Southern Arabia — The Mahri Island of Sokotra: Tamarida or Hadibo AND We Depart for the Land's End, i.e. Ras Momi

As we left the mountain side and approached the plain of Tamarida, we passed close by what would seem to have been an ancient ruined fort on the cliff above the sea, evidently intended to guard this path.

CHAPTER XXXI TAMARIDA OR HADIBO

Certainly Tamarida is a pretty place, with its river, its lagoon, and its palms, its whitewashed houses and whitewashed mosques, and with its fine view of the Haghier range immediately behind it.

The mosques are new, and offer but little in the way of architectural beauty, for the fanatical Wahhabi from Nejd swept over the island in 1801, and in their religious zeal destroyed the places of worship; and the extensive cemeteries still bear testimony to the ravages of these iconoclasts, with their ruined tombs and overturned headstones.

We encamped on the further side of a good-sized stream or little river, having it between us and the town of Tamarida or Hadibo; and this was really a protection to us at night, for the inhabitants of that neighbourhood are terribly afraid of certain jinni or ghinni, which abide in the stream, and will not go near it at night.

Indeed, we remarked that it was considered by Hashi and Mahmoud, the two Somali servants, a wise precaution to draw all the water and bring up the washing, which was drying, in good time of an afternoon.

They had heard such fearful stories that they were very much afraid of being bewitched while in the island, though I doubt whether I and my camera were not nearly as alarming.

They had heard how a Sokotran man had turned a woman of Maskat into a seal and forced her to swim over to Sokotra in that shape.

We were told that this story is perfectly true!

This evil reputation of the islanders is very persistent.

Marco Polo says: 'The Sokotrans are enchanters, as great as any in the world, though excommunicated by their prelates therefor; and raise winds to bring back such ships as have wronged them, till they obtain satisfaction.'

It is only just to say we had no need to fear such honest and friendly people.

Sultan Salem of Sokotra, the nephew of old Sultan Ali of Kishin, the monarch of the Mahri tribe, whom we had visited two years before on the south coast of Arabia, governed the island as his uncle's deputy.

He had a castle at Tamarida of very poor and dilapidated appearance, which he rarely inhabited, preferring to live in the hills near Garriah, or at his miserable house at Haula, some eight miles along the coast from Tamarida.

Haula is as ungainly a spot as it is possible to conceive--without water, without wood, and invaded by sand--quite the ugliest place we saw on the island, its only recommendation being that during the north-east monsoons the few dhows which visit the island anchor there, since it affords some sort of shelter from the winds in that direction, and Sultan Salem has a keen eye to business.

His Majesty came to visit us, shortly after our arrival at Tamarida, from his country residence, and favoured us with an audience in the courtyard of his palace, with all the great men of the island seated around him.

He was a man of fifty, with a handsome but somewhat sinister face; he was girt as to his head with a many-coloured _kefieh_, and as to his waist with a girdle supporting a finely inlaid Maskat dagger and a sword.

His body was enveloped in a clean white robe, and his feet were bare.

His conversation, both then and when he returned our visit at our camp, on which occasion he received a few presents, was solely about the price of camels and how many we should need.

He did not ask us one other question.

He talked little Arabic, being of the Mahri tribe.

We gave him an Enfield carbine of 1863. On the plain behind Tamarida there is a conical hill about 200 feet high called Hasan, which has been fortified as an Acropolis, and was provided with cemented tanks.

These ruins have also been called Portuguese, but they looked to us more Arabic in character.

When one has seen the very elaborate forts erected by the Portuguese on the coasts of the Persian Gulf and East Africa one feels pretty confident in asserting that they took no steps to settle themselves permanently in Sokotra; in fact, their occupation of it only extended over a period of four years, and the probability is that, finding it harbourless, and worth little for their purposes of a depôt on the road to India, they never thought it worth their while to build any permanent edifices.

In the neighbourhood there is a hill where the English are said to have encamped, and where there are traces of a more ancient civilisation, probably Portuguese.

There are walls of small stones, cased with cement, and, inside them, a tank with conduits.

Opposite to this hill, and across the stream, is a ruined village, only one house of which is still inhabited; it has circular walls and a circular paddock adjoining it for cattle.

It is, perhaps, annoying to have to add another to the list of the many tongues spoken in the world, but I think there is no room for doubt that Sokoteri must be added to that already distracting catalogue.

Though Sokotra has been under Mahri rule probably since before our era--for Arrian tells us that in his day the island of Dioscorida, as it was then called, was under the rule of the king of the Arabian frankincense country, and the best days of that country were long before Arrian's time--nevertheless, the inhabitants have kept their language quite distinct both from Mahri and from Arabic.

