Chapter 20

THE GARA MOUNTAINS

At length we turned our faces towards the Gara mountains, with considerable interest and curiosity, and prepared to ascend them by a tortuous valley, the Wadi Ghersìd, which dives into their very midst, and forms the usual approach for camels, as the mountain sides in other parts are too precipitous. After riding up the valley for a few miles, we came across one of the small lakes of which we were in quest, nestling in a rocky hole, and with its fine boulders hung with ferns and vegetation, forming altogether one of the most ideal spots we had ever seen. That arid Arabia could produce so lovely a spot, was to us one of the greatest surprises of our lives. Water-birds and water-plants were here to be found in abundance, and the hill slopes around were decked with fine sycamores and acacia-trees, amongst the branches of which sweet white jessamine, several species of convolvulus, and other creepers climbed.

The water was deliciously cool, rushing forth from three different points in the rock among maidenhair and other ferns into the basin which formed the lake, but it is impregnated with lime, which leaves a deposit all down the valley along its course. Evidence of the mighty rush of water during the rains is seen on all sides, rubbish is then cast into the branches of the great fig-trees, and the Bedouin told us that at times this valley is entirely full of water and quite impassable.

Next day we pursued our way up the gorge of Ghersìd, climbing higher and higher, making our way through dense woods, often dangerous for the camel riders, and obliging us frequently to dismount.

Merchants who visited Dhofar in pursuit of their trade knew of these valleys, and not unnaturally brought home glowing accounts of their fertility, and thus gained for Arabia a reputation which has been thought to be exaggerated.

In the Wadi Ghersìd, amongst the dense vegetation which makes the spot a veritable paradise, we came across many Bedouin of the Beit al Kathan family tending their flocks and dwelling in the caves. They were all exceedingly obsequious to Sheikh Sehel, and we soon found that he was a veritable king amongst them, and forthwith we gave up any attempt to guide our own footsteps, but left ourselves entirely in his hands, to take us whither he would and spend as long about it as he liked. One thing which interested us very much was to see the greetings of the Bedouin: for an acquaintance they merely rub the palms of their hands when they meet, and then kiss the tips of their respective fingers; for an intimate friend they join hands and kiss each other; but for a relative they not only join hands, but they rub noses and finally kiss on either cheek. Whenever we met a party of their friends on our way, it was a signal for a halt that these greetings might be observed, and then followed a pipe. At first we rather resented these halts; but they take such a short time over their whiff of tobacco, and are so disconsolate without it, that we soon gave up complaints at these delays. They literally only take one whiff and pass the stone pipe on, so that a halt for a smoke seldom lasts more than five minutes, and all are satisfied. Sheikh Sehel met many of his relatives in the Wadi Ghersìd, and his nose was subject to many energetic rubs, and the novelty of this greeting, about which one had vaguely read in years gone by, excited our interest deeply, but at the same time we were thankful we were not likely to meet any relatives in the valley, and to have to undergo the novel sensations in person.

Every afternoon, when our tents were pitched and our baggage open, whole rows of Bedouin would sit outside asking for medicine; pills, of special violence of course, and quinine were the chief drugs required, and then we had many sore eyes and revolting sores of every description, requiring closer attention. As to the pills, we had some difficulty in getting the Bedouin not to chew them, but when one man, Mas'ah by name, solemnly chewed five Holloway's pills and was very sick after so doing, it began to dawn upon them that our method was the right one. Most embarrassing of all our patients was old Sheikh Sehel himself. Fortune had been kind to him in most respects: she had given him wealth and power amongst men, and the fickle goddess had bestowed upon him two wives, but alas! no offspring, and to seek for a remedy for this, to a savage, overwhelming disaster, he came with his head-men to the tent of the European medicine men. It was in vain for my husband to tell him that he had brought no remedy for this complaint. They had seen him on one or two occasions consult a small medicine book, and their only reply to his negative was, 'The book; get out the book, Theodore,' and he had solemnly to pretend to go through the volume before they could be convinced that he had no medicine to meet the case.

