A Journey through the Yemen and some General Remarks Upon that Country by Walter Harris

LAHEJ TO KHOREIBA.

When I awoke the heat of the day was over, so, under the guidance of Saïd and one of my camel-men, I sauntered out to see the town of Howta. The place presents, on the whole, an appearance rather of dirt and squalor than of what one expects the capital of an Arab Sultan to be like. The streets are narrow, and built without any idea of regularity, turning and twisting as they do in every direction; nor are the houses even built in any attempt at being in line. Here one juts out into the narrow byway, there another stands back off the street behind a thick hedge of bristling thorns. Nearly all the houses are surrounded by these zarebas or yards, into which the cattle are driven of a night. Strange mangy dogs bark at one as one passes along, and their bark is echoed from within by the yelps of puppies. There is, in fact, but little to see in Howta. Perhaps the sights best worth noticing are in the market, where under the shade of an enormous _b'dam_ tree sit women selling bread, while the surrounding strip of sand is crowded by Arabs with long spears and their camels. Here also are exposed for sale vegetables, camel and horse fodder, and many other market products, which are sent on to Aden. Not far from this market are the bazaars, narrow covered-in streets with rough little mud-brick shops on either side, filled with cotton goods, for the most part of European manufacture; a few gaudy muslins from India, however, giving a brilliant hue to some of these dusky little box-like shops. A whole bazaar is put aside for the workers in metals. It forms a thatched square, divided up by low walls, some three feet in height, like sheep-pens, in which the various metal-workers sit, each with his forge. The scene is a most picturesque one. The sunlight falling in through holes in the ill-thatched roofing strikes upon the burnished metal until the daggers and spear-heads sparkle and glisten like diamonds. The air is hazy with the fumes of the forges, and rings with the never-ceasing fall of the hammer upon the metals. And what workers! Great lithe men, grand in the exposure of their bare limbs; their raven locks loosely falling upon their shoulders, and waving backwards and forwards with the motion of the workmen's bodies. The workmanship of Howta is rough. In spear-heads they excel; but they fail in the silver-work of their dagger-sheaths to attain the results reached by the silversmiths of the larger towns inland.

Returning to the _café_ where I had put up, I found the camels ready to start, so mounting once more, we set out. Leaving the town behind us, the way took us for the first few miles through rich cultivated land, watered by a careful system of irrigation, and gorgeous in its verdure. Emerging from the fields, we struck into wilder country, torn up into great ravines by the Wadi Lahej-a river that, in the dry season, is but a tiny stream, but after rains a series of vast torrents, its many channels becoming filled with the huge mass of water, often carrying away much of the cultivated land, and doing no little damage. Sometimes the trunks of big trees from the far interior are carried over the desert-where at ordinary times the sand absorbs the water to such an extent that it never reaches the sea-and cast into the bay at Aden. From this it can be judged how severe are the rainfalls when such comparatively rare occurrences do take place.

The river which I mention here under the name of the Wadi Lahej is also known by the name of the Mobarat. It has two channels to the sea, but, as already stated, is at most seasons exhausted by the desert sands of the low-lying coast country. The principal channel is the Wadi el-Kebir, or great river, which flows out near Hashma, a small village in the Bay of Aden, the other being the Wadi es-Seghir, or small river, which empties itself into the Ghubbat Seilan, a bay to the north-east of Aden, and formed by the peninsula itself and by Ras Seilan, a point some thirty miles along the coast.

Wild and depressing the scene was. Ahead of us, almost as far as the eye could reach, stretched the desert, unbroken by even a single bush, and gradually sloping up to broken rocky peaks, which glowed a dull leaden crimson under the rays of the setting sun. We were leaving the oasis behind now, and no longer the peasants returning from the fields stood to gaze on us as we passed by; no longer their wild songs rang in our ears-songs sung by the sons of the desert and echoed by its daughters, as, hoe in hand, or leading the flocks and herds, they wandered back to the town. Now it was only occasionally that a warrior with spear passed us, on foot or on camel-back. Then night fell,-night such as we had experienced on the previous march, and which I have so dismally failed to describe,-night which fails all description. But we went on, the camels patiently plodding their way. It was eleven o'clock before we halted and spread our carpet under a clump of thorny trees, close to the river-bed, which we had been following since our departure from Howta. Here we rested for a few hours, our fire twinkling and flickering and bursting into little flames as we threw the thorny twigs upon it, for the night was chilly and a heavy dew falling.