Next day, however, they received from the imam a present of five sheep, three camel-loads of wood, a large quantity of wax-tapers, rice, and spices. At the same time they were informed that two days at least would elapse before they could obtain an audience, a matter about which they were indifferent; but that they could not in the mean time quit their house. Though considerably chagrined at the latter circumstance, they hoped in some measure to neutralize its effects, by receiving the visits of such natives as curiosity, or any other motive, might allure to the house; and accordingly were very much gratified at the appearance of a Jew, who had performed in their company the journey from Cairo to Loheia. This young Israelite, delighted to spend a few moments in the company of persons who received him without any demonstrations of contempt, appeared to experience a gratification in obliging them; and came on the second day accompanied by one of the most celebrated astrologers of his sect, from whom Niebuhr learned the Hebrew appellations of several stars. While he was yet conversing with this learned descendant of Abraham, the secretary of the imam arrived. They were ignorant of the etiquette of the court of Sana, according to which they should have abstained from receiving as well as from paying visits; but the secretary, whose business it was to have instructed them on these points, doubly enraged by their infraction of the rules of decorum, and by a sense of his own negligence, directed all the violence of his fury against the unfortunate Jews, whose society he imagined must have been equally disagreeable to the travellers as it would have been to him. He therefore not only expelled them from the house, but, in order to protect the imam’s guests from a repetition of the same intrusion, gave peremptory orders to their Mohammedan attendant to admit no person whatever until they should have obtained their audience.
Two days after their arrival they were admitted into the presence of the imam. It is probable that, having previously formed an exalted idea of the splendour of oriental princes, the reader will be liable to disappointment on the present occasion. The riches and magnificence of the califs, however, of which we find so many glowing descriptions in the Thousand and One Nights, in D’Herbelot, and many other writers, have long passed away, leaving to the successors of those religious monarchs nothing but remembrance of ancient glory, which gleams like a meteoric light about their throne and diadem. Niebuhr, arriving at Sana from the sandy deserts of the Tehama, where poverty reigns paramount over every thing, enjoyed the advantage of possessing an imagination sobered by stern realities. His fancy depicted the court of the imam in the livery of the desert. He expected little. If he was disappointed, therefore, it was not disagreeably.
The imam, with a vanity pardonable enough in a prince who learns from his cradle to estimate his own greatness by the pomp and glitter which surround him, had in fact employed the two days elapsed since the arrival of his guests in active preparations for their reception; and the rules of etiquette forbidding strangers to pay or receive visits during the interval, were originally intended to conceal this circumstance, and create the belief that the holyday appearance of the court was its ordinary costume. Our travellers were conducted to the palace by the minister’s secretary, who here performed what is called the mehmandar’s office in Persia. They found the great court of the edifice thronged with horses, officers, and other Arabs of various grades; so that it required the ministry of the imam’s grand equerry to open them a way through the crowd. The hall of audience was a spacious square apartment, vaulted above, and having on its centre several fountains of water, which, gushing aloft to a considerable height, and falling again incessantly, maintained a refreshing coolness in the air. A broad divan, adorned with fine Persian carpets, occupied the extremity of the hall, and flanked the throne, which was merely covered with silken stuffs, and rich cushions. Here the imam sat cross-legged, according to the custom of the East. He received the travellers graciously, allowed them to kiss the hem of his garment, and the back and palm of his hand—an honour which is but sparingly granted to strangers. At the conclusion of this ceremony a herald cried aloud, “God save the imam!” and all the people repeated the same words. As their knowledge of Arabic was still very limited, they conversed with the imam by means of an interpreter, a contrivance admirably adapted for shortening public conferences, since there are few persons who, under such circumstances, would be disposed to indulge in useless circumlocution.
The result of this audience was, that they obtained the prince’s permission to remain in the country as long as they desired; and on their retiring, a small present in money was sent them, which they judiciously determined to accept. In the afternoon of the same day they were invited to the minister’s villa, where Niebuhr exhibited his mathematical instruments, his microscopes, books, engravings, &c.; at the sight of which Fakih Achmed expressed the highest satisfaction. From the various questions which he put to them, they discovered, moreover, that he himself was a man of very considerable knowledge, particularly in geography; while from his constant intercourse with foreigners his manners had acquired an ease and gracefulness which rendered his company highly pleasing. Nevertheless, Niebuhr, who feared that the cupidity of this minister, or of some other courtier, might be excited by the sight of his instruments, regretted to perceive these tokens of curiosity, and the necessity he was under of satisfying it; but his suspicions, which appear to have been as unfounded as they were illiberal, were not of long duration, for no man demanded of him any part of his property, or seemed to regard it with covetousness. He, in fact, learned shortly afterward that even the presents which it was judged necessary to make both to the imam and his minister were altogether unexpected, since they were not merchants, and demanded no favours of prince or courtiers.
