The term "Yemen," meaning the land on the right hand, is the name applied to that whole tract of land in Arabia south of Mecca and west of the Hadramaut, which has always been looked upon as a dependency or province.

In early historical times the Yemen was occupied by Homerites and other aborigines, but later on by the Himyarites, who drove many of the original inhabitants to seek a new home in Africa, where, having intermarried with the Gallas, Kaffirs, and Dankalis, they formed a new race which is generally known nowadays as the Somali.

The physical conformation of the Yemen is not unlike that of the portion of Africa immediately opposite, where there is as great diversity in climate and soil as there is in the manners and customs of the peoples.

From Aden, the Eastern Gibraltar, right northward there stretches a range of mountains chiefly formed of igneous rocks that have been bent, torn, and twisted like the iron girders of a huge building that has been destroyed by fire and almost covered by the ruin. Bare peak after peak rises from the mass of dÉbris yet everywhere pierced, scarred, and seamed by the monsoon floods seeking their way to the ocean bed; they seldom reach it, however, as a stream and never as a river, because of the barren, scorched, sandy zone which belts the Red Sea and sucks into its huge maw everything that the hills send down.

Like his country the Yemen Arab is girded about with an arid zone of reserve which few Europeans have ever crossed, but when they have managed to do so, according to the individual they have met, they have found it may be a man with a heart as hard as a nether millstone. Marrying one day and divorcing almost the next, only to marry another as soon as he can scrape together sufficient funds to purchase a wife, this type of man looks upon woman as an inferior animal formed for man's gratification, and to be flung aside like a sucked orange when the juice is gone.

Or on the other hand, they may find men whom real love has saved and made to give forth warm affection and true domestic joy, just as the terraced ridges on their mountain slopes retain the God-given moisture and send forth a luxuriant crop of strengthening cereals, delicious coffee, and luscious grapes.

I have known young men of twenty-four who have been married and divorced half a dozen times, and also Arabs whose days are in the sere and yellow leaf who never had but one wife.

There was a native chief who used to come occasionally to our dispensary whose children were numbered by three figures, and Khan Bahadur Numcherjee Rustomjee, C. I. E., who was for many years a magistrate in Aden, told me he knew a woman who had been legally married more than fifty times and had actually forgotten the names of the fathers of two of her children!

One day an Arab brought a fine-looking woman to our dispensary, and as he was very kind to her and seemed to love her very much I ventured to tell him that she was suffering from diabetes mellitus, and that in order to preserve her life he would require to be careful with her diet. He thanked me most profoundly, promised to do all that he could for her, took her home and divorced her the same day, casting her off in the village and leaving her without a copper.

Next morning she came weeping to the dispensary and I tried to get compensation, but the man pleaded poverty, and because I was the cause of her plight I felt in duty bound to support her until she died some months later.

Another man of more than fifty years carried the wife of his youth to our dispensary on his back. She was suffering from Bright's disease and ascites, yet he toiled on and till now has shown no sign of wavering in his allegiance. Warm-hearted, courteous, and kind, I look upon him as one of nature's noblemen whom even Mohammedanism cannot spoil.

Another man whose wife had an ovarian tumor brought her down from Hodeidah for me to operate on, and faithfully attended to all her wants while she was ill, and at last when the wound caused by operation was healed, took her home joyfully as a bridegroom takes home the bride of his choice.

A third man, who had either two or three wives at the time, called me to see one who had been in labor for six days. When the Arab midwives confessed that they could do nothing more for her and when he saw her sinking, love triumphed over prejudice, and he came hurriedly for me. I performed a CÆsarean section, and so earned the gratitude of both husband and wife, who, though years have gone, still take a warm interest in all that concerns the mission.

I wish, however, that I could say that cases like these were common experiences with me, but unfortunately the reverse is the case. Men seem always ashamed to speak of their wives and when wanting medicine for them or me to visit them always speak of them as, "my family"—"the mother of my children"—"my uncle's daughters," or like circumlocution. Once I boxed a boy's ears for speaking of his own mother as his "father's cow!"

Brought up in ignorance, unable to read, write, sew, or do fancy work—in all my experience out here I have never known of a real Arab girl being sent to school nor a real Arab woman who knew the alphabet. Sold at a marriageable age, in many cases to the highest bidder, then kept closely secluded in the house, is it any wonder that her health is undermined and when brought to child-bed there is no strength left?

Called one day to see a Somali woman I missed the whip usually seen in a Somali's house, and jokingly asked how her husband managed to keep her in order without a whip. She, taking her husband and me by the hand, said, "You are my father and this is my husband. Love unites us, and where love is there is no need for whips."

I was so pleased with her speech that I offered her husband, who was out of work, a subordinate place in our dispensary. Yet less than a month later I heard that he had divorced his wife and turned her out of doors.

The following case will, I think, illustrate the usual attitude of the Arabs in the Yemen towards womankind:

A man whose wife had been in labor two days came asking for medicine to make her well. My reply was that it was necessary to see the woman before I could give such a drug as he wished. "Well," said he, "she will die before I allow you or any other man to see her," and two days after I heard of her death.

I have often remonstrated with the men for keeping their wives so closely confined and for not delighting in their company, and making them companions and friends. But almost invariably I have been answered thus, "The Prophet (upon whom be blessing and peace) said, 'Do not trouble them with what they cannot bear, for they are prisoners in your hands whom you took in trust from God.'" And therefore as prisoners they are to be kept and treated as being of inferior intellect.

I have known cases where a man gave his daughter in marriage on condition that the bridegroom would never marry another wife; but the man broke his word and married a second wife, whereupon he was summoned before the kadi, who ruled that, "When a man marries a woman on condition that he would not marry another at the same time with her, the contract is valid and the condition void because it makes unlawful what is lawful, and God knoweth all."

The consequence of such laws is that the women become prone to criminal intrigues, and I have known dozens of cases where mothers have helped their daughters and even acted as procuresses for them to avenge some slight upon them or injury done to them. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Heaven to them is little better than a place of prostitution. Why, then, should they desire it? Here they know the bitterness of being one of two or three wives, why then should they wish to be "one of seventy"?