We took five days in getting from Kalenzia to Tamarida, and found the water question on this route rather a serious one until we reached Mori and Kadhoup, where the streams from the high mountains began. Mori is a charming little spot by the sea, with a fine stream and a lagoon, and palms and bright yellow houses as a foreground to the dark-blue mountains.
Kadhoup is another fishing village built by the edge of the sea, with a marshy waste of sand separating it from the hills; it possesses a considerable number of surf-boats and canoes, and catamarans, on which the fishermen ply their trade. Just outside the town women were busy baking large pots for the export of butter, placing large fires around them for this purpose. The Sokotrans are very crude in their ceramic productions, and seem to have not the faintest inclination to decorate their jars in any way. There were quantities of flamingoes on the beach.
We encamped at the foot of the hills, with a watery and sandy waste between us and the village.
There are the foundations of some curious unfinished houses near Kadhoup, also assigned to the Portuguese; but there appears to me to be no reason whatsoever for ascribing these miserable remains to the builders of the fine forts at Maskat, the founders of Ormuz and Goa, and the lords of the East up to the seventeenth century.
The mountains here jut right out into the sea, forming a bold and rugged coast line, and the path which connects the two places is as fine a one to look upon as I have ever seen.
We had read a very awe-inspiring account of this path by Lieutenant Wellsted, and so were quite disposed to believe all our camel-drivers told us of the awful dangers to be encountered. They had formed a plan whereby their Kadhoup friends might come in for some of our rupees. We were not only to pay for camels, but also for a boat. Some, at least, of the camels were sure, they said, to fall into the sea from the cliffs, and our possessions, if not our lives themselves, might be lost. They said that we ought to send our baggage by boat, even if we risked the mountain path ourselves.
We assured them that we had landed in Sokotra (which they pronounce Sakoutra) to see the island, and not to circumnavigate it. Others could pass, so we could.
Their last hope was in my hoped-for faintheartedness. They watched till I was alone in the tent, and, having recounted all the perils over again, said:
'Let the men go over the mountain, but you, O Bibi! will go in a boat, safely. You cannot climb, you cannot ride the camel, no one can hold you; the path is too narrow, and you will be afraid.'
That being no good, old Sheikh Ali came. He was anxious, poor old man, to be spared the exertion, and eventually rode all the way, except when there was no room. He said I should go in a boat with him; he would take care of me and give me musk (which he called misk) when we reached Hadibo. He often promised misk, but I never got any; and here I may remark that I have frequently heard Maskàt pronounced Mìskit in Arabia amongst the Bedouin of the East.