Chapter 19

THE GARA TRIBE

We left Al Hafa on December 29, after waiting six days for camels. There was much difficulty in getting a sufficient quantity, and never before had camels been hired in this manner. It was hard to make the people understand what we meant or wished to do.

When at length the camels were assembled, they arrived naked and bare. There were no ropes of any kind, or sticks to tie the baggage to, no vestige of any sort of pack saddle, and we had to wait till the following day before a few ropes could be procured. A good many of our spare blankets had to be used as saddle-cloths, that is to say under the baggage; ropes off our boxes, straps, raw-hide _riems_ that we had used in South Africa, and in fact every available string had to be used to tie it on, and the Bedouin even took the strings which they wear as fillets round their hair, to tie round the camels' necks and noses to lead them.

There was great confusion over the loading, as all that ever yet had been done to camels in that country was to tie a couple of sacks of frankincense together and hang them on. The camels roared incessantly, got up before they were ready, shook off their loads, would not kneel down or ran away loaded, shedding everything or dragging things at their heels. Sometimes their masters quite left off their work to quarrel amongst themselves, bawling and shouting. Though we were ready at seven, it was after midday before we were off, though Wali Suleiman himself superintended the loading.

Camels in Dhofar are not very choice feeders, and have a predilection for bones, and if they saw a bone near the path they would make for it with an eager rush extremely disconcerting to the rider. Fish, too, is dried for them and given them as food (called _kei_ by the Gara and _ohma_ by the Arabs), as also is a cactus which grows in the mountains, which is cut into sections for them. They are fine sturdy animals, and can go up and down hill better than any camels I have ever seen. The fertile Gara range is a great breeding place for camels, but as there is no commerce or communication with the interior, the Bedouin do not make much use of them themselves, but sell them to their neighbours, who come here to purchase.

My husband, Imam Sherif and I had each a seat on a separate loaded camel, with our _rezais_ or _lahafs_--thick cotton quilts--on the baggage; six of the servants rode in pairs while one walked, all taking turns. We went about eight miles westward the first day and considered it a wonderfully good journey. We stopped at the edge of the plain, about half a mile from the sea at Ras Risout, where some very dirty water was to be obtained under a rock.

We passed some ruins with columns four miles west of Al Hafa at Aukad.

The approach to the mountains is up narrow gulleys full of frankincense-trees.

We had a stormy and quarrelsome start next day, after a delay caused by my husband's camel sitting down constantly and unexpectedly, and a stoppage because two possible enemies being descried it was deemed needful to wait till all the camels came up that we might keep together. When they arrived we waited so long that we got up, told them that we did not want to be kept all day on the road, and began to mount our camels, saying we would return to the wali at Al Hafa. In the end they began quarrelling with each other and made peace with us, and next we set off to a place farther north than they had before intended, where there was good water in a small amphitheatre of mountains. We went up a lovely gorge with ferns, trees, and a running stream, as different as possible to the aridity of the Hadhramout.

January 1, 1895, began with a wild-goose chase after some ruins consisting of a circular wall of loose stones about a foot in height, very likely only a sheep pen.

The camels were much quieter and the Bedouin very friendly. We only travelled an hour and a half, having gone round some spurs and found ourselves in a round valley, back to back with that we had left, and about half a mile distant from our last camp. It was surrounded by some very high and some lower hills, and we were just under a beetling cliff with good water in a stream among bulrushes, reeds, and tropical vegetation.

There was a Bedou family close by with goats; they sold us milk at an exorbitant price and asked so much for a kid that we stuck to our tinned meat.

The Gara, in whose country we were now, are a wild pastoral tribe of the mountains, travelling over them hither and thither in search of food for their flocks. They are troglodytes of a genuine kind and know no home save their ancestral caves, with which this limestone range abounds; they only live in rude reed huts like ant hills, when they come down to the plain of Dhofar in the rainy season for pasturage. There is a curious story connected with the Gara tribe, which probably makes them unique in Arabia, and that is, that a few years ago they owned a white sheikh. About the beginning of this century an American ship was wrecked on this coast, and all the occupants were killed save the cabin boy, who was kept as a slave. As years went on his superior ability asserted itself, and gained for him in his later years the proud position of sheikh of all the Garas. He lived, married, and died amongst them, leaving, I believe, two daughters, who still live up in the mountains with their tribe. The life and adventures of this Yankee boy must have been as thrilling and interesting as any novelist could desire, and it is a great pity that the white sheikh could not have been personally interviewed before his death, which occurred over twenty years ago.

