which has been variously spelt. We decided to spell it Dihelemnitin. It has otherwise been called Dishelenata, &c. It is a lovely spot, at the confluence of two streams in a wood of palms, and we had a nice little flat field to camp in. When I say a field, I mean a wall-supported place once used as such. We saw very little cultivation except gardens at the villages, and the palm-trees were for the most part quite neglected. Near Tamarida we saw just a few fan-palms, and one I remember looked very odd, as it still retained every leaf it had ever had, and looked like a yellow tower, with the green leaves at the top. All the rest were bristling, withered down to the ground.
In South Arabia people are punished if they steal each other's palm-leaves, as the ribs are valuable for many things as well as the leaves themselves, but here there are no restrictions of that kind.
There was a good deal of climbing up and down to SaiÈhen, our next camp. While we stayed there my husband went about everywhere that he was told there were ruins or supposed inscriptions, but saw nothing worth mentioning except the inscribed crosses already alluded to.
At first, after leaving SaiÈhen, we kept along the lower ground for some time, passing by Garriah Khor, a very long inlet or lagoon which stretches inland for at least two miles. We dismounted at Dis'hass, where, we were told by Ammar, 'the English once had houses.' It was a mass of ruins.
We went over a pass about 2,500 feet high, and up and down two sets of hills to a level plain about 1,500 feet high, extending all the way to Ras Momi. As we ascended we passed a peak 2,000 feet high, called GÒdahan, which has a great hole in the middle of it, through which a large patch of sky is visible. We encamped near it, close to the hamlet of Kit'hab, in a wood of palms and various other trees, full of those pretty green and grey birds, half parrot and half dove, whose beauty, however, did not save them from our pot.
From this place and even before we reached it we had very little personal use of our camels, the clambering up as well as down was so severe.
There is behind the peak of GÒdahan a curious flat ridge, raised not very many feet above the plateau, which is called Matagioti, and is perfectly honeycombed with fissures and crevices, offering delightful homes for people of troglodytic tendencies. Huge fig-trees grow in these crevices, and dragon's-blood trees, and large herds of cows and goats revel in the rich carpet of grass which covers the flat surface of the plateau. Unfortunately, this rich pasture ground is only indifferently supplied with water. We obtained ours from two very nasty holes where rain-water had lain, and in which many cattle had washed; and when these dry up the Bedouin have to go down to the lower valleys in search of it. Before we left it had assumed the appearance of porter.
There was a great deal of lavender growing about and numerous pretty flowers, and we found many shells in that place. It was so very cold that we had a fine bonfire to dine by, and the dew that night was drenching, pouring off our tents like rain in the morning.
As Ras Momi is approached the country wears a very desolate aspect; there are no trees here, but low bushes and stunted adeniums covered with lichen, and looking just like rocks with little bushes on them; very little water, but plenty of grass.
We encamped near the hamlet of Saihon, where, though there was no appearance of a mosque, there was not only a mollah but a doctor. The former was so free from fanaticism as to send us a present of a lamb.
The inhabitants were very friendly to us, and let us go into their houses and watch their occupations. The women were busy grinding limestone to make pots; and we obtained a very dirty little bag full of a kind of organic substance like small white stones, which is ground to powder, mixed with water into a whitish paste, which after a little time turns red. I think they paint the pots with it.
They were pleasant looking folk with quite a European cast of countenance, mostly ugly, and some with scanty beards, and reminding us strongly of the old frieze of the Parthenon sculptures in the Acropolis Museum at Athens. Really, they were just like them except for their colour, which is chocolate brown. We could not help thinking of the 'Moskophoros' when one came up to look at us with a lamb round his neck. We settled there for several days, not being able to go nearer Ras Momi for reasons connected with water. I cannot think it could have been really pleasant to the people of Saihon that we should have drunk up nearly all their water, and only left a little the colour of coffee behind us.
We suffered badly while there from two things; firstly from the dreadful kind of grass upon which we were encamped, and secondly from a regular gale of wind.
The grass, a pennisetum I believe, is one we knew and hated in Mashonaland. The seed is like a little grain of very sharp oats, well barbed, which carries behind it into your clothes a thread like a fish-hook, about 2 inches long.
As for the wind, when we came home one afternoon we found Matthaios in a most dreadful state, fearing the tents would be down. He was trying to get the outer flies off alone, and was delighted when my husband and I, the only two other experienced tent-dwellers, came to his assistance. For days we might as well have lived in a drum, for the noise of this tempest.
There was a little round enclosure to keep goats in; we knew that Hashi and Mahmoud had taken this as their home, and we were satisfied that no matter which way the wind blew they were sheltered; but one evening before dinner we heard that Mahmoud was ill with fever. We both went to see that he was comfortable, and my husband took him some quinine.