It was curious to hear their morning greeting, 'Sabakh, Theodore! Sabakh, Mabel!' The women of the Gara tribe are timid creatures, small, and not altogether ill-looking; in fact the Garas are, as a tribe, undersized and of small limbs, but exceedingly active and lithe. The women do not possess the wealth in savage jewellery which we found to be the case in the Hadhramout the previous year, nor do they paint themselves so grotesquely with turmeric and other dyes, but indulge only in a few patches of black, sticky stuff like cobbler's wax on their faces, and a touch of antimony round their eyes and joining their eyebrows; they wear no veils, and at first we could not get near them, as they ran away in terror at our approach. They have but poor jewellery--silver necklaces, armlets, nose, toe, and finger rings. One evening, when up in the mountains, we were told that a harem wished to see us, and we were conducted to a spot just out of sight of our tents, where sat three females on the ground looking miserably shy, and in their nervousness they plucked and ate grass, and constantly as we approached retreated three or four steps back and seated themselves again. Presently, after much persuasion, we got one of them to come to the tent and accept a present of needles and other oddments, the delight of womankind all the world over. Altogether these Gara women formed a marked and pleasant contrast to the Bedouin women in the Hadhramout, who literally besieged us in our tent, and never gave us any peace.

It is interesting to read in the 'Periplus' (p. 32) a description of this coast and of the high mountains behind, 'where men dwell in holes.' We often went to visit the troglodytes in their cave homes, where we found men, women, and children living with their flocks and herds in happy harmony. The floor of their caves is soft and springy, the result of the deposits of generations of cattle; in the dark recesses of the cave the kids are kept during their mother's absence at the pasture, and though these caves are slightly odoriferous, we found them cool and refreshing after the external heat. In some of them huts are erected for the families, and in one cave we found almost a village of huts; but in the smaller ones they have no covering, and when in the open the Gara cares for nothing but a tree to shelter him. All their farm implements are of the most primitive nature; the churn is just a skin hung on three sticks, which a woman shakes about until she obtains her butter. Ghi or rancid butter is one of the chief exports of Dhofar. They practise too, a pious fraud on their cows by stretching a calf-skin on a stick, and when the cow licks this she is satisfied and the milk comes freely. They have but few pots and pans, and these of the dirtiest description, so when we got milk from them we always sent our own utensils.

In these valleys, by rocks near the streams and under trees, live, the Bedouin told us, those curious semi-divine spirits which they call _jinni_, the propitiating of which seems to be the chief form of religion amongst them. One morning, as we were riding up a narrow gorge beneath the shade of a beetling cliff, our guides suddenly set up a sing-song chant, which they continued for fully ten minutes. '_Aleik soubera, Aleik soubera_,' were the words which they constantly repeated, and which were addressed, they told us, to the jinni of the rocks, a supplication to allow us to pass in safety.

Jinni also inhabit the lakes in the Gara mountains, and it is considered dangerous to wet your feet in them, for you will catch a fever. We could not induce the Bedouin to gather a water-plant we coveted in one of them for this reason. They inhabit, too, the caves where the people dwell, and have to be propitiated with suitable offerings. In fact, the fear of jinni, and the skill of certain magicians in keeping them friendly, are the only tangible form of religion that we could discover amongst them. When at the coast villages they outwardly conform to the Mohammedan customs, but when away in their mountains they abandon them altogether. During the time we were with them they never performed either the prayers or the ablutions required by the Moslem creed, and the only thing approaching a religious festival amongst them that we heard of, is an annual festival held by the Garas in November by the side of one of their lakes, to which all the members of the different families repair, and at which a magician sits on a rock in the centre of a group of dancing Bedouin, to propitiate, with certain formulas, the jinni of the lake. Amongst the Bedouin of the Hadhramout we noticed the same absence of religious observances and the same superstitious dread of jinni, but at the same time I fully believe they have their own sacred places and festivals, which they conceal as much as possible from the fanatical Moslems who dwell amongst them. A Bedouin never fasts during Ramazan, and does not object to do his work during the month of abstinence, but he goes to mosque and says his prayers when occasion brings him to the coast. It seems to me a curious coincidence that in many other Mohammedan countries we have visited we have come across the same story of concealed religion as practised by the nomad races. We have the Ali-Ullah-hi in the Persian mountains, about whose secret rites horrible stories are told; we have the Ansairi and the Druses in the Lebanon, and the nomad Yourouks of Asia Minor, and the Dünmeh of Salonika, about all of whom the strict Mohammedans of the towns tell you exactly the same story that we heard about the Bedouin of Southern Arabia. They are all looked upon as heathen by the Moslems, and accredited with secret rites and ceremonies about which no definite knowledge can be gained; and thus it would seem that throughout the length and breadth of Islam there are survivals of more ancient cults which the followers of Mohammed have never been able to eradicate, cults which no doubt would offer points of vast interest to the anthropologist if it were possible to unravel the mysteries which surround them.