Sprenger (§ 449) supposes that the tribal name Gara or Kara corresponds to the ancient Ascites whom Ptolemy places on this coast; but as the Ascites were essentially a seafaring race, and the Gara are a pastoral tribe of hill Bedouin, the connection between them does not seem very obvious. It is more probable that they may correspond to the Carrei mentioned in the campaign of Aelius Gallus as a race of Southern Arabia, possessing, according to Pliny, the most fertile country.

As for weapons, the Gara have three, and every male of the tribe carries them. One is a small shield (_gohb_) of wood or shark's skin, deep, and with a wooden knob at the centre, so that when they are tired and want a rest they can turn it round and utilise it as a stool; the second is a flat iron sword with a wooden handle, actually made in Germany, for we saw a dhow arrive from Zanzibar whilst we were at Dhofar which brought a cargo of such swords; the Bedouin purchased them with avidity, and were like children with a new toy for some time after, bending them across their naked shoulders, and measuring them with their neighbours, to see that they were all equally long; handing them safely about by their blades. These swords are simply flat pieces of iron, made narrower at the top to leave a place for the hand to grip them; there is no form of hilt of any kind. They are used to cut down trees, split logs, scrape sticks, and cut meat into joints. They have scabbards covered with white calico, which are not always used, and there are no straps to attach the sword to the person. The third weapon is a wooden throw-stick, made of a specially hard wood called _miet_, which grows in the mountains; it is about a yard long, and pointed at both ends; it is called _ghatrif_. The Gara are wonderfully skilful at hurling it through the air, and use it both in battle and for the chase with admirable precision. They have hardly any guns amongst them, and what they have are only of the long matchlock class; in fact, they do not seem to covet the possession of firearms, as our friends in the Hadhramout did the year before. Every man clutched the sword and ghatrif in one hand very tightly as there was nothing to prevent their slipping, being both pointed.

The little pipes which they use are of limestone, soft when cut and hardening in the air. They are more like cigarette holders than pipes.

The thorn-extractors used by the Gara tribe are like those used by most of the other Bedouin: a knife, a sort of stiletto, and tweezers. They sit down on the wayside and hack most heartily at their feet, and then prod deeply with the stiletto before pulling the thorn out with the tweezers.

Certainly black skins are not so sensitive as white, and though, of course, I do not approve of slavery, I do think a great deal of unneeded pity has been wasted on slaves by people who took it for granted that being men and brothers they had the same feelings as ourselves, either in mind or body. No one with the same feelings as we could go so readily through the burning cure (_kayya_). In Mashonaland I have seen people walking on narrow paths only suited to people who have never learnt to turn out their toes, all overhung with thorny bushes which not only tore our clothes but our skins. The black people only had white scratches as if they were made of morocco leather. If by any chance a knock really brought a bit of flesh or skin off, and blood annoyed them by streaming down, they would clutch up a handful of grass with a dry leaf or stick, and wipe the wound out quite roughly.

We had never put ourselves into the charge of such wild people as the Garas--far wilder in every way than the Bedouin of the Hadhramout, inasmuch as they have far less contact with civilisation. The Bedou of Southern Arabia is, to my mind, distinctly of an aboriginal race. He has nothing to do with the Arabs, and was probably there just as he is now, centuries before the Arabs found a footing in this country. He is every bit as wild as the African savage, and not nearly so submissive to discipline, and is endowed with a spirit of independence which makes him resent the slightest approach to legal supervision.

When once away from the influence of Wali Suleiman, they paid no heed to the orders of the soldiers sent by him, and during the time we were with them we had the unpleasant feeling that we were entirely in their power. They would not march longer than they liked; they would only take us where they wished, and they were unpleasantly familiar; with difficulty we kept them out of our tents, and if we asked them not to sing at night and disturb our rest, they always set to work with greater vigour.

Seventeen of these men, nearly naked, armed as I have described, and wild-looking in the extreme, formed our bodyguard, and if we attempted to give an order which did not please them, they would independently reply, 'We are all sheikhs, we are not slaves.' At the same time they paid the greatest deference to their chief, the old Sheikh Sehel, and expected us to do the same.