We found Hashi had put him to bed on the windy side of the enclosure, with a hard, stiff camel-mat under him, one over his body, and a third on his head. We soon moved him and wrapped him in blankets, and my husband having got some sacks and other things as a pillow, Hashi put them on the top of Mahmoud's head. We built up a waterproof tent over him, but soon had to unpack him, as the village doctor appeared on the scene, demanding a fee of two annas from my husband.
He began by making several slashes on the top of his head and cupping him with a horn, which he sucked, gave him some medicine, and having spent a little time blowing in different directions, settled down, crouching over the patient, waving his hand as if making passes to mesmerise him, and muttering a few words alternately with spitting, slightly and often, in his face.
Our joint efforts were successful in the recovery of Mahmoud, who was well next day.
It is curious that in this somewhat wild and at present uninteresting locality we found more traces of ruins and bygone habitations than are found in any other part of the island. About five miles from Ras Momi, and hidden by an amphitheatre of low hills on the watershed between the two seas, we came across the foundations of a large square building, constructed out of very large stones, and with great regularity. It was 105 feet square; the outer wall was 6 feet thick, and it was divided inside into several compartments by transverse walls. To the south-east corner was attached an adjunct, 14 by 22 feet. There was very little soil in this building; and nothing whatever save the foundations to guide us in our speculations as to what this could be. Other ruins of a ruder and more irregular character lay scattered in the vicinity, and at some remote period, when Sokotra was in its brighter days, this must have been an important centre of civilisation.
None of the natives would help us to dig in this place. They are very much afraid of the Devil, and think the ground under the ruins is hollow and that there is a house in it. At one time hopes were held out that the sacrifice of a goat might avert danger, but, after all, we and Matthaios had to do the best we could in the way of digging. We always carried tools with us. My part consisted in tracing out the walls with the trowel and moving stones.
My husband and I found it most difficult next day to take the measurements in the high wind.
From Saihon my husband climbed up a steep and rugged mountain to a ruined village on a strong place called Zerug. Ammar's family mansion was near: a cave containing three women, some children, and large flocks of goats, kept in the cave by a wall; it is heated at night, and very stuffy.
Before leaving this corner of the island we journeyed to the edge of the plateau and looked down the steep cliffs at the eastern cape, where Ras Momi pierces, with a series of diminishing heights, the Indian Ocean. The waves were dashing over the remains of the wreck, still visible, of a German vessel which went down here with all hands some few years ago, and the Bedouin produced for our edification several fragments of German print, which they had treasured up, and which they deemed of fabulous value. Ras Momi somewhat reminded us of Cape Finisterre, in Brittany, and as a dangerous point for navigation it also resembles it closely. Near the summit of one hill we passed an ancient and long disused reservoir, dug in the side of it, and constructed with stones; and during our stay here we visited the sites of many ancient villages, and found the cave charnel-houses already alluded to.
We lunched in a sort of cave, behind some huts on the opposite side of the valley, if such it may be called, from the bone caves, and were put to the rout by a serpent, which evidently liked the water in a little rocky pit in the mouth of the cave. It was horrible stuff, but we had brought water for our tea with us. Our supposed foe was slain. The serpent was very pretty, fully a yard long, black and salmon-coloured, and with a very tapering head and tail. It was said to be poisonous, but we thought it could not be.
The hills all about Ras Momi are divided into irregular plots by long piles of stones stretching in every direction, certainly not the work of the Sokotrans of to-day, but the work of some people who valued every inch of ground, and utilised it for some purpose or other. The miles of walls we passed here, and rode over with our camels, give to the country somewhat the aspect of the Yorkshire wolds. It has been suggested that they were erected as divisions for aloe-grounds; but I think if this was the case traces of aloes would surely be found here still. Aloes are still abundant about Fereghet and the valleys of Haghier, but near Ras Momi there are none, and it is hard to think what else could grow there now; but these mountain slopes may not always have been so denuded.
CHAPTER XXXIII
MOUNT HAGHIER AND FEREGHET
After leaving our camp at Saihon we took a path in a south-westerly direction, and after a few days of somewhat monotonous travelling we came again into the deeper valleys and finer scenery of the central districts of the island. Through them we made our way in the direction of Mount Haghier.
Sokotra without Mount Haghier would be like a body without a soul. The great mass of mountains which occupies the centre of the island rises in many jagged and stupendous peaks to the height of nearly 5,000 feet. At all seasons of the year it catches the fugitive sea mists which so rarely visit the Arabian coasts, and down its sides flow sparkling streams and bubbling cascades. The Ghebel Bit Molek (a name which, by the way, sounds as if it had an Assyrian origin) is the highest peak. It is very sheer and unapproachable at its summit, and though only 4,900 feet high will give trouble to the adventurous crag-climber who is bent on conquering it. Then there are the Driat peaks, the Adouna peaks, and many others piercing the sky like needles, around which wild goats and civet cats roam, but no other big game.