Of course it is naturally strongly impregnated with words from both these tongues; but the fundamental words of the language are distinct, and in a trilingual parallel list of close on 300 words, which my husband took down in the presence of Mahri, Sokoteri and Arabic speaking people on the island, we found distinctly more in the language derived from an Arab than from a Mahri source.

In subtlety of sound Sokoteri is painfully rich, and we had the greatest difficulty in transcribing the words.

They corkscrew their tongues, they gurgle in their throats, and bring sounds from most alarming depths, but luckily they do not click.

They have no word for a dog, for there is not a dog on the island; neither for a horse nor a lion, for the same reason;

they seemed surprised at the idea that there might be such words in their language; but for all the animals, trees, and articles commonly found there they have words as distinct from the Arabic and Mahri as cheese is from _fromage_.

At Tamarida we annexed a respectable man called Ammar as interpreter.

He was familiar with all the languages spoken in the island, and daily, when the camp was all pitched and arranged, my husband used to produce a long list of Arabic words, and Ammar used to sit on his heels and tell the Mahri and Sokoteri equivalents, the words, however, being for the most part shouted out in chorus by numerous bystanders.

I have since added the English, and the vocabulary will be found in an appendix.

It was most difficult to get an answer as to anything abstract.

For instance, 'clothes' would be asked, and Ammar, after inquiring if white clothes were meant, or blue, or black, or red, and being answered 'any clothes,' would give a list of garments of various shapes.

'Age' was a question that caused a great awkwardness, I am sorry to say.

'Well,' answered Ammar, 'it might be anything--seven, fifteen, seventy--anything!'

After the greatest invention and planning on our part, we unhappily thought to put the question in this form: 'How do you say "What is your age?"

' '_My_ age,' said Ammar, '_mine_--well'--with evident annoyance and great hesitation--'I'm thirty-five--_not_ old--not _old_ at all.'

He is really quite fifty.

On such occasions there had to be a tremendous conversation with the bystanders.

[Illustration: THEODORE BENT MAKING THE VOCABULARY AT FEREGHET] I will not say more of the language than that instead of our little word _I_ the Sokoteri is _hemukomòn_ and the Mahri _evomúhshom_.

I wish we could speak confidently about the origin of the so-called Bedouin, the pastoral inhabitants of the island, who live in the valleys and heights of Mount Haghier, and wander over the surface of the island with their flocks and herds.

It has been often asserted that these Bedouin are troglodytes, or cave-dwellers pure and simple, but I do not think this is substantially correct.

None of them, as far as we could ascertain, dwell always or by preference in caves; but all of them own stone-built tenements, however humble, in some warm and secluded valley, and they only abandon these to dwell in caves when driven to the higher regions in search of pasturage for their flocks during the dry season, which lasts from November till the south-west monsoon bursts in the beginning of June.

Whilst we were on the island the season was exceptionally dry, and most of the villages in the valleys were entirely abandoned for the mountain caves.

The Bedou is decidedly a handsome individual, lithe of limb like his goats, and with a _café-au-lait_-coloured skin; he has a sharp profile, excellent teeth; he often wears a stubbly black beard and has beautifully pencilled eyebrows, and, though differing entirely in language, in physique and type he closely resembles the Bedouin found in the Mahri and Gara mountains.

Furthermore, the mode of life is the same--dwelling in caves when necessary, but having permanent abodes on the lower lands; and they have several other striking points in common.

Greetings take place between the Arabian Bedouin and the Sokotran Bedouin in similar fashion, by touching each cheek and then rubbing the nose.

We found the Bedouin of Mount Haghier fond of dancing and playing their _teherane_, and also peculiarly lax in their religious observances; and though ostensibly conforming to Mohammedan practice, they observe next to none of their precepts; and it is precisely the same with the Bedouin whom we met in the Gara mountains.

There is certainly nothing African about the Sokotran Bedouin; therefore I am inclined to consider them as a branch of that aboriginal race which inhabited Arabia, with a language of its own; and when Arabia is philologically understood and its various races investigated, I expect we shall hear of several new languages spoken by different branches of this aboriginal race, and then, perhaps, a parallel will be found to the proudly isolated tongue of this remote island.

The Bedou houses are round, and surrounded by a round wall in which the flocks are penned at night; flat-roofed and covered with soil, and inside they are as destitute of interest as it is possible to conceive--a few mats on which the family sleep, a few jars in which they store their butter, and a skin churn in which they make the same.

The plan of those houses that are oblong is that of two circles united by a bit of wall at one side, the door being at the other.