Sheikh Sehel was the head of the Beit al Kathan, which is the chief of the many families into which the Gara tribe is divided, and consequently he was recognised as the chief of all the Garas. He was a wizened, very avaricious-looking old man, who must have been close upon seventy, and though he owned 500 head of cattle and 70 camels, he dressed his old bones in nothing save a loin-cloth, and his matted grey locks were adorned and kept together by a simple leather thong twisted several times round his forehead. Despite his appearance he was a great man in his limited sphere, and for the weeks that were to come we were completely in his power.

He had the exclusive charge of me and my camel, which he led straight through everything, regardless of the fact that I was on several occasions nearly knocked off by the branches of trees; and if my seat was uncomfortable, which it often was, as well as precarious--for we all sat on luggage indifferently tied on--we had the greatest work to make Sheikh Sehel stop to rectify the discomfort, for he was the sheikh of all the Garas, as he constantly repeated, and his dignity was not to be trifled with.

The seventeen sheikhs got half a dollar a day each for food, their slaves a quarter.

Our expedition nearly came to an untimely end a very few days after our start, owing, as my husband himself confessed, to a little indiscretion on his part; but as the event serves to illustrate the condition of the men we were with, I must not fail to recount it. During our day's march we met with a large company of the Al Khathan family pasturing their flocks and herds in a pleasant valley. Great greetings took place, and our men carried off two goats for an evening feast. When night approached they lit a fire of wood, and piled stones on the embers so as to form a heated surface. On this they placed the meat, cut in strips with their swords, the entrails, the heads, and every part of the animal, until their kitchen looked like a ghastly sacrifice to appease the anger of some deity. I must confess that the smell thereof was exceeding savoury, and the picture presented by these hungry savages, gathered round the lurid light of their kitchen, was weird in the extreme. Daggers were used for knives, two fingers for forks, and we stood at a respectful distance and watched them gorge; and so excited did they become as they consumed the flesh, that one could almost have supposed them to be under the influence of strong drink. Several friends joined them from the neighbouring hills, and far into the night they carried on their wild orgy, singing, shouting, and periodically letting off the guns which the soldiers sent by Wali Suleiman brought with them.

We retired in due course to our tent and our beds, but not to sleep, for in addition to their discordant songs, in rushing to and fro they would catch in our tent-guys, and give us sudden shocks, which rendered sleep impossible. Exasperated at this beyond all bearing, my husband at length rushed out and caught a Bedou in the very act of tumbling over a guy. Needless to say a well-placed kick sent him quickly about his business, and after this silence was established and we got some repose.

Next morning, however, when we were prepared to start, we found our Bedouin all seated in a silent, solemn phalanx, refusing to move. 'What is the matter?' my husband asked, 'why are we not ready to start?' and from amongst them arose a stern, freezing reply. 'You must return to Al Hafa. We can travel no more with you, as Theodore has kicked Sheikh Sehel,' for by this time they had become acquainted with our Christian names, and never used any other appellative.

We felt that the aspect of affairs was serious, and that in the night season he had been guilty of an indiscretion which might imperil both our safety and the farther progress of our journey. So we affected to take the matter as a joke, laughed heartily, patted Sheikh Sehel on the back, said that we did not know who it was, and my husband entered into a solemn compact that if they would not catch in our guys again, he would never kick his majesty any more. It was surprising to see how soon the glum faces relaxed, and how soon all ill-feeling was forgotten. In a very few minutes life and bustle, chattering and good humour reigned in our camp, and we were excellent friends again.

It was on the third day after leaving Al Hafa that we passed through one of the districts where frankincense is still collected, in a narrow valley running down from the mountains into the plain of Dhofar. The valley was covered for miles with this shrub, the trunk of which, when punctured, emits the odoriferous gum. We did not see any very large trees, such as we did in Sokotra. The Bedouin choose the hot season, when the gum flows most freely, to do this puncturing. During the rains of July and August, and during the cool season, the trees are left alone. The first step is to make an incision in the trunk, then they strip off a narrow bit of bark below the hole, so as to make a receptacle in which the milky juice, the _spuma pinguis_ of Pliny, can lodge and harden. Then the incision is deepened, and after seven days they return to collect what are, by that time, quite big tears of frankincense, larger than an egg.