In the lower ground are found quantities of wild donkeys, which, the Bedouin complained, were in the habit of trampling upon and killing their goats. Whether these donkeys are naturally wild or descendants of escaped tamed ones I am unable to say. Some are dark and some are white, and their skins seemed to be more glossy than those of the domestic moke. The Bedouin like to catch them if they can, with the hope of taming them for domestic use.
Vegetation in Sokotra
The glory of Mount Haghier is undoubtedly its dragon's-blood tree (DracÆnia cinnabari), found scattered at an elevation of about 1,000 feet and upwards over the greater part of Sokotra. Certainly it is the quaintest tree imaginable, from 20 feet to 30 feet high, exactly like a green umbrella which is just in the process of being blown inside out, I thought. One of our party thought them like huge green toadstools, another like trees made for a child's Noah's Ark. The gum was called kinnÀbare, but the Arab name is kÀtir. The Sokoteri name is edah.
It is a great pity that the Sokotrans of to-day do not make more use of the rich ruby-red gum which issues from its bark when punctured, and which produces a valuable resin, now used as varnish; but the tree is now found in more enterprising countries—in Sumatra, in South America, and elsewhere. So the export of dragon's blood from its own ancient home is now practically nil.
If the dragon's-blood tree, with its close-set, radiating branches and stiff, aloe-like leaves, is quaint—and some might be inclined to say ugly—it has, nevertheless, its economic use; but not so its still quainter comrade on the slopes of Mount Haghier, the gouty, swollen-stemmed Adenium. This, I think, is the ugliest tree in creation, with one of the most beautiful of flowers: it looks like one of the first efforts of Dame Nature in tree-making, happily abandoned by her for more graceful shapes and forms. The swollen and twisted contortions of its trunk recall with a shudder those miserable sufferers from elephantiasis; its leaves are stiff and formal, and they usually drop off, as if ashamed of themselves, before the lovely flower, like a rich-coloured, large oleander blossom, comes out. The adenium bears some slight resemblance, on a small scale, to the unsightly baobab-tree of Africa, though it tapers much more rapidly, and looks as if it belonged to a different epoch of creation to our own trees at home.
Then there is the cucumber-tree, another hideous-stemmed tree, swollen and whitish; and the hill-slopes covered with this look as if they had been decorated with so many huge composite candles which had guttered horribly. At the top of the candle are a few short branches, on which grow a few stiff crinkly leaves and small yellow flowers, which produce the edible fruit. This tree, in Sokoteri kamhÀn, the Dendrosicyos Socotrana of the botanist, is like the language of the Bedouin, found only on Sokotra, and is seldom more than 10 or 12 feet in height. It is a favourite perch for three or four of the white vultures which swarm in the island, and the picture formed by these ungainly birds on the top of this ungainly tree is an odd one.
To the south of Mount Haghier one comes across valleys entirely full of frankincense-trees, with rich red leaves, like autumn tints, and clusters of blood-red flowers. No one touches the trees here, and this natural product of the island is now absolutely ignored. Then there are the myrrhs, also ignored, and other gum-producing plants; and the gnarled tamarinds, affording lovely shade, and the fruit of which the natives, oddly enough, do know the value of, and make a cooling drink therewith. Then there are the tree-euphorbias, which look as if they were trying to mimic the dragon's blood, the branches of which the natives throw into the lagoons so that the fish may be killed, and the poisonous milky juice of which they rub on the bottoms of their canoes to prevent leakage.
Such are among the oddest to look upon of Sokotra's vegetable productions. Wild oranges, too, are found on Mount Haghier, of a very rich yellow when ripe, but bitter as gall to eat; and the wild pomegranate, with its lovely red flowers and small yellow fruit, the flannelly coating of which only is eaten, instead of the seeds, as is the case with the cultivated one.
The vegetable world is indeed richly represented in this remote island, and one could not help thinking what possibilities it would offer for the cultivation of lucrative plants, such as tobacco, which is now grown by the natives in small quantities, as is also cotton; and perhaps coffee and tea would thrive on the higher elevations.
The Bedouin would bring us aloes both in leaf and in solution, in hopes that we might take a fancy to this venerable Sokotran production. Now a very little of it is collected, and everybody takes what he likes from the nearest source, whereas, I believe, in former times, when aloes were an object of commerce here, the plantations were strictly divided off by walls, and the owners jealously looked after their property.
The way the aloe-juice is collected is this. As the Abyssinians do when they are going to wash clothes the aloe-gatherers dig a hole in the ground and line it with a skin. Then they pile old leaves, points outward, all round till the pressure makes the juice exude. This at first is called taÏf diho, or riho, both of the latter words used for water, though the former is the most usual. It is left till it is firmer and drier, and this takes about a month. Then it is called taÏf geshisha. When it has dried for about six weeks it is nearly hard, and called taÏf kasahal. It is exported in skins. The collection of dragon's blood is carried on just like that of the mastic in Chios. The drops are knocked off into bags. The drops which come off unbroken are the most valued, and called edah amsello. Then the nice, clean, broken bits are picked out, and called edah dakkah; the refuse, with bits of dirt, bark, and leaves stuck in it, edah. This is made up into cakes with a little resin and sold very cheap.
