During the days we were at Hagarein several weddings were celebrated. To form a suitable place for conviviality they cover over a yard with mats, just as the Abyssinians do, and the women, to show their hilarity on the occasion, utter the same gurgling noises as the Abyssinian women do on a like occasion, and which in Abyssinia is called ulultà. From our roof we watched the bridegroom's nocturnal procession to his bride's house, accompanied by his friends bearing torches, and singing and speechifying to their hearts' content.
On our return from the ruins near Meshed, Taisir (our soldier) came to us and was very indignant about the price the sultan charged for his soldiers. He was given ten rupees to attach himself to us, as an earnest of the good bakshish he would get at the coast, as he said all the other soldiers would go back from Shibahm, and really in that case I think he would have been glad of our escort.
Then Saleh, who had 100 rupees a month and ate with everyone, came to demand half a rupee a day for food; this was granted, as we thought it could come off his bakshish, and he soon appeared to make the same request for Mahmoud, the naturalist. Matthaios was furious, as Mahmoud ate partly with him, and no one was angrier with him than Saleh. It was settled that we should give him tea, bread, and four annas, and they all went off bawling. Afterwards we heard Saleh had said, 'Mr. Bent is giving so much money to the sultan, why should we not have some?'
We really thought at first that we should be able to encamp at Meshed and dig, for there was a seyyid who had been in Hyderabad and was very civil to us, but this happiness only lasted one hour. The sultan said it would really not be safe unless we lived in Hagarein, so we had to give it up as it was an impossibility to dig in the heat of the day, with six hours' journey to fatigue us; besides we must have paid many soldiers and we were told no one would dig for us. So much was said about the dangers of the onward road that Saleh was sent with the letters for Shibahm and Sheher and told to hold them tight, and say that if we could not deliver these in person we should return to the wali of Aden and say that the sultan of Hagarein would not let us go on. This frightened him, so he made a very dear bargain for fifteen camels, and we were to leave next day.
We were glad enough to depart from Hagarein, which is so picturesque that it really might be an old, mediæval, fortified town on the Rhine, built entirely of mud and with no water in its river. All the houses are enormously high, and have a kitchen and oven on each floor. The bricks of which they are built are about one foot square and with straw in them. They have shooting holes from every room and machicolations over the outer doors and along the battlements, and what makes the houses seem to contain even more stories than they do, is that each floor has two ranges of windows, one on the ground so that you can only see out if you sit on the floor, and another too high to see out of at all; below every lower window projects a long wooden spout. The narrow lanes are mere drains, and the whole place a hotbed of disease; the people looked very unhealthy: when cholera comes they die like flies. As a wind up to this last evening Mahmoud came into our room and soon began to say his prayers; we could not make out why, but it turned out he had no light in his room.
Altogether we had not a reposeful time in Hagarein. We were told early next day that fourteen men of the Nahad tribe had come as our siyara, though we had been told two would be sufficient; so we had to agree to take four. Then we were asked to pay those who had come unbidden. The sultan came himself about it, and his children came to beg for annas. At last the sultan, who had often said he felt as if he were our brother, obtained twelve rupees which he asked for to pay his expenses for the kids and honey, and said my horse had eaten the worth of twice as much money as he had asked before.
When we finally got off we found the old rascal had only sent half the Nahadi and had only sent two soldiers, and so had really made forty dollars out of us over that one item. The Nahad men had ten dollars each. They are not under the sultan of Makalla, but independent. The Nahad tribe occupy about ten miles of the valley through which we passed, and the toll-money we paid to this tribe for the privilege of passing by was the most exorbitant demanded from us on our journey. When once you have paid the toll-money (siyar), and have with you the escort (siyara) of the tribe in whose territory you are, you are practically safe wherever you may travel in Arabia, but this did not prevent us from being grossly insulted as we passed by certain Nahad villages. Kaidoun, where dwells the very holy man so celebrated all the country round for his miracles and good works, is the chief centre of this tribe. We had purposely avoided passing too near this town, and afterwards learnt that it was owing to the influence of this very holy seyyid that our reception was so bad amongst the Nahad tribe.
All about Hagarein are many traces of the olden days when the frankincense trade flourished, and when the town of Doan, which name is still retained in the Wadi Doan, was a great emporium for this trade. Acres and acres of ruins, dating from the centuries immediately before our era, lie stretched along the valley here, just showing their heads above the weight of superincumbent sand which has invaded and overwhelmed the past glories of this district. The ruins of certain lofty square buildings stand upon hillocks at isolated intervals; from these we got several inscriptions, which prove that they were the high 'platforms' alluded to on so many Himyaritic inscribed stones as raised in honour of their dead. As for the town around them, it has been entirely engulfed in sand; the then dry bed of a torrent runs through the centre, and from this fact we can ascertain, from the walls of sand on either side of the stream, that the town itself has been buried some 30 feet or 40 feet by this sand. It is now called Raidoun. The ground lies strewn with fragments of Himyaritic inscriptions, pottery, and other indications of a rich harvest for the excavator, but the hostility of the Nahad tribe prevented us from paying these ruins more than a cursory visit, and even to secure this we had to pay the sheikh of the place nineteen dollars, and his greeting was ominous as he angrily muttered, 'Salaam to all who believe Mohammed is the true prophet.'
We were warned 'that our eyes should never be let to see Meshed again;' we might camp before we got there, or after, as we wished, so were led by a roundabout way to Adab, and saw no more of the leprous seyyid who told such wondrous tales about the English king who once lived in Hagarein, and how the English, Turks, and Arabs were all descended from King Sam. Also he told the Addite fable of how the giants and rich men tried to make a paradise of their own, the beautiful garden of Irem, and defied God, and so destruction came upon the tribe of Ad, the remnant of whom survive at Aden on Jebel Shemshan, in the form of monkeys. This is the Mohammedan legend of the end of the Sabæan Empire.
We were much amused with what Imam Sharif said to this seyyid. Imam Sharif is himself a seyyid or sherif, a descendant of Mohammed, his family having come from Medina, so he was always much respected. He said to him: 'You think these English are very bad people, but the Koran says that all people are like their rulers; now we have no spots or diseases on our bodies, but are all clean and sound, which shows plainly that our ruler and the rest of us must be the same. Now you, my brother, must be under the displeasure of God, for I see that you are covered with leprosy.' This was not a kind or civil speech, I fear, but not a ruder one than those addressed to us. This leprosy shows itself by an appearance as if patches of white skin were neatly set into the dark skin.
