ooG IlEPORT — 1894. 



existence given up. The strong fanaticism of the inhabitants and their 

 belief in the sacredness of their country have been another very im- 

 portant factor in perpetuating its existence. Every man who leaves the 

 Hadramout in search of fortune hopes to return and die in the odour of 

 sanctity. No woman ever leaves the country, and there are cases on 

 record of a wife being separated from her husband for forty years. 

 On their return the wanderers relapse into the same condition of 

 fanaticism and hatred of all external influence which has obtained in 

 this country from time immemorial, and all they have gained is money 

 Avith which to continue to live in their own valley, and erect the castles 

 and palaces with which the whole line of the Hadramout is thickly 

 studded. 



The plateau when reached extends, as I have said, to an apparently 

 unlimited extent in every direction ; after one day's journey, however, 

 it will be seen that valleys running northwards are cut out of this flat 

 surface like slices out of a cake. The principal valleys which run into 

 the big central valley from the south are the Wadi Al Isa, Al Eyn, 

 Dowan, Racliy, Adym, and Ben Ali ; there are many others which we had 

 not the time or opportunity to visit. The chief peculiarity of these 

 valleys is that tliey descend very rapidly, and are at their head very 

 nearly as deep as during the rest of their course. They seem as if they 

 had formed part of a great inland fiord, from which the sea retired at 

 .some remote period, leaving the successive marks of many strands on the 

 sandstone and limestone walls which shut in these valleys. Everywhere 

 the descent into them is rapid and diflicult, and no place I have ever 

 seen in the world can possibly be more shut oft' and hennned in by 

 natural features as the broad main valley known as the Hadramout and 

 its collateral branches. The old Arabian stoiy of Sinbad descending 

 into a deep valley on the back of a roc must have originated in some 

 such country as this. It is remarkable how the camels contrive to get 

 to and fro, and frequent accidents to the animals take place during the 

 ascent and descent from the plateau. As seen from above, the aspect of 

 these long narrow valleys is exceedingly curious ; the walls of rocks are 

 almost precipitous, about 1,000 feet in height. In many places the 

 valleys are not a mile wide, and present one long unbroken line of 

 villages, each with its palm grove, its cultivated land, its big castles 

 and houses, and its surrounding hovels for the lower classes. Even the 

 Bedouins have big houses here and settled abodes when on a journey 

 or pasturing their flocks ; they have no tents, and are little better than 

 naked savages. But when they ret.urn home to their valley we find 

 them living in large commodious houses sevei'al storeys in height, with 

 the antlers of antelopes decorating them outside, and though only built 

 of sun-dried bricks their architecture reminds one of the media3val 

 towns on the Rhine. In fact, if one could substitute a flat surface of 

 sand covei-ing the river bed and place almost treeless mountains on either 

 side one might well compare these valleys to those of Germany. The 

 town^ of Hagarein is built on an isolated hill in the middle of the 

 Wadi Kasr, with its walls and battlements, its turrets and machi- 

 colations : it looks at a distance exactly like one of the fortified mediteval 

 towns of Europe. 



In most cases the narrower valleys are the most fertile, the water 

 supply is far better than it is in the main valley, for at the head of the 

 main valley are the salt hills of the Shabwa district, from which, as in 