My husband as usual made a botanical collection, and I believe it contained a few novelties; but for further particulars on the flora of Sokotra and the trees thereof I must refer you to Professor Bailey Balfour's very huge and equally interesting book. We were so fortunate as to have it with us, and it added much to our pleasure.
Our way was over broken ground, with little of interest save the lovely views over mountain and gorge and the many dragon, frankincense, and myrrh trees, past an open space in which is the village of Jahaida, where the inhabitants had cultivated some little fields, to RÖshi, where there was no village but a good deal of water. We encamped in a cattle-pen, the camel-men making themselves a capital house with floors, walls, and sides of the thick mats of the camels. These mats are really like hard mattresses, nearly 1 inch thick, and very stiff, about 1 yard long by 2 feet wide.
We always tried to encamp in a field if we could, as then we were sure of some earth for the tent-pegs. After three days, during which I do not think our guides knew their way very well, we went over a steep pass, up and down, into the deep valley of Es'hab. We had wandered about a good deal backwards and forwards over stony wolds, and the men all disagreed as to the direction, and we had scrambled up a valley off our road to see some supposed inscriptions, a much more dangerous place than the Kadhoup road.
The Es'hab valley, with its rich red stone dotted with green and its weird trees, forms an admirable foreground to the blue pinnacles of Haghier—tropical and Alpine at the same time.
The climbing was most tremendous, up first and then down very steeply, all over large sharp loose stones, till we reached the water, the camel-men leaning backwards holding their camels by their tails with all their might by way of putting on the drag. When we reached the valley we gladly mounted our camels, and squeezed through woods, and often were nearly torn off. We encamped in a sweet place, with a stream and shade and a most fragrant carpet of basil, some of which we had in our soup, and some of which was carried on for future use. We found the management of our milk-tins rather difficult. We often had to resort to them, for, surrounded though we were by herds of cattle, the supply of fresh milk was very irregular: sometimes we could have more than we wanted and at others none at all. It is pretty dear, too, in Sokotra, as so much is used up for the ghi.
THE BREAKWATER AT FEREGHET
The Breakwater at Fereghet
On January 17 we forced our way on through more woods, the peak of Toff seeming to fill up the end of the valley, to the Wadi Dishel, and crossed over to the Wadi Dikadik, where we settled near a wide river in a beautiful grassy spot, with many trees entwined with monkey-ropes, rejoicing that on the following day we should reach Fereghe, or Fereghet, where we intended to rest some time. We had heard from Ammar a delightful description of it, and as we have so often been disappointed under such circumstances we said we would take all possible enjoyment out of the pleasures of hope beforehand. But really this time we had everything we expected, including a wide rocky river, enabling us to bathe, develop photographs, and set up a laundry.
Fereghet was, in fact, a most charming spot. Here our tents were pitched beneath wide-spreading tamarinds, and we could walk in shade for a considerable distance under these gigantic old trees. Fereghet, moreover, was the site of an ancient ruined town which interested us exceedingly: walls, 8 to 10 feet thick, had been constructed out of very large unhewn boulders externally, filled with rubble, to check the torrent, which in the rainy season rushes down here carrying all before it to the sea. These walls, showing much skill in keeping a straight line, are clearly the work of an age long gone by, when weight-moving was better understood than it is at present, and doubtless the ruins of Fereghet may be traced back to the days when Sokotra was resorted to for its gums. The fine old tamarind-trees had done much to destroy the colossal wall, only about 100 feet of which now remains, still about 5 feet high; but there are many other traces of ruins and a small fort of later date. It is likely enough that Fereghet was a great centre of the trade of the island, for frankincense, myrrh, and dragon's blood grow copiously around, and the position under the slopes of Haghier, and almost in the middle of the island, was suitable for such a town.
We opened a tomb not very far from Fereghet with a great block of stone over it, 6 feet long by 3 feet thick; but the ill-conditioned relatives of the deceased had placed nothing therein save the corpse; and we were annoyed not to find any trace of inscriptions near this ruined town, which might have thrown some light on the subject. All I feel sure of is that the Portuguese did not build this town, as it is commonly asserted. In fact we did not see any building on the island which can definitely be ascribed to that nation.
Below Fereghet the valley gets broader and runs straight down to the sea at the south of the island, where the streams from Mount Haghier all lose themselves in a vast plain of sand called Noget, which we could see from the mountains up which we climbed.
This is the widest point of the island of Sokotra, and it is really only thirty-six miles between the ocean at Tamarida and the ocean at Noget, but the intervention of Mount Haghier and its ramifications make it appear a very long way indeed.
