The minarets and pillars of the old mosques looked down on a strange scene that day. In the half-ruined, domed houses of the departed race, stall-holders had pitched their stalls: lanes and cross lanes of closely-packed vendors of quaint crockery, newly-cut lucerne, onions, fish, and objects of European fabric such as only Orientals admire, and amongst all was a compact mass of struggling humanity; but it was easy to see that the date-palm and its produce formed the staple trade of the place. There were all shapes and sizes of baskets made of palm-leaves, dates in profusion, fuel of the dried spathes, the male spathes for fructifying the palm, and palm-leaf matting—the only furniture, and sometimes the only roofing of their comfortless huts.
The costumes were dazzling in their brilliancy and quaintness. It was a scene never to be forgotten, and one of which a photograph, which I took from a gentle eminence, gives but a faint idea. It was our last scene on Bahrein—a fitting conclusion to our sojourn thereon.
MASKAT
CHAPTER IV
SOME HISTORICAL FACTS ABOUT OMAN
On two separate occasions we visited Maskat. The first time was in 1889 on our way to Persia, and the second in 1895 when we were starting for Dhofar, on the journey which I shall describe later.