The caves were not all dug down and around a courtyard, but were often high up on a perpendicular wall, and were reached by steps.
The women offered me dates and showed me their looms. I saw where they slept, generally on benches like low tables, called by them “mokera.”
In one of the underground vaults, to which the access was through a very heavy gate, was an oil-mill, and in another a granary.
After spending a couple of hours in the shelter of the caves, we again started riding through the valley in a southerly direction, and passing through large palm and olive groves. Nowhere in the mountains had I seen such rich vegetation.
Close to the village were some ten women clad in dark blue, drawing water from one of the few wells on this mountain. Two large columns, formed of hewn palm stems, were inserted on either side of the well, so as to slope inwards. These supported another palm stem placed horizontally on the top of them; this again sustained a wooden disk by means of which the water was hauled up. This system of drawing water is rather comical, for the women, instead of hauling up the bucket by moving their hands on the rope, seize the latter and take a quick run, the distance covered being equal to the depth of the well. When they have thus drawn a pitcherful of water they return to the well to take another run.
We constantly passed spots in the valley planted more or less largely with olive trees, but some of these were in an unhealthy condition, showing grey or yellow instead of a deep fresh green. If rain were not soon to fall these would die, and it would be many years before others could be grown and bear fruit.
It cut me to the heart to see all this wealth on the verge of destruction, and the more so when I learnt that the Khalifa owned many of the trees. Rain had fallen in many other districts, but none in this.
Quitting the valley we turned to the right, and rode in a westerly direction amongst colossal cliffs and into a wild ravine, where we were surrounded to the north, west, and south by towering rock pinnacles. Only the very centre of this chasm was reached by the sun, which, hidden behind the mountain, streamed in glorious radiance through a rift in the wall of the cliff. On either side of this rift, with the light playing on their roughly piled grey masses, were the two villages of Tujan, clinging to the precipitous sides like swallows’ nests to a wall. On one side, high up the mountain, I caught a glimpse of what appeared to be an eagle’s nest as the sunlight glanced on it. On inquiring what it was I received the reply that in old, very old, days the village people resided there, before they moved lower down the slope.
When we arrived at a difficult pass, my guide, “Erzib ben Hamed,” who had his home in the village, asked me to dismount. So, leading our animals, we walked slowly up, our feet slipping, and the stones rattling down behind us. Beneath some olive trees we again mounted to make our entry.
We were now near enough to discern that the rift was a deep ravine; on either side was an irregular mass of dreary, grey houses piled one over the other, above which the nearly perpendicular cliffs rose steeply to almost the very top of the mountain, broken only in one place by a flat surface. On the side nearest to us stood the ruins of the village of bygone days, perched like a mediæval castle on the summit of the cliff.