The island to the east and to the west of its great mountain very soon loses its fantastic scenery and its ample supply of water. The most remarkable peak we could see from Fereghet was Adouna. The topmost point of this mountain is split. We saw this clearly afterwards, when we continued our journey up the valley, but from Fereghet, I found it out by seeing a small cloud passing through it. To look at the mountains you would think they were made of black stone with a few patches of red lichen, but really these patches of red are the natural rock showing amongst the fine black lichen which covers the mountains.
The channels of the water in the river-bed are shown by this blackness, and the water looks like an inky stream.
Beyond Fereghet we were near a river the water of which was very low. The main bed of the water-channel was all black, and above this was a coat of white over the blackened stones, and as the remaining pools were all white, I suppose that some white tributary continues flowing later than the black stream.
The few Bedouin who live round Fereghet were in constant contact with our camp, as you will understand when you know that our tent was pitched exactly on their high road—a little narrow path. They behaved most kindly in going aside. The women used to bring us aloe plants just torn up, and seemed much disappointed at finding that we did not find any use for them.
We heard from them that there is only one leper on the island and he lives alone in the hills.
Our sheltering tamarind-trees, wide-spreading and gnarled, abounded in doves; some were small ones like ours, and some of the parrot kind, whose cawing was far from sedative. We enjoyed wandering in the shade of the fig-trees, wild and unprofitable, the date and other trees. Around us stood the relics of a bygone race of men, who had ill-naturedly left us no inscriptions on stone, and no clue to tell us who they were. Mountains hemmed us in on every side, and any little wind was very refreshing, for we were only about 400 feet above the sea-level, and quite sheltered from our now only too-well-known north-east monsoon. On a kind of promontory by a deep pool in the river is a building of stones and mortar, later in style than the wall and equally inexplicable, probably a fort.
It is impossible to describe the fantastic beauty of the delightful Fereghet. We were quite sorry to leave it on January 24. We rode a little way along the river, passing a single fan-palm-tree, very tall and bare, and then had another great climb up and down. We passed a good many old tombs, which had been opened. They were made of large slabs. We found one in the evening not far from our camp, so we opened it the following morning before starting. After a great deal of trouble with the pickaxes and crowbar nothing was found but bones. We measured the top stone, 6 feet 5 inches by 2 feet 10 inches and 1 foot 5 inches thick.
We next scrambled up a wooded mountain, steep enough, but nothing to the downward scramble. There was no particular road: one had to stick one's heels into trailing masses of sharp chips and blocks of red stone and let them slide as short a way as they would. The booted portion of our party began to feel great anxiety as to foot-gear. We wondered if our boots could possibly last to Tamarida where we had left a good deal of baggage, i.e. clothes that we had needed on the steamer. We used to apply the gums of various trees to the soles and toes to retard consumption. The camels sat down and slid, or looked as if they were doing so; the camel-men, holding the tails, nearly lay on their backs; but we reached the river safely, encamped there, and rode most of next day up a valley, crossing the water often. We had to wind in and out of clumps of trees, sometimes lying on our camels to get under branches, and finally, after going through thick woods, stopped at the foot of some mighty mountains.
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. The village was quite hidden by trees and creepers, but its inhabitants were away on the higher pasturage, and our men occupied the empty tenements.
DRAGON'S-BLOOD TREES AT YEHAZAHAZ
Dragon's-Blood Trees at Yehazahaz
We stayed there a couple of days, and the first evening as we were sitting in our tent after tea, a tremendous noise and shouting proceeded from the direction of our kitchen. This proved to be occasioned by the discovery of some long-suspected sugar thieves. They were the three youngest of our camel-drivers. They were all tied to a palm-tree with their arms round it, and Ammar began scourging them with a rope. I begged them off; my husband thought I had been foolish, particularly as the scourging had not been ordered by him. The boys certainly did not seem to mind it a bit. However, the elder men consulted and Ammar brought a rupee next morning as a fine, which my husband thought it right to accept.
The red mountains here assume a greyish-white appearance. The land shells seemed to grow larger on the tops of the mountains. We found some about 3 inches in length.
On leaving Yehazahaz there was no riding for us, but a climb afoot straight up a steep pass and down across a river and over a second pass. The way was mostly rough and through woods, but there were a few little grassy bits. We descended only about 100 feet and pitched our tents on a flattish, spongy piece of grass, near a pretty streamlet overhung with begonias and many other flowers, at a spot called Adahan, where a sort of pass winds its way between the granite peaks. We were encamped for several days at an elevation of close on 3,000 feet above the sea-level. Here, when the mist came down upon us, we were enveloped in clouds, rain, and wretchedness; but the air to us was cool and invigorating, though I fear our scantily clad attendants found it anything but agreeable.
There were drawbacks, too, to the enjoyment of our mountain camps in the shape of several kinds of pernicious grasses, which grew thickly round our tent, and the seeds of which penetrated relentlessly into everything. Grass thorns invaded our day and night raiment, getting into places hitherto deemed impregnable, and the prickly sensation caused by them was irritating to both body and mind.
