We were all very tired, hot and hungry, but alas for Arab hospitality! No coffee was brought, not even water, and when our servants asked for water and wood—'Show us first your money' was the answer they got.
We had a very public visit from the governor, who is called sultan, and who asked us if we had had a pleasant journey, and wondered how we could have been so many days on the road.
He was told of all our troubles, and took the Hamoumi, Mohammad, who shot at us, a prisoner, and his jembia (or as they say in Southern Arabia ghembia), without which he is ashamed to be seen, was given into my husband's custody.
Our expedition all passed a peaceful night, thankful to be in security after eighteen days of anxiety, never knowing what ambushes we might be led into; but Talib we heard did not sleep at all and was quite ill from fright, as contrary to his wishes he was, said the sultan, to be taken to Sheher with us on the morrow.
Ghail Babwazir is an oasis or series of oases of rank fertility, caused by a stream the water of which is warm and bitter, and which is conducted by channels cut in the rock in various directions.
Acres and acres of tobacco, bananas, Indian corn, cotton, and other crops are thus produced in the wilderness, and this cultivation has given rise to the overgrown village.
The stream was discovered about five hundred years ago by one Sheikh Omar, and before that time all this part was waste ground.
This fertilising spring rises under a hill to the east, where a large reservoir has been dug out. Above on the hill are some Arab ruins, places where things were stored, and there is a road up. Canals cut some twenty feet deep, like the kanats of Persia, conduct the water to the fields. The chief product is tobacco, known as Hamoumi tobacco.
Our roof happened to command a view of the terrace where a bride and her handmaidens were making merry with drums and coffee. In spite of the frowns and gesticulations of the order-keeper, who flourished her stick at us and bade us begone, we were able to get a peep, forbidden to males, at the blushing bride. She wore on her head large silver bosses like tin plates, her ears were weighed down with jewels, her fingers were straight with rings, and her arms a mass of bracelets up to the elbow, and her breast was hidden by a multiplicity of necklaces. Her face, of course, was painted yellow, with black lines over her eyes and mouth like heavy moustaches, and from her nose hung something which looked to us like a gold coin. The bride herself evidently had no objection to my husband's presence, but the threatening aspect of her women compelled us reluctantly to retire.
On the 29th we set out for Sheher, or Shaher Bander as it is called, a most cheerful set of people, at least as far as our own immediate party was concerned; some of the others had little cause for pleasant anticipations.
