The Aòdeli women paint red lines under their eyes and down their noses and round their foreheads with a kind of earth-dye which they call hisn. Sometimes there is a round spot on the forehead and red triangles on the cheeks. One woman had her face literally dyed scarlet all over. She had a heavy necklace of beads and carried the sheep-skin coat, that she could not wear in the hot plain, rolled up and laid on her head. It is curious how dissatisfied dark people seem to be with the colour of their skins, so often trying to lighten it; the fairness of the English is in some places attributed to the soap they use.
We took advantage of the curiosity of the Aòdeli, who had just arrived with a kafila, to make them stay in our camp and question them. The El Khaur mountains look most fascinating to see only from a distance: they are inhabited by lawless tribes owing allegiance to no man, and, having no wholesome fear of the Wali of Aden before their eyes, would murder any traveller who ventured among them; they are all Bedouin. The Aòdeli are a very large tribe, and say they have 4,000 men for war; the Markashi can put 500 or 600 in the field; and the Fadhli 2,000. Lauda, the chief town of the Aòdeli, is much bigger than Shibahm; there are many Arabs. The sultan is Mohamed-bin-Saleh. It is six hours from Mis'hal—thirty-four miles—and is situated below the mountains. Above it is El Betha—Sultan Saleh. Belad el Megheba, in the upper Yafei country, is under Sultan Hakam Mohamed-bin-Ali. Sabad el Baida Resass (where there must be lead) is not under the Turks; El Aòdeli live there. Neither is Sahib Lauda under the Turks; the inhabitants are Augheri. This has a very soft guttural—the Arabic ghin.
Plain of Mis'hal and Aòdeli Tribe
Our next stage was Bir Lammas, about four miles off, mostly across the monotonous plain. We passed four dars and villages. In time of war the Fadhli sultan comes and occupies one of these dars. We met sheikhs walking with little battle-axes on long poles—weapons in war, and in peace used for chopping wood, at all times emblems of their rank. The plain at length broke away, and we got into the narrow, and not very deep, wooded Wadi el Mimin. It has very precipitous sides of basalt, brown in colour, and making a very untidy attempt at being columnar. Bir Lammas is a great, and I must add, very dirty, halting-place for caravans going to Shukra, on the Tarik el Arkob, to El Kaur and the Wadi Hadhramout.
We were two nights at Bir Lammas. I was too ill to go about at all, but I could not resist going out to see some baboons which came to look at us from the low cliffs. I am sure their leader must have been 4 feet long without his tail.
My husband, who went for a climb, came to pretty close quarters with a striped hyena.
We were encamped about 380 yards off from the well, and thought it a very pretty place, with acacia-trees and creepers hanging in long trails and making arbours of all of them. The women do all the work here, having to fetch water from Bir Lammas and Ghenab for Mis'hal. The children, up to fourteen years of age, tend the flocks, and the men stroll about or sit in very warlike-looking conclaves, with guns and spears. Young children have wooden jembias to accustom them to their use, and it is funny to see tiny urchins of three or four hurling reeds at each other in imitation of their elders with more deadly weapons. The Bedouin seem born in an element of war; one we heard of had lasted fifteen years, but was happily now stopped for a little while.
On a hill near the plain, about half a mile from Bir Lammas, there are ruins of good style, probably of the Ashabir period of Hamdani.
We were to ride five hours to the next water after Bir Lammas. I felt it would be an awful journey, as I was becoming more and more inert, but I was able to jump on to my camel as usual. I begged my husband to tell me as each hour passed, being quite determined never to ask too soon, but every time I did ask it turned out to be only twenty minutes from the last time.