From Adahan one could easily ascend to the highest ground; though perhaps one ought not to say easily, for climbing is no joke up here, through dense vegetation and rocky gullies. Looking down into the gorges, we enjoyed some splendid effects, and were constantly reminded of the Grand Corral of Madeira.
There were many trees and flowering shrubs, rocky needles, and pinnacles all around us, and a view of the ocean to the north; and by climbing up we could catch sight of the ocean to southward too.
My husband tried to ascend the highest peak in the island—Driate it is called by the Bedouin—but when he had gone as far as possible the peak soared above him about 400 feet sheer and impracticable, quite bare of vegetation. An Alpine Club would find plenty of amusement in Sokotra. The bottoms and sides of the valleys, filled with bulbous plants and rank vegetation, enormous dragon's-blood-trees, the long valleys of Fereghet and Yehazahaz winding their way to the coast, the rugged mass of Bit Molek, and the view over both seas make, my husband said, as interesting a natural view as it is possible to conceive. The clouds had fortunately rolled themselves up for the occasion.
We had, however, during our stay so much wet that we had a special fire to dine by, and by it a very rudely constructed clothes-horse to dry our dripping garments. Our kitchen fire was the constant resort of the Bedouin of the neighbourhood, coming to see us and bring provisions to sell. We had plenty of milk and one day bought a tiny calf for three rupees. The camel-men who skinned it tried to keep the head as their perquisite, but Matthaios secured it and put it in our soup. To our surprise the two Somali servants, Hashi and Mahmoud, would in consequence eat none of the soup nor any meat. They usually ate anything that was going.
A lame Bedou brought us some green oranges and potatoes, which were really the roots of a convolvulus: they were not bad when baked in the ashes, but hard when boiled. He also brought us a sweet herb which they use to stuff pillows with. The greetings of the Bedou always amuse us; they first put cheek to cheek and then rub noses in the most matter-of-fact way, so we may infer that this mode of salutation is in vogue in the Mahra country. It was pleasant to be among such friendly people, who had no horror of us and did not even seem much surprised at seeing us there, and to be able to go off quite alone for a scramble so safely.
CHAPTER XXXIV
BACK TO THE OCEAN
After several days at Adahan we climbed down northward. Our journey was only three miles along a very narrow valley, but we made much more of it climbing after plants and shells. We stopped at the first little flat place that would hold our tents, a sort of small shelf more than knee-deep in that awful grass; and though we really enjoyed that camp for two days, pain was our portion all the time. The scenery was magnificent, and all the more striking that the mountains, having cast off their lichen covering, gleamed out in their glowing red. All round us there was such steepness that it was a work of great difficulty to set up my camera anywhere.
We had a very steep descent after that over sharp stones to the plain, my husband and I, as usual, when on foot, starting before the others, and though we were sorry when we finally quitted the mountains, we were glad enough to find ourselves on our camels again, to be carried to Suk, where we decided to stay, as we heard that the sultan's boat was there and the sultan himself was not so very far off. We wished to engage the ship for our return to Aden.
Before leaving the s.s. Canara my husband had begged the captain to take a letter to Bombay requesting that the B.I.S.N. Co. would send a steamer for us, and let us know about it by some dhow. A dhow had arrived from Bombay with no letter for us, but with news of the plague: so we became afraid that if the plague prevented the steamer from coming and we waited for it, we might have to stick on Sokotra during the whole of the south-west monsoon. My husband therefore began parleying about sailing-boats and had sent Ammar from Adahan, and the sultan had sent his captain up to meet us.
Dr. Schweinfurth sees in the present name of Sokotra a Hindoo origin, and the survival of the Hindoo name Diu Sukutura, which the Greeks, after their easy-going fashion, changed into Dioscorides. This is very ingenious and most likely correct. When the Portuguese reached the island in 1538, they found the Arab sheikh dwelling at the capital called Zoko, now in ruins, and still called Suk, a survival doubtless of the original name.
The old capital of Zoko is a delicious spot, and the ruins are buried in groves of palm-trees by the side of a large and deep lagoon of fresh water; this lagoon is only separated from the sea by a narrow belt of sand and shingle, and it seems to me highly probable that this was the ancient harbour where the boats in search of the precious products of the island found shelter. The southern coast of Arabia affords many instances of these silted harbours, and the northern coast of Sokotra is similar, many of the lagoons, or khors as they call them, being deep and running over a mile inland. The view at Suk over the wide lagoon fringed with palm groves, on to the jagged heights of Mount Haghier rising immediately behind, is, I think, to be placed amongst the most enchanting pictures I have ever seen.
Extensive excavation at Suk might probably bring to light some interesting relics of the earlier inhabitants of this island, but it would have to be deep, as later edifices have been erected here; and labour and tools would have to be brought from elsewhere.