In one house into which my husband penetrated he found a bundle hanging from the ceiling, which he discovered to be a baby by the exposure of one of its little feet.

Everything is poor and pastoral.

The Bedouin have hardly any clothes to cover themselves with, nothing to keep them warm when the weather is damp, save a home-spun sheet, and they have no ideas beyond those connected with their flocks.

The closest intimacy exists between a Bedou and his goats and his cows; the animals understand and obey certain calls with absolute accuracy, and you generally see a Sokotran shepherdess walking before her flock, and not after it.

The owners stroke and caress their little cows until they are as tame as dogs.

The cows in Sokotra are far more numerous than one would expect, and there is excellent pasturage for them; they are a very pretty little breed, smaller than our Alderney, without the hump, and with the long dewlap; they are fat and plump, and excellent milkers.

The Bedou does very little in the way of cultivation, but when grass is scarce, and consequently milk, he turns his attention to the sowing of jowari in little round fields dotted about the valleys, with a wall round to keep the goats off.

In each of these he digs a well, and waters his crop before sunrise and after sunset; the field is divided into little compartments by stones, the better to retain the soil and water; and sometimes you will see a Bedou papa with his wife and son sitting and tilling these _bijou_ fields with pointed bits of wood, for other tools are unknown to them.

We hired our camels for our journey eastwards from the Arab merchants who live at Tamarida or Hadibo; they are the sole camel proprietors in the island, as the Bedouin own nothing but their flocks; and excellent animals these camels are, too, the strongest and tallest we had seen.

Of our camel-men, some were Bedouin and some were negroes, and we found them on the whole honest and obliging, though with the usual keen eye for a possible bakshish, which is not uncommon elsewhere.

The eastern end of Sokotra is similar in character to the western, being a low continuation of the spurs of Haghier, intersected with valleys, and with a plateau stretching right away to Ras Momi about 1,500 feet above the sea-level.

This plateau is a perfect paradise for shepherds, with much rich grass all over it; but it is badly watered, and water has to be fetched from the deep pools which are found in all its valleys at the driest season of the year, and in the rainy season these become impassable torrents, sweeping trees and rocks before them; and the hillsides up to the edge of the bare dolomitic pinnacles of the Haghier range are thickly clothed with vegetation.

Three considerable streams run from southward of Mount Haghier, fertilising three splendid valleys, until the waters, as the sea is approached, lose themselves in the sand.

To the north there are many more streams, and inasmuch as the sea is considerably nearer, they all reach it, or, rather, the silted-up lagoons already alluded to.

By the side of these streams innumerable palm-groves grow--in fact, dates form the staple food of the islanders.

And out of the date-tree they get branches for their hedges, stems for their roofs; the leaf provides them with their sleeping-mats, and, when beaten on stones, with fibre, with which they are exceedingly clever in making ropes.

Our camel-men were always at it, and produced, with the assistance of fingers and toes, the most excellent rope at the shortest possible notice.

They also make strong girdles with this fibre, which the slaves, who are employed in fertilising the palm-trees, bind round their bodies and the trees so as to facilitate their ascent, and provide them with a firm seat when the point of operation is reached.

They weave, too, baskets, or, rather, stiff sacks, in which to hang their luggage on either side of the camel.

A Sokotran camel-man is a most dexterous packer.

He must first obliterate his camel's hump by placing against it three or four thick felt mats or _nummuds_, and on this raised surface he builds all his luggage, carefully secured in his baskets, with the result that we never, during any of our expeditions with camels, had so little damage done to our property, even though the roads were so mountainous and the box-bushes were constantly rubbing against the loads.

The camels are very fine specimens of their race, standing considerably higher than the Arabian animal, and when mounted on the top of our luggage, above the hump thus unnaturally raised, we felt at first disagreeably elevated.

Whilst on the subject of camels and camel-trappings, I may add that each owner has his own mark painted and branded on his own property.

Some of these marks consist purely of Himyaritic letters, whilst others are variants, which would naturally arise from copying a very old-world alphabetic original.

I take these marks to be preserved by the steady conservatism of the Oriental; we copied many of them, and the result looks like a partial reproduction of the old Sabæan alphabet, and they may be seen in an appendix.

Scattered over Sokotra there are numerous villages, each being a little cluster of from five to ten round or oblong houses and round cattle-pens.

I was informed by a competent authority on the island that there are four hundred of these pastoral villages between Ras Kalenzia and Ras Momi, a distance of some seventy odd miles as the crow flies; and from the frequency with which we came across them during our marches up only a limited number of Sokotra's many valleys, I should think the number is not over-estimated.

