I will not say more of the language than that instead of our little word I the Sokoteri is hemukomòn and the Mahri evomúhshom.
I wish we could speak confidently about the origin of the so-called Bedouin, the pastoral inhabitants of the island, who live in the valleys and heights of Mount Haghier, and wander over the surface of the island with their flocks and herds.
It has been often asserted that these Bedouin are troglodytes, or cave-dwellers pure and simple, but I do not think this is substantially correct. None of them, as far as we could ascertain, dwell always or by preference in caves; but all of them own stone-built tenements, however humble, in some warm and secluded valley, and they only abandon these to dwell in caves when driven to the higher regions in search of pasturage for their flocks during the dry season, which lasts from November till the south-west monsoon bursts in the beginning of June.
Whilst we were on the island the season was exceptionally dry, and most of the villages in the valleys were entirely abandoned for the mountain caves.
The Bedou is decidedly a handsome individual, lithe of limb like his goats, and with a café-au-lait-coloured skin; he has a sharp profile, excellent teeth; he often wears a stubbly black beard and has beautifully pencilled eyebrows, and, though differing entirely in language, in physique and type he closely resembles the Bedouin found in the Mahri and Gara mountains. Furthermore, the mode of life is the same—dwelling in caves when necessary, but having permanent abodes on the lower lands; and they have several other striking points in common. Greetings take place between the Arabian Bedouin and the Sokotran Bedouin in similar fashion, by touching each cheek and then rubbing the nose. We found the Bedouin of Mount Haghier fond of dancing and playing their teherane, and also peculiarly lax in their religious observances; and though ostensibly conforming to Mohammedan practice, they observe next to none of their precepts; and it is precisely the same with the Bedouin whom we met in the Gara mountains. There is certainly nothing African about the Sokotran Bedouin; therefore I am inclined to consider them as a branch of that aboriginal race which inhabited Arabia, with a language of its own; and when Arabia is philologically understood and its various races investigated, I expect we shall hear of several new languages spoken by different branches of this aboriginal race, and then, perhaps, a parallel will be found to the proudly isolated tongue of this remote island.
The Bedou houses are round, and surrounded by a round wall in which the flocks are penned at night; flat-roofed and covered with soil, and inside they are as destitute of interest as it is possible to conceive—a few mats on which the family sleep, a few jars in which they store their butter, and a skin churn in which they make the same. The plan of those houses that are oblong is that of two circles united by a bit of wall at one side, the door being at the other. In one house into which my husband penetrated he found a bundle hanging from the ceiling, which he discovered to be a baby by the exposure of one of its little feet.
Everything is poor and pastoral. The Bedouin have hardly any clothes to cover themselves with, nothing to keep them warm when the weather is damp, save a home-spun sheet, and they have no ideas beyond those connected with their flocks. The closest intimacy exists between a Bedou and his goats and his cows; the animals understand and obey certain calls with absolute accuracy, and you generally see a Sokotran shepherdess walking before her flock, and not after it. The owners stroke and caress their little cows until they are as tame as dogs.
The cows in Sokotra are far more numerous than one would expect, and there is excellent pasturage for them; they are a very pretty little breed, smaller than our Alderney, without the hump, and with the long dewlap; they are fat and plump, and excellent milkers.
The Bedou does very little in the way of cultivation, but when grass is scarce, and consequently milk, he turns his attention to the sowing of jowari in little round fields dotted about the valleys, with a wall round to keep the goats off. In each of these he digs a well, and waters his crop before sunrise and after sunset; the field is divided into little compartments by stones, the better to retain the soil and water; and sometimes you will see a Bedou papa with his wife and son sitting and tilling these bijou fields with pointed bits of wood, for other tools are unknown to them.
We hired our camels for our journey eastwards from the Arab merchants who live at Tamarida or Hadibo; they are the sole camel proprietors in the island, as the Bedouin own nothing but their flocks; and excellent animals these camels are, too, the strongest and tallest we had seen. Of our camel-men, some were Bedouin and some were negroes, and we found them on the whole honest and obliging, though with the usual keen eye for a possible bakshish, which is not uncommon elsewhere.
