ON THE EXPLORATION OF HADRAMOUT IN SOUTHERN ARABIA. o55 



fertilises a considerable area, and there are several others. Beyond these 

 natural streams, or g hails as they are called, the coast-line is both water- 

 less and featureless, and it is very narrow : in most parts the line of moun- 

 tains begins to rise about six miles from the coast, and continues an 

 abrupt and almost unbi'oken line all along the coast. Several caravan 

 roads penetrate into the interior up the short valleys, but in every case tlieie 

 is a very steep ascent, exceedingly arduous for camels and beasts of burden. 

 At an elevation of 5,000 feet there is a plateau extending on all sides, as 

 far as the eye can reach, divided by nature into two storeys, the upper one 

 being about eighty feet higher than the lower, and representing what is 

 left of a higher surface gradually disappearing in the course of ages. On 

 the upper storey vegetation is entirely absent, and in many places the 

 ground is covered with black basaltic stones scattered over the sui'face as 

 if from a gigantic pepper-pot. In the gullies of this upper storey there 

 are considerable traces of vegetation, and it is here that the myrrh trees 

 and frankincense trees grew which once formed the wealth of this district. 

 The subject of frankincense and myrrh is of course one of the most interesting 

 in connection with the Hadramout, as this portion of Arabia was the one 

 which supplied the ancient world with these precious drugs ; and when one 

 considers how they were anciently used, both for private and religious 

 purposes, one can readily understand the commercial importance of these 

 commodities. Claudius Ptolemy gives us accurate information as to the 

 caravan routes by which the drugs were conveyed to the Mediterranean 

 from the country of the Hadramitas, or Chatramitre as the Greeks, from their 

 inability to sound the initial H, called it. Pliny also affords us valuable 

 information on the subject, as do also the Arabian geographers of the 

 earlier centuries of our era. From personal observation I should say that 

 the ancients held communication with the Hadramout almost entirely by 

 the land caravan route, as there are absolutely no traces of antiquity to be 

 found along the arid coast-line, whereas the interior valley and its collateral 

 branches are very rich in remains of the ancient Himyaritic civilisation. 

 Evidently the trees which produced these drugs grew on the plateau. 

 Myn-h trees are still very common on it, and every year Africans come 

 over from Somaliland for the purpose of collecting the sap. During our 

 wanderings we only once came across a specimen of the frankincense tree : 

 it has evidently almost entirely disappeared from this locality, but is to be 

 still found in abundance, I am told, further east, in the country of the 

 Mahri tribe. 



It is highly probable that the systematic destruction of the timber on 

 this plateau during the course of countless ages has much to say to the 

 present deplorable condition of the Hadramout and its collateral valleys. 

 These are all being silted up by sand, which invades them from the 

 central desert on the north and from the plateau on the south. This 

 sand in many instances is forty feet deep, and entirely covers the running 

 waters which for the purposes of cultivation have to be brought up by 

 wells and led to the land intended for cultivation by an elaborate system 

 of irrigation. There are very few running streams in this district, and 

 every year we were told they are becoming fewer, and will undoubtedly 

 very soon disappear altogether. The inhabitants of the Hadramout 

 have a hard struggle to maintain against this invasion of their country 

 by a natural catastrophe, and were it not for the custom of the in- 

 habitants of going abroad to seek their fortunes, there is no doubt that 

 long ago the country would have been abandoned, and the struggle for 



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