The inhabitants were very friendly to us, and let us go into their houses and watch their occupations. The women were busy grinding limestone to make pots; and we obtained a very dirty little bag full of a kind of organic substance like small white stones, which is ground to powder, mixed with water into a whitish paste, which after a little time turns red. I think they paint the pots with it.
They were pleasant looking folk with quite a European cast of countenance, mostly ugly, and some with scanty beards, and reminding us strongly of the old frieze of the Parthenon sculptures in the Acropolis Museum at Athens. Really, they were just like them except for their colour, which is chocolate brown. We could not help thinking of the 'Moskophoros' when one came up to look at us with a lamb round his neck. We settled there for several days, not being able to go nearer Ras Momi for reasons connected with water. I cannot think it could have been really pleasant to the people of Saihon that we should have drunk up nearly all their water, and only left a little the colour of coffee behind us.
We suffered badly while there from two things; firstly from the dreadful kind of grass upon which we were encamped, and secondly from a regular gale of wind.
The grass, a pennisetum I believe, is one we knew and hated in Mashonaland. The seed is like a little grain of very sharp oats, well barbed, which carries behind it into your clothes a thread like a fish-hook, about 2 inches long.
As for the wind, when we came home one afternoon we found Matthaios in a most dreadful state, fearing the tents would be down. He was trying to get the outer flies off alone, and was delighted when my husband and I, the only two other experienced tent-dwellers, came to his assistance. For days we might as well have lived in a drum, for the noise of this tempest.
There was a little round enclosure to keep goats in; we knew that Hashi and Mahmoud had taken this as their home, and we were satisfied that no matter which way the wind blew they were sheltered; but one evening before dinner we heard that Mahmoud was ill with fever. We both went to see that he was comfortable, and my husband took him some quinine.
We found Hashi had put him to bed on the windy side of the enclosure, with a hard, stiff camel-mat under him, one over his body, and a third on his head. We soon moved him and wrapped him in blankets, and my husband having got some sacks and other things as a pillow, Hashi put them on the top of Mahmoud's head. We built up a waterproof tent over him, but soon had to unpack him, as the village doctor appeared on the scene, demanding a fee of two annas from my husband.
He began by making several slashes on the top of his head and cupping him with a horn, which he sucked, gave him some medicine, and having spent a little time blowing in different directions, settled down, crouching over the patient, waving his hand as if making passes to mesmerise him, and muttering a few words alternately with spitting, slightly and often, in his face.
Our joint efforts were successful in the recovery of Mahmoud, who was well next day.
It is curious that in this somewhat wild and at present uninteresting locality we found more traces of ruins and bygone habitations than are found in any other part of the island. About five miles from Ras Momi, and hidden by an amphitheatre of low hills on the watershed between the two seas, we came across the foundations of a large square building, constructed out of very large stones, and with great regularity. It was 105 feet square; the outer wall was 6 feet thick, and it was divided inside into several compartments by transverse walls. To the south-east corner was attached an adjunct, 14 by 22 feet. There was very little soil in this building; and nothing whatever save the foundations to guide us in our speculations as to what this could be. Other ruins of a ruder and more irregular character lay scattered in the vicinity, and at some remote period, when Sokotra was in its brighter days, this must have been an important centre of civilisation.