If this is so, the population of the island must be considerably over the estimate given, and must approach twelve or thirteen thousand souls; but owing to the migratory nature of the inhabitants, and their life half spent in houses and half in caves, any exact census would be exceedingly hard to obtain.

The east of the island is, however, decidedly more populous than the west, as the water supply is better.

We were constantly passing the little round-housed villages, with their palm-groves and their flocks.

CHAPTER XXXII

WE DEPART FOR THE LAND'S END--_i.

e. _ RAS MOMI

After leaving Tamarida we spent a night at a place the name of which has been variously spelt.

We decided to spell it Dihelemnitin.

It has otherwise been called Dishelenata, &c. It is a lovely spot, at the confluence of two streams in a wood of palms, and we had a nice little flat field to camp in.

When I say a field, I mean a wall-supported place once used as such.

We saw very little cultivation except gardens at the villages, and the palm-trees were for the most part quite neglected.

Near Tamarida we saw just a few fan-palms, and one I remember looked very odd, as it still retained every leaf it had ever had, and looked like a yellow tower, with the green leaves at the top.

All the rest were bristling, withered down to the ground.

In South Arabia people are punished if they steal each other's palm-leaves, as the ribs are valuable for many things as well as the leaves themselves, but here there are no restrictions of that kind.

There was a good deal of climbing up and down to Saièhen, our next camp.

While we stayed there my husband went about everywhere that he was told there were ruins or supposed inscriptions, but saw nothing worth mentioning except the inscribed crosses already alluded to.

At first, after leaving Saièhen, we kept along the lower ground for some time, passing by Garriah Khor, a very long inlet or lagoon which stretches inland for at least two miles.

We dismounted at Dis'hass, where, we were told by Ammar, 'the English once had houses.'

It was a mass of ruins.

We went over a pass about 2,500 feet high, and up and down two sets of hills to a level plain about 1,500 feet high, extending all the way to Ras Momi.

As we ascended we passed a peak 2,000 feet high, called Gòdahan, which has a great hole in the middle of it, through which a large patch of sky is visible.

We encamped near it, close to the hamlet of Kit'hab, in a wood of palms and various other trees, full of those pretty green and grey birds, half parrot and half dove, whose beauty, however, did not save them from our pot.

From this place and even before we reached it we had very little personal use of our camels, the clambering up as well as down was so severe.

There is behind the peak of Gòdahan a curious flat ridge, raised not very many feet above the plateau, which is called Matagioti, and is perfectly honeycombed with fissures and crevices, offering delightful homes for people of troglodytic tendencies.

Huge fig-trees grow in these crevices, and dragon's-blood trees, and large herds of cows and goats revel in the rich carpet of grass which covers the flat surface of the plateau.

Unfortunately, this rich pasture ground is only indifferently supplied with water.

We obtained ours from two very nasty holes where rain-water had lain, and in which many cattle had washed; and when these dry up the Bedouin have to go down to the lower valleys in search of it.

Before we left it had assumed the appearance of porter.

There was a great deal of lavender growing about and numerous pretty flowers, and we found many shells in that place.

It was so very cold that we had a fine bonfire to dine by, and the dew that night was drenching, pouring off our tents like rain in the morning.

As Ras Momi is approached the country wears a very desolate aspect; there are no trees here, but low bushes and stunted adeniums covered with lichen, and looking just like rocks with little bushes on them; very little water, but plenty of grass.

We encamped near the hamlet of Saihon, where, though there was no appearance of a mosque, there was not only a mollah but a doctor.

The former was so free from fanaticism as to send us a present of a lamb.

The inhabitants were very friendly to us, and let us go into their houses and watch their occupations.

The women were busy grinding limestone to make pots; and we obtained a very dirty little bag full of a kind of organic substance like small white stones, which is ground to powder, mixed with water into a whitish paste, which after a little time turns red.

I think they paint the pots with it.

They were pleasant looking folk with quite a European cast of countenance, mostly ugly, and some with scanty beards, and reminding us strongly of the old frieze of the Parthenon sculptures in the Acropolis Museum at Athens.

Really, they were just like them except for their colour, which is chocolate brown.

We could not help thinking of the 'Moskophoros' when one came up to look at us with a lamb round his neck.

We settled there for several days, not being able to go nearer Ras Momi for reasons connected with water.

I cannot think it could have been really pleasant to the people of Saihon that we should have drunk up nearly all their water, and only left a little the colour of coffee behind us.

We suffered badly while there from two things; firstly from the dreadful kind of grass upon which we were encamped, and secondly from a regular gale of wind.

The grass, a _pennisetum_ I believe, is one we knew and hated in Mashonaland.

The seed is like a little grain of very sharp oats, well barbed, which carries behind it into your clothes a thread like a fish-hook, about 2 inches long.