Niebuhr confesses that the reception which he and his companions met with at Sana was marked by a degree of civility and friendship that far surpassed their expectations. The Arabs would seem, indeed, to have derived so much gratification from their society, that it is more than probable they would willingly have made some sacrifice to retain them; but the death of Von Haven and Forskaal had cast a damp over their imaginations; they apprehended that disease might even then be undermining their constitutions, and were therefore more desirous of flying from the country than of studying its productions or its inhabitants. When they departed from Mokha several English ships were lying there, taking in cargoes of coffee for India; and this circumstance, by promising to facilitate their progress farther towards the east, operated strongly upon their determination to quit Arabia, the original object of their mission, for other regions which appeared more agreeable. One of Niebuhr’s biographers appears to think that it was mere solicitude to transmit to Europe an account of what had been performed by the expedition, and not any apprehension of danger, which rendered him so exceedingly desirous of quitting Yemen, for that he never clung to life with any great eagerness. I have by no means an unfavourable opinion of Niebuhr’s courage, which, on the contrary, I consider to have been in general equal to the dangers to which he was exposed; but I nowhere find any traces of that stoical indifference about life and death which his biographer seems to attribute to him; and am persuaded, that on the occasion of his departure from Sana, it was the apprehension of death, united, perhaps, with a longing for European society, which actuated his movements. At the same time I acknowledge that his fears were natural, and that most travellers under similar circumstances would have acted much the same way. We miss, however, in Niebuhr, both on this and on all other occasions, the chivalrous spirit of Marco Polo, Pietro della Valle, Chardin, and Bruce, as we miss in his writings the enthusiasm which casts so powerful a charm over the records of their adventures.
The same reasons which induce me to acknowledge the rational nature of Niebuhr’s apology for suddenly quitting Yemen long before he had completed his examination and description of it, incline me likewise to accept his reasons for avoiding the road by Jerim and Táäs, which would have led him by Haddâfa and Dhâfar, where Hamyaric inscriptions were said to exist. He had already been frequently deceived by the misrepresentations of Arabic ignorance, and therefore doubted the accuracy of his informants. The three remaining members of the mission set out from Sana on the 26th of July, and, arriving at Mokha on the 5th of August, found that their apprehensions of danger at Sana, which, though excusable, were not well founded, had precipitated them into real peril; for the English ship in which they intended to embark was by no means ready to sail, so that they had to remain in that burning climate nearly a whole month, during which almost every individual in the party, servants and all, fell sick.
The ship in which Niebuhr at length set sail for India belonged to Mr. Francis Scott, a younger son of the Scotts of Harden, a jacobite family of Roxburghshire. With this gentleman Niebuhr ever after lived on terms of intimate friendship; and “five-and-thirty years afterward,” says our traveller’s son, the historian of the Roman republic, “when I studied in Edinburgh, I was received in all respects as one of the family in the house of this venerable man, who then lived at his ease in the Scottish capital on the fortune he had acquired by honourable industry.”
On his arrival at Bombay he met with the most cordial reception from the English, in whose society he had first learned to delight while in Egypt. Here he spent a considerable time in studying the manners and customs of the Hindoos, and his observations, though now destitute of value, must at that time have possessed considerable interest, above all on the Continent. He here lost Cramer, the last of his companions; Baurenfeind, the artist, having died on the voyage. During his stay at Bombay he made a voyage to Surat, famous in the history of oriental commerce and in the Arabian Nights; but his stay was short, and he returned to Bombay without pushing his researches any farther into the interior. The passion for travelling was certainly never very powerful in Niebuhr; but he was posessed by considerable curiosity, and this passion induced him to form the design of proceeding in an English ship to China; but being unwell at the time of the ship’s departure, he relinquished the design, which he never afterward resumed.
His residence at Bombay, a much less healthy place than Sana, was continued so long, that I am strongly inclined to suspect the want of European society may, after all, have numbered among his most powerful reasons for hurrying from Yemen. From this city he forwarded the manuscripts of his deceased companions as well as his own papers, by way of London, to Copenhagen; and at length, on the 8th of December, 1764, set sail in one of the company’s ships of war, bound for Muskat and the Persian Gulf. During this voyage he beheld the surface of the sea for half a German mile in extent covered at night with that luminous appearance which we denominate “phosphoric fires;” and which, according to his opinion, arises entirely from shoals of medusas, which by the English sailors are called “blubbers.” A few days afterward, as they approached the shore of Oman, they were accompanied for a considerable distance by a troop of dolphins, which, by the persevering manner in which they followed the ship, seemed, as Lucian jocularly observes, to be animated by a kind of philanthropy, as when they bore Melicerta and Arion to the shore on their backs.
They arrived at Muskat on the 3d of January, 1765; and here Niebuhr, had the interior of Arabia possessed any attractions for him, had once more an opportunity of indulging his curiosity, and fulfilling the original design of the expedition; for, from the humane and polished manners of the people of Oman, travelling was here, he says, attended with no more danger than in Yemen. He preferred, however, ascending the Persian Gulf in an English ship; and therefore, after a stay of a few days, set sail for Abusheher, where he arrived on the 4th of February.