We imagined we were being very kindly received when they pointed out the largest building in the place as our habitation, and my husband, Imam Sharif, our interpreter Hassan, and I joyfully hastened thither.
Unfortunately we had no recommendation to the head-man of this place, and he evidently distrusted us, for after taking us to a fort built of mud bricks, which offered ample accommodation for our party, he flatly refused to allow us to have our baggage or our servants therein.
After entering a kind of guard-room, we had to plunge to the right into pitchy darkness and stumble along, stretching out our hands like blind men, each taken by the shoulders and pushed and shoved by a roundabout way to a dark inner staircase, where we emerged into the light on some roofs.
They wanted us to stay where we were, but not wishing to remain without conveniences, we succeeded in getting between them and the door, and then found our way out of the building and rejoined our servants and our baggage on the beach. We flourished our letter to Wali Suleiman in his face; we expostulated, threatened, and cajoled, and passed a whole miserable hour by the shore, seated on our belongings under the blazing afternoon sun, watching our steamer gradually disappearing in the distance. Hemmed in by Bedouin, who stared at us as if we had come from the moon, exceedingly hot, hungry, and uncomfortable, we passed a very evil time indeed, speculating as to what would be the result of the conclave of the old head-men; but at last they approached us in a more friendly spirit, begged our pardon, and reinstated us in the fort with our bag and baggage, and were as civil as they could be. To our dying day we shall never know what caused us this dilemma. Did they really think we had come to seize their fort (which we afterwards heard was the case), and interfere with their frankincense monopoly? Or did they think we had come to look into the question of a large Arab dhow, which was flying the French flag, and was beached on the shore, and which we had reason to believe was conveying a cargo of slaves to one of the neighbouring markets for disposal? Personally, I suspect the latter was the true reason of their aversion to our presence, for the coast from here to Maskat has a bad reputation in this respect, and just lately Arab slave-dhows have been carrying on their trade under cover of protection obtained from France at Obok and Zanzibar. The inhabitants have plaited hair and knobkerries. I believe they belong to the Jenefa tribe.
Finding Merbat so uncongenial an abode, with no points of interest, and with a malarious-looking swamp in its vicinity, and not being able to obtain camels or escort for a journey inland, we determined only to pass one night there, and after wandering about in search of interests which did not exist, we came to terms with the captain of a most filthy baggala to take us along the coast to Al Hafa, the residence of Wali Suleiman, without whose direct assistance we plainly saw that nothing could be done about extending our expedition into the interior. It was only forty miles to Al Hafa, but, owing to adverse winds, it took us exactly two days to perform this voyage, and our boat was one of the dirtiest of the kind we have ever travelled on. In our little cabin in the stern the smell of bilge-water was almost overpowering, and every silver thing we had about us turned black with the sulphureous vapours. These pungent odours were relieved from time to time by burning huge chafing dishes of frankincense, a large cargo of which was aboard for transport to Bombay after we had been deposited at Al Hafa. One of the many songs our sailors sang when changing the flapping sails was about frankincense, so we tried to imagine that we were having a pleasant experience of the country we were about to visit; and even in its dirt and squalor an Arab dhow is a picturesque abode, with its pretty carvings and odd-shaped bulwarks. We were twenty-five souls on board, and our captain and his crew being devout Mohammedans, we had plenty of time and opportunity for studying their numerous prayers and ablutions.
The plain of Dhofar, along which we were now coasting, is quite an abnormal feature in this arid coast. It is the only fertile stretch between Aden and Maskat. It is formed of alluvial soil washed down from the Gara mountains; there is abundance of water very near the surface, and frequent streams make their way down to the sea, so that it is green. The great drawback to the country is the want of harbours; during the north-east monsoons dhows can find shelter at Merbat, and during the south-west monsoons at Risout, but the rest of the coast is provided with nothing but open roadsteads, with the surf always rolling in from the Indian Ocean.
The plain is never more than nine miles wide, and at the eastern end, where the mountains were nearer to the sea, it is reduced to a very narrow strip, a grand exception to the long line of barren waste which forms the Arabian frontage to the Indian Ocean, and which gets narrower and narrower as the mountains approach the sea at Saihut. Tall cocoanut palms adorn it in clusters, and long stretches of bright green fields refresh the eye; and, at frequent intervals, we saw flourishing villages by the coast. Tobacco, cotton, Indian corn, and various species of grain grow here in great abundance, and in the gardens we find many of the products of India flourishing, viz. the plantain, the papya, mulberries, melons, chillis, brinjols, and fruits and vegetables of various descriptions. We anchored for some hours off one of these villages, and paid our toll of dates to the Bedouin who came off to claim them, as is customary all along this coast, every dhow paying this toll in return for the privilege of obtaining water when they want it.
The Gara mountains are now one of the wildest spots in wild Arabia; owing to the disastrous blood feuds amongst the tribe and the insecurity of travel, they had never previously been penetrated by Europeans: all that was known of the district was the actual coast-line. Exciting rumours had reached the ears of Colonel Miles, a former political agent at Maskat, concerning lakes and streams, and fertility unwonted for Arabia, which existed in these mountains, and our appetites were consequently whetted for their discovery.
In ancient times this was one of the chief sources of the time-honoured frankincense trade, which still maintains itself here even more than in the Hadhramout. It is carried on by the Bedouin of the Gara tribe, who bring down the odoriferous gum from the mountains on camels. About 9,000 cwt. of it is exported to Bombay annually. Down by the coast at Al Hafa there is a square enclosure or bazaar where piles of frankincense may still be seen ready for exportation, miniature successors of those piles of the tears of gum from the tree-trunks which are depicted on the old Egyptian temple at Deir al Bahari as one of the proceeds of Queen Hatasou's expeditions to the land of Punt.
The actual libaniferous country is, perhaps, now not much bigger than the Isle of Wight, and in its physical appearance not unlike it, cut off from the rest of the world by a desert behind and an ocean in front. Probably in ancient days the frankincense-bearing area was not much more extensive. Claudius Ptolemy, the anonymous author of the 'Periplus,' Pliny, Theophrastus, and a little later on the Arabian geographers, speak of it, and from their descriptions there is no difficulty in fixing the limits of it, and its ruined towns are still easily identified.