The shrub itself is a picturesque one, with a leaf not unlike an ash, only stiffer; it has a tiny green flower, not red like the Sokotra flowers, and a scaly bark. In all there are three districts in the Gara mountains where the tree still grows; anciently, no doubt, it was found in much larger quantities, but the demand for frankincense is now so very limited that they take no care whatever of the trees. They only tap the most promising ones, and those that grow farther west in the Mahri country, as they produce an inferior quality, are not now tapped at all.

The best is obtained at spots called Hoye and Haski, about four days' journey inland from Merbat, where the Gara mountains slope down into the Nejd desert. The second in quality comes from near Cape Risout, and also a little farther west, at a place called Chisen, near Rakhiout, frankincense of a marketable quality is obtained, but that farther west in the Mahri country is not collected now, being much inferior. The best quality they call _leban lakt_, and the second quality _leban resimi_, and about 9,000 cwt. are exported yearly and sent to Bombay. It is only collected in the hot weather, before the rains begin and when the gum flows freely, in the months of March, April, and May, for during the rains the tracks on the Gara mountains are impassable. The trees belong to the various families of the Gara tribe; each tree is marked and known to its owner, and the product is sold wholesale to Banyan merchants, who come to Dhofar just before the monsoons to take it away.

One must imagine that when this industry was at its height, in the days when frankincense was valued not only for temple ritual but for domestic use, the trade in these mountains must have been very active, and the cunning old Sabæan merchants, who liked to keep the monopoly of this drug, told wonderful stories of the phoenix which guarded the trees, of the insalubrity of the climate and of the deadly vapours which came from them when punctured for the gum. Needless to say, these were all false commercial inventions, which apparently succeeded admirably, for the old classical authors were exceedingly vague as to the localities whence frankincense came. Merchants came in their ships to the port of Moscha, which we shall presently visit, to get cargoes of the drug, but they probably knew as little as we did of the interior of the hills behind, and one of the reasons why Aelius Gallus was sent to Arabia by Augustus on his unsuccessful campaign was 'to discover where Arabian gold and frankincense came from.'

Early Arabian authors are far more explicit, and we gather from Makrisi, Ibn Khaldun, and others, something more definite about Dhofar and the frankincense trade, and of the prince of this district who had the monopoly of the trade, and punished its infringement with death. These writers, when compared with the classical ones, assist us greatly in identifying localities.

The Portuguese knew about Dhofar and its productions, for Camoens, in his Tenth Lusiad, 716, writes:

'O'er Dhofar's plain the richest incense breathes.'

But not until Dr. Carter coasted along here some fifty years ago was it definitely known that this was the chief locality in Arabia which produced the drug.

Myrrh, too, grows in large quantities in the Gara range, and we obtained specimens of it in close proximity to the frankincense-tree. The gum of the myrrh-tree is much redder than ordinary gum Arabic, whereas the frankincense gum is considerably whiter. The commerce of Dhofar must have been exceedingly rich in those ancient days, as is evidenced by the size and extent of the Sabæan ruins on the plain. They are the most easterly ruins which have been found in Arabia of the Sabæan period, and probably owe their origin entirely to the drug trade.

For the first few days of our journey, we suffered greatly from the unruliness of the camels. They danced about like wild things at first, and scattered our belongings far and wide, and all of us in our turns had serious falls, and during those days, boxes and packages kept flying about in all directions. Imam Sharif had his travelling trunk broken to pieces and the contents scattered right and left, and some treasured objects of jewellery therein contained were never recovered. So scarce did rope become during our journey, that the Bedouin had actually to take the leather thongs which bound their matted locks together, to lead the camels with, and rope was almost the only thing they tried to steal from us while we were in their company. At length our means of tying became so exhausted that we had to send a messenger back to buy rope from Wali Suleiman, and obtained a large sackful for two reals.

Our new supply of rope was made of aloe-fibre, barely twisted in one thin strand, and at every camp we had to set up a rope-walk to make ropes that would not break. The Garas were always cutting off short bits to tie round their hair or their necks. The servants, headed by Lobo, had to be very sharp in picking up all the pieces lying about after unloading, or we should soon have been at a loss again.

We originally understood that Sheikh Sehel was going to take us up to the mountains by a valley still farther west, but for some reason, which we shall never know, he refused; some said the Mahri tribe was giving trouble in this direction, others that the road was too difficult for camels. At any rate, we had partially to retrace our steps, and following along the foot of the mountains, found ourselves encamped not so many miles away from Al Hafa.