III
ALONG UNBEATEN TRACES IN YEMEN
Those who think Arabia is a sandy desert with a few nomad tents and camels and ostriches scattered over it, have never seen Yemen. Yemen is the most fertile and most beautiful of all the provinces of Arabia. It means the right hand, and this name was given it as one of good omen by the early Arabs. It was called by the Romans Arabia Felix, or Happy Arabia, to distinguish it from Arabia Petrea (Stony Arabia) and Arabia Deserta (Desert Arabia).
Those who have never gone inland from Aden cannot imagine how very different the hill country is from the torrid coast, but a journey of even thirty miles inland is convincing. Corn never grew more luxuriantly in Kansas or Iowa than in some of the valleys of Yemen. If the country had a good government and the people were Christians, it would be one of the happiest in the world; a country where the orange, lemon, quince, grape, mango, plum, apricot, peach and apple yield their fruit in their season; where you can also get pomegranates, figs, dates, plantains and mulberries; a country where wheat, barley and coffee are staple products, and where there is a glorious profusion of wild flowers—although the camel drivers call it grass. Here one can see the nest of the oriole hanging from the acacia tree, and wild doves chasing each other from the clefts of the rocks, while farther up in the highlands, wild monkeys sport among the foliage of the trees.
It was my privilege to make two journeys through Yemen to its beautiful capital, Sanaa. On my first journey (1891) I went by the usual road from Hodeida on the coast, but in 1893 I chose the unbeaten tracks from Aden directly north, in order to see some of the places not yet visited and meet the people.
At the time of my first and also of my second journey, the Arabs were in rebellion against the Turks. They have been fighting them now for fifteen years, trying to secure their independence, and this year the country is more disturbed than ever, but the Arabs have no unity, no leadership, and, worst of all, no artillery, and so the Turkish government succeeds in crushing the rebellion time after time, and holding this province of Arabia in her grasp.
It was five o’clock on Monday morning, July 2d, that I set off from Aden with my camel boy Salih, and we did not stop until we reached the village of Wahat, nearly at noon. Starting again at seven o’clock, we followed the Arab custom of marching the whole night with the caravan. There was no breeze, and it was very hot. Vegetation does not begin until you enter Wady Merga. Here we had fresh dates, and made our camp under a big acacia tree. The road begins to rise rapidly as we follow the Wady northwards, and at midnight we pass Suk-el-Juma, or Friday market. This part of the road, they tell us, is dangerous, and so the Bedouins who accompany our eighty-two camel caravan swing the lighted wicks which they use to fire their flint-lock shotguns. Only one man in the party had a Springfield rifle. On July 4th we fell in with some Arabs who wanted to seize me as a spy of the British government and keep me as a prisoner until money was paid for my release. After some difficulty we persuaded them that I was not a British subject, and that no money would be paid even if they kept me a prisoner for many days.
The following day we had another adventure. Climbing up the valley and past fields of verdure, where men were plowing and women were weeding the gardens, we suddenly stumbled upon a Turkish castle, where an unmannerly negro official was in charge. He said no strangers were allowed beyond the Turkish frontier, seized all my baggage, confiscated my books and maps, and sent me under guard to Taiz, the next important town. On the afternoon of this same day, a heavy thunderstorm burst upon us from a clear sky, the wind became a hurricane, some of the camels stampeded, our umbrellas turned inside out, and, worst of all, a mountain torrent, swollen by the sudden rains and hail, carried away a donkey and part of our baggage. Drenched to the skin, we at last forced the camels up the slope to the house of an Arab, and were hospitably entertained, around a big fire which he built, on Arab coffee and sweetmeats.
We were now three thousand feet above sea level, and it was very cold at night even in July. We pressed on the next day, travelling through a country where every one fears his neighbour. I asked my guide why he had not prayed since we left Wahat, and his answer was, “If I pray on the road, my heart gets soft, and I fear to shoot an Arab robber because he may be a Moslem.” We saw many centipedes and scorpions sleeping after their rain bath, and warming themselves on the rocks. Every turn of the road brought us in sight of new villages, and everywhere the peasants have done their best to cultivate the soil by irrigation, until you can count a dozen terraces one above the other up the mountainside, in various shades of green of the different crops. Once and again we met caravans going down to the coast, carrying coffee or sheep-hides, as you see in the picture. One could hear the approach of a caravan by the camel drivers’ song. In a high, monotonous key and with endless repetition, they would sing verses like this about their camels:
“O Lord, keep them from all dangers that pass,
And make their long legs pillars of brass.”