Between Jedid and Ras Fartak the land is low and recedes, and as we sailed along we decided that it was the mouth of some big valley from the interior, and after careful cross-examination of the sultan of Kishin and our sailors we gathered that this was actually the mouth of the great Hadhramout valley, which does not take the extraordinary bend that is given in our maps, but runs in almost a straight line from west to east, and the bend represents an entirely distinct valley, the Wadi Mosila, which comes out at Saihut.
We were two days getting to Sheher, anchoring both nights; the first, as 'dirty weather' was causing alarm, was a very noisy one, the servants and sailors talking and singing all night to be in readiness. The second night we were put to bed very quietly among the strange and weird stacks of rocks at Ras Dis, and had a heavy shower of rain, which, of course, penetrated our matting roof.
When we reached Sheher, a messenger was sent ashore with a letter to Sultan Hussein, and a message was returned inviting us to take up our quarters in the same unfinished palace where we had lived ten months before. One of the first people to greet us was the nàkhoda of the ship on which we had gone to Aden from Sheher. The word reis for captain is never used. Ghaleb Mia was at the house to meet us, and we were much interested by finding that the governors of everywhere round about were in Sheher to give up their accounts. He of Hagarein was scowling, but they of Dis, Kosseir, and Haura seemed friendly and pleased to see us. We heard good accounts of various patients, and were especially pleased to hear that the daughter of the governor of Dis, who had for some time been bedridden with a bad leg, had been well ever since our visit—quite cured by Holloway's ointment. The next day there were great negotiations and plannings as to our future course.
Our scheme was that we should go from Sheher to Inat in the Hadhramout valley, down to Bir Borhut and Kabr Houd, and thence eastward to Wadi Mosila, back to Sheher by the coast, and then try to go westward—or, as to us appeared preferable, to go up by the Wadi Mosila to Wadi Hadhramout, and then to try to get to the west without returning to Sheher.
There we stuck for some days, listening to any gossip we could hear, and taking evening walks by the sea, guarded by soldiers. We were told that Sultan Salàh of Shibahm had lost his head wife, the sister of Manassar of Makalla, but had consoled himself by marrying four others about two months afterwards, and had divorced two of them already. The family of Al Kaiti are not very good friends among themselves; a soldier discharged by Salàh of Shibahm is always quickly engaged by Hussein of Sheher, and if Hussein dismisses a servant he is sure of a place with Manassar. They stop each other's letters and annoy each other in many ways, but are always ready to unite if any strange foe assails their family.
Manassar had quarrelled with his wife, the daughter of Salàh, because Salàh, on the death of his wife, had refused to marry a third daughter of Manassar, as his dying wife requested. Hussein had only one wife and no children.
There had been great trouble with the Hamoumi, and only three months before two soldiers had been killed about half a mile from Sheher. Ghaleb Mia and Hussein Mia dared not go to Inbula or anywhere outside their walls without forty or fifty men, and when Salàh's daughter, who is married to the seyyid, came to Sheher, she had to come by a circuitous route, with an escort of five hundred men.
When a Bedou has committed a murder, he runs to the houses of the seyyids, where there is sanctuary, and gets absolution on paying four or five hundred dollars, according to the rank of the murdered man. Thus travelling is difficult unless you have paid siyar, and a relation of the siyara is kept in prison at Sheher. All this time the behaviour of the sultans and their hospitality to us were very different to what it had been the year before; they sent us no presents of food, nor did they ever invite Imam Sharif to a meal, which they had constantly done when we were last there. Their manner was stiff and constrained, and they said they themselves had been badly treated for their kindness to us and that they were now considered Kafirs themselves. The fact is that all the Mohammedan world was in a state of restless activity, as the jehad, or holy war, was being preached. And now I will tell a most remarkable circumstance, quite the most extraordinary in this book.
Sultan Hussein told my husband on February 1 that a consul had been murdered at Jedda.
We were most excited about this, and anxiously inquired about it when we reached Aden, but heard that no murder had taken place, nor did it till May, when several consuls were murdered.