As for the wind, when we came home one afternoon we found Matthaios in a most dreadful state, fearing the tents would be down.

He was trying to get the outer flies off alone, and was delighted when my husband and I, the only two other experienced tent-dwellers, came to his assistance.

For days we might as well have lived in a drum, for the noise of this tempest.

There was a little round enclosure to keep goats in; we knew that Hashi and Mahmoud had taken this as their home, and we were satisfied that no matter which way the wind blew they were sheltered; but one evening before dinner we heard that Mahmoud was ill with fever.

We both went to see that he was comfortable, and my husband took him some quinine.

We found Hashi had put him to bed on the windy side of the enclosure, with a hard, stiff camel-mat under him, one over his body, and a third on his head.

We soon moved him and wrapped him in blankets, and my husband having got some sacks and other things as a pillow, Hashi put them on the top of Mahmoud's head.

We built up a waterproof tent over him, but soon had to unpack him, as the village doctor appeared on the scene, demanding a fee of two annas from my husband.

He began by making several slashes on the top of his head and cupping him with a horn, which he sucked, gave him some medicine, and having spent a little time blowing in different directions, settled down, crouching over the patient, waving his hand as if making passes to mesmerise him, and muttering a few words alternately with spitting, slightly and often, in his face.

Our joint efforts were successful in the recovery of Mahmoud, who was well next day.

It is curious that in this somewhat wild and at present uninteresting locality we found more traces of ruins and bygone habitations than are found in any other part of the island.

About five miles from Ras Momi, and hidden by an amphitheatre of low hills on the watershed between the two seas, we came across the foundations of a large square building, constructed out of very large stones, and with great regularity.

It was 105 feet square; the outer wall was 6 feet thick, and it was divided inside into several compartments by transverse walls.

To the south-east corner was attached an adjunct, 14 by 22 feet.

There was very little soil in this building; and nothing whatever save the foundations to guide us in our speculations as to what this could be.

Other ruins of a ruder and more irregular character lay scattered in the vicinity, and at some remote period, when Sokotra was in its brighter days, this must have been an important centre of civilisation.

None of the natives would help us to dig in this place.

They are very much afraid of the Devil, and think the ground under the ruins is hollow and that there is a house in it.

At one time hopes were held out that the sacrifice of a goat might avert danger, but, after all, we and Matthaios had to do the best we could in the way of digging.

We always carried tools with us.

My part consisted in tracing out the walls with the trowel and moving stones.

My husband and I found it most difficult next day to take the measurements in the high wind.

From Saihon my husband climbed up a steep and rugged mountain to a ruined village on a strong place called Zerug.

Ammar's family mansion was near: a cave containing three women, some children, and large flocks of goats, kept in the cave by a wall; it is heated at night, and very stuffy.

Before leaving this corner of the island we journeyed to the edge of the plateau and looked down the steep cliffs at the eastern cape, where Ras Momi pierces, with a series of diminishing heights, the Indian Ocean.

The waves were dashing over the remains of the wreck, still visible, of a German vessel which went down here with all hands some few years ago, and the Bedouin produced for our edification several fragments of German print, which they had treasured up, and which they deemed of fabulous value.

Ras Momi somewhat reminded us of Cape Finisterre, in Brittany, and as a dangerous point for navigation it also resembles it closely.

Near the summit of one hill we passed an ancient and long disused reservoir, dug in the side of it, and constructed with stones; and during our stay here we visited the sites of many ancient villages, and found the cave charnel-houses already alluded to.

We lunched in a sort of cave, behind some huts on the opposite side of the valley, if such it may be called, from the bone caves, and were put to the rout by a serpent, which evidently liked the water in a little rocky pit in the mouth of the cave.

It was horrible stuff, but we had brought water for our tea with us.

Our supposed foe was slain.

The serpent was very pretty, fully a yard long, black and salmon-coloured, and with a very tapering head and tail.

It was said to be poisonous, but we thought it could not be.

The hills all about Ras Momi are divided into irregular plots by long piles of stones stretching in every direction, certainly not the work of the Sokotrans of to-day, but the work of some people who valued every inch of ground, and utilised it for some purpose or other.

The miles of walls we passed here, and rode over with our camels, give to the country somewhat the aspect of the Yorkshire wolds.

It has been suggested that they were erected as divisions for aloe-grounds; but I think if this was the case traces of aloes would surely be found here still.

Aloes are still abundant about Fereghet and the valleys of Haghier, but near Ras Momi there are none, and it is hard to think what else could grow there now; but these mountain slopes may not always have been so denuded.

CHAPTER XXXIII