The present capital is called Tamarida by Arabs and foreigners, and Hadibo by the natives, and its construction is quite of a modern date; the name is apparently a Latinised form of the Arabic tamar, or date fruit, which tree is largely cultivated there.
Much is said by old writers about the Greek colonists who came to Sokotra in ancient times, but I cannot help thinking that the Hellenic world never carried its enterprise much in this direction, for, if the Greeks did, they have left no trace whatsoever of their existence there.
I should think few places in the world have pursued the even tenor of their way over so many centuries as Sokotra has. Yakut, writing seven hundred years ago, speaks of the Arabs as ruling here; the author of the 'Periplus' more than one thousand years ago tells us the same thing; and now we have a representative of the same country and the same race governing the island still.
Sokotra has followed the fortunes of Arabia; throughout, the same political and religious influences which have been at work in Arabia have been felt here. Sokotra, like Arabia, has gone through its several stages of Pagan, Christian, and Mohammedan beliefs.
The first time the island came in contact with modern ideas and modern civilisation was when the Portuguese occupied it in 1538, and this was, as we have seen, ephemeral. Then the island fell under the rod of Wahabi persecution at the beginning of this century, as did nearly the whole of Arabia in those days. In 1835 it was for a short time brought under direct British influence, and Indian troops encamped on the plain of Tamarida. It was then uncertain whether Aden or Sokotra would be chosen as a coaling station for India, and Lieutenant Wellsted was sent in the Palinurus to take a survey of it; but doubtless the harbourless condition of the island, and the superior position of Aden in that respect, caused the decision in favour of Aden.
The advantages Aden afforded for fortification and for commanding the mouth of the Red Sea influenced the decision, and Sokotra, with its fair mountains and rich fertility, was again allowed to relapse into its pristine state of quiescence, and the British soldier was condemned to sojourn on the barren, burning rocks of Aden, instead of in this island paradise.
Finally, in 1876, to prevent the island being acquired by any other nation, the British Government entered into a treaty with the sultan, by which the latter gets 360 dollars a year, and binds himself and his heirs and successors, 'amongst other things, to protect any vessel, foreign or British, with the crew, passengers, and cargo, that may be wrecked on the island of Sokotra and its dependencies,' and it is understood that the island is never to be ceded to a foreign power without British consent.
A more peaceful, law-abiding people it would be hard to find elsewhere—such a sharp contrast to the tribes on the South Arabian coast. They seem never to quarrel amongst themselves, as far as we could see, and the few soldiers Sultan Salem possesses have a remarkably easy time of it. Our luggage was invariably left about at night without anyone to protect it, and none of it was stolen, and after our journeys in Southern Arabia the atmosphere of security was exceedingly agreeable.
The only thieves were the white and yellow vultures who sat on guard around our kitchen and were always ready to carry off our meat, and made many valiant attempts to do so.
Money is scarce in the island, and so are jealousies, and probably the Bedouin of Sokotra will remain in their bucolic innocence to the end of time, if no root of bitterness in the shape of modern civilisation is planted amongst them.
It is undoubtedly a providential thing for the Sokotran that his island is harbourless, that his mountains are not auriferous, and that the modern world is not so keen about dragon's-blood, which is still called 'the blood of two brothers,' frankincense and myrrh, as the ancients were. A thing we regretted very much in leaving Sokotra was the delightful peace of travelling without an armed escort, which we had not enjoyed for years; we knew we should soon be travelling again with soldiers in Arabia.
There is a wretched hamlet of Somali at Suk, which had been visited by us from Hadibo. We had only one night at Suk, and in the morning my husband and Matthaios went off on foot to Haulah or Haulaf to see the boat. This is where the sultan lives. I believe the boat was actually at Khor Dilisha. They did not think it would have been so far or they would have taken camels. It was a three-mile tramp in the sand.
My husband and Matthaios came back from Haulah very hot and tired, not having seen the sultan; he was sleeping or praying all the time, the mode in which Moslems say 'not at home'—in short he was keeping out of the way. They described the boat as everything that was delightful, though people not so well accustomed as we were to voyaging in these ships might not agree with them, but it was impossible to come to terms. They had had a very stormy interview with the sultan's captain, who said that 1,000 rupees was the lowest price. My husband said he had paid no more for the steamer, and we had all had beds provided and food; 800 was his highest price.
The sultan has a miserable house in a very uncomfortable spot, surrounded by a few huts belonging to fishermen, who go out on little rafts made of bundles of palm-leaf ribs to drop the traps for fish.
THE HAGHIER MOUNTAINS FROM SUK (From a water-colour sketch by Theodore Bent)
The Haghier Mountains from Suk (From a water-colour sketch by Theodore Bent)
We then moved to Hadibo again, going along the shore, and encamping quite in a different place to that in which we were at first; we were in a nice date grove by the lagoon and close to the beach. We now commenced a time of dreadful uncertainty as to how or when we could leave the island.
