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

MENAKHA TO HODAIDAH.

The road from Menakha to the coast leads one for the first few miles along the mountains on the southern side of the valley, gradually ascending the while, until, an hour or so after leaving the town, an altitude of eight thousand feet above the sea-level is reached. At this spot a spur in the mountain is crossed, near to which is the remarkable village of Kariat el-Hajra, a rock crowned with tall stone houses, many of which are built in the strange fashion of towers. A precipice surrounds the village on every side, the lower slopes of which are cultivated in terraces. The place has the appearance of being a large and important one, and from its position must be exceedingly strong. The country immediately surrounding this spot is very beautiful, there being an abundance of water and no lack of trees, while the terraces and fields were, at the time of my visit, green with young grass and crops, and gorgeous with wild-flowers. Leaving Hajra on the right, the road begins to descend, and soon another village, more extraordinary than that we had already passed, came into sight. This is Attara. From an expanse of terraced slope rises a single pinnacle of rock some hundreds of feet in height, split perpendicularly into two divisions. On the very summit, on which there is only just room for it to stand, is a large building, apparently a house and tower. Although unable to see the track by which this, to the eye, apparently unscalable position is reached, my men informed me that there is a stairway cut in the solid rock, by means of which the inhabitants ascend and descend. Close nestling under the pinnacle is the rest of the village, built tier above tier on the steep mountain-side. The path by which we were descending zigzags down until one arrives in a sort of amphitheatre, of which the village forms an apex. The ground here is richly cultivated with coffee-trees and bananas, growing upon terraces. In one place the jungle seems to have gained possession of what was originally cultivated land, and appears in a mass of euphorbie and other strange trees and plants. Here, too, jasmine grows in wonderful abundance, the whole air being filled with its sweet fragrance.

Zigzagging down the mountain-side, we arrived before mid-day at the _café_ of Wisil, wonderfully perched on the very edge of the precipice. The place is poor enough, but a few shady huts of grass and mats have been erected round a little terraced garden, over the wall of which one gazes far down into the valley beneath. Here under a shady tree we spread our carpet and refreshed ourselves, revelling in the magnificence of our surroundings. This resting-place was situated at an elevation of a little over four thousand five hundred feet above the sea-level, so that since the morning we had descended some three thousand feet.

From this spot is obtained perhaps the most extraordinary view of the terraced mountains we had as yet obtained. These surrounding ranges are celebrated for their coffee, principally Jibel Masar and Safan, both of which lie to the north of the road. Away above the terraces the mountains rise in perpendicular precipices, and nearly every peak is crowned with one of the curious towers already described.

The view from Wisil was the last we were to see of its kind, for we were fast leaving the mountains behind and descending to the plains, or Teháma, and even from here the change to the country was appreciable, for far away to the west the great mountains became lower, and the horizon was bounded with rough barren hills, very like those we had seen around Jibel Menif, when we left the desert beyond Lahej. A weird old lady served us with coffee and food at our resting-place-a parchment-skinned grinning old hag, half clothed in torn dark-blue rags, with a lot of what looked like dirty bandages wound round her head; but she was a cheery old gossip, and Saïd took advantage of her to exhibit his wit and sarcasm, much to her amusement as well as our own.

Poor Saïd! The wear and tear of the last month had worn him a bit. Fever had paled his skin, and left him thinner than he was when he had started from Aden; but no weariness, no fever, had caused him to pay less attention to his personal charms than before, and his curly locks were as soft and silky and glossy as ever, although his loin-cloth and sash told tales of travel. Still, in all our hardships he had been ever bright and gay, and as we neared civilisation once more, and there seemed some chance of his seeing his paradise-Aden-again, his eyes regained their former twinkle, and his laugh grew more cheery than ever. With Abdurrahman it was different, and the strain and exertion he had been through had told on his more delicate constitution. Brought up in the bracing mountains of Morocco, where frosts are common, and even in the daytime the heat is never oppressive, he had felt severely the sudden changes of the tropics. All his gaiety had left him, and he scarcely spoke. It was with difficulty that we could rouse his spirits, try hard as we did, Saïd and I. Almost every evening, in spite of arsenic and quinine, fever would seize him, and he would lie awake of a night, tossing and moaning in a way that was pitiful to see and hear.