Hearing nothing from the sultan, Matthaios was sent on a camel to offer 800 rupees, and returned most indignant, 2,000 being the lowest price asked, i.e. 124l. Later the captain came, agreed to the 800, and said my husband must pay 400 at sunset to get wood and water. As the men never came for the money till we were in bed, they were sent off till next morning, when they came very early and asked for paper to write the contract. My husband produced some, with pen and ink. They said they could only write with a pencil, but when that was got the captain said 500 must be paid: he did not want it himself, nor yet the sultan, but the sailors did; my husband then said he would complain to the Wali of Aden, and they all suddenly departed, and the captain, we heard, went to Kadhoup, where there was another boat, in order to prevent its owner spoiling the sultan's bargain.
Two days after we had a message to say we were to pay the whole 800 rupees at once, that the sultan was coming to fetch it himself, and that we should positively start that day.
No sultan came, but next day a very affectionate letter from him said he would come round with the ship at sunset. We had to forgive his non-appearance that time, as there was such a storm that we could not, in any case, have passed the surf. Next day he came by land to the castle, where we had seen him, and sent to ask my husband to bring the money; so he went, attended by myrmidons bearing money-bags, pen, and paper, but as the sultan would not sign the contract, the money was brought back. At midday there was an apology sent with two lambs and a little calf, and at sunset the sultan really arrived at our camp, signed the contract, and carried off the money; so we left next day.
We had plenty to do, so were quite occupied all this time. I used to develop photographs, for I had my dark tent set up. I had awful trials to bear. The water was so warm that the gelatine frilled in spite of alum, and what was worse, when I put the negatives in the hyposulphate of soda they ran off their supports like so much hot starch. Some I saved, but I never dared do more than carefully dip them in the 'hypo,' and even then it seemed to froth up at once. I had a good many negatives marked by this, and had to smooth off the bubbles with my hands, regardless of their colour, and I had to work at night for coolness.
We had very little milk while there; none till the last two days. A man was drinking a bowlful in our camp, and this is the surprising way in which he did it: he dipped his hand in and sucked his fingers (not clean ones at first), and so continued till he had finished it all up. Our visitors used sometimes suddenly to hurry off to pray, choosing a bit of damp sand, and when they returned some of the sand was sticking to their foreheads. The longer that sand stayed on the better, as it was considered a sign of a religious man.
We had an anxious battle with white ants also. A basket was nearly devoured by them, but our best steamer raiment was preserved by the inner lining of American cloth, though they were sitting on it in sheets. We had remarked in South Africa that they never eat mackintosh. The basket was brushed over the sea, steeped in the lagoon, and inundated with boiling water. This was the only thing attacked of all that we had left behind when we were in Hadibo the first time.
Our brown ship, 70 feet in length by 15 wide, did really look a very 'mere nutshell' to go 500 miles over the great ocean in, but it was far, far better than some we had been in.
From the deck Sokotra looked almost too beautiful to leave.
The weather was very rough, the sailors not nearly ready, and it was midday before we started. By this time all the servants were prostrate, and my husband had to get the sailors to help him in setting up our beds, and arranging the baggage in the place between decks astern, which was 3½ feet high, and, as the beds had to be tied to each other, 2 feet apart, as well as to the sides of the ship, we had to bend low and step high when moving about. The two Somali servants managed wonderfully to take it in turns to be well after a bit, but Matthaios was one of the worst, so food was a difficulty and his wrath was great when, Mahmoud having made us tea like ink, he found the tea canister empty. We had rough weather enough, but the wind was favourable. We were always afraid of falling off our seats at meals, for we were perched anywhere, on anything we could get, round our kitchen box as a table. Bruises alone were not the cause of our terror, but the fact is that the sailors were always shaking their raiment and making those searching and successful investigations, accompanied by that unmistakable movement of the elbows and backs of the thumb-nails, which literally 'give one the creeps.'
The captain had a compass, but no other instrument of any kind, and none of the sailors seemed to know the way. They showed us islands, which we knew to be such, as the African coast, and Cape Guardafui where we knew it could not be.
On the third evening we saw the Asiatic coast, and at sunset we saw the jagged Jebel Shemshan very far away, and of course hoped to see it nearer next day. But when we woke in the morning, my husband went out to see the cause of the unusual rocking of the ship and still more unusual silence, and found everyone asleep and the ship lying to out of sight of any land.
The captain said they imagined we had passed Aden in the dark, and thinking they should soon be among rocks or coral-reefs had stopped; a dreadful uproar then arose, and everyone on the ship shouted different directions for steering. My husband desired them to steer north that we might find land, as none of them had any idea of our longitude. At last we saw a steamer, presumably from Aden, and getting north of her and steering west we at length had Africa on our port side again, and reached Aden by the following sunrise, though it took us till two o'clock to get into port.