We were for ever hearing stories of jinni amongst the Gara Bedouin, and all we could gather was that when propitiated they are friendly to the human race. Old Sheikh Sehel and his men stuck to it that they had constantly seen jinni, and their belief in them seems deeply rooted. This word is pronounced ghinni in Southern Arabia.

On January 4 we were at Beit el Khatan. We had to climb on foot. The valley became narrower as we went on, and the cliffs at the side were full of long caverns, with great stumpy stalactites and stalagmites, looking like teeth in gigantic mouths. The rocks we had to climb up were very rough and rugged, but where millions of camels' feet in thousands of years had polished them they were quite smooth and slippery. When we got above the woods, all very hot, we were able to ride again, at an elevation of 2,600 feet, on undulating, grassy ground.

We encamped under two large fig-trees, and the weather being cloudy and windy were glad to find a quantity of wood ready gathered, the remains of a night shelter. There was muddy water at a little distance. The climate seems most healthy, in winter at least. Three kinds of figs grow here. Some are little purple ones with narrow leaves, and some large red ones with broad leaves.

Leaving the Wadi Ghersìd we had a beautiful journey. We two enjoyed every minute of the three hours and a half.

We went up the valley through a thick forest of lovely trees. There were myrtles, ilex, figs, acacia, and a quantity of other trees, with climbing cacti and other creepers, and great high trees of jasmin. Sometimes it was hard enough to get through the bushes and under the trees, perched up aloft on our camels. We were down in the river-bed part of the time, and then climbing through the forest to get to the top of the falls. Above the forest rise tiers of cliffs, and there were trees at the top on a tableland, as well as large isolated trees on most of the mountain tops, sheltering many birds.

We had to wait fully an hour for our tent, as the servants' camels were somehow belated, and it was considered to be all owing to the jinni, whose abode we passed. Large white bustards assembled round our camp.

Once we were settled, there was the usual run on the medicine chest. A very nice Bedou soldier, Aman, the head one, was given five pills into one hand by my husband, and as he insisted on grasping his weapons with his other, he had such difficulty in consuming them that I had to hold the cup of water for him to sip from.

Madder trees grow about, and the Bedouin make clothes from the silky fibres.

We ascended a good deal the following day, to a point whence our view extended over the great central desert. It looked like a blue sea with a yellow shore. We then turned a little to the south, then north again, and found ourselves among a quantity of wooded spurs, and on the edge of a deep wooded wadi.

Right up to the tops of the mountains, which reach an elevation of about 3,000 feet, the ground is fertile and covered with grass, on which large herds of cattle feed; clusters of sycamores and limes growing here and there give to the undulating hills quite a park-like appearance. As we happened to be there in the dry season, the grass was all brown and slippery, and there stood around us acres upon acres of hay with no one to harvest it; but after the rains the aspect of the Gara hills must be as green and pleasant as those of Derbyshire. The dry grass often catches fire, and from the mountains in various directions we saw columns of smoke arising as if from the chimneys of a manufacturing district. The country through which we travelled for the next two days is covered with thorny bushes and anthills, and is more like Africa than Arabia. The anthills, though very extensive, were not so fantastic as those we saw in Africa. We were going eastward over high ground; we decided to halt for two nights near a pretty little hole full of maidenhair fern, where there was water. It was nice and clean at first, but even at the end of the first day it was much diminished and very muddy. Travellers like ourselves must be a great nuisance drinking up the scanty supply of water which might last the inhabitants for a long while.

We had hoped to get a good rest after our many days of marching, but while we were here there came on the most frightful hurricane from the north; it blew steadily for two days and nights and put all rest out of the question. With difficulty could we keep our tents erect; when we were in ours we had to be tightly tied in and sit next to the sunniest wall; in the evening when the wind abated a little we used to sit by a large fire, dressed in blankets.

The piercing blasts quite shrivelled up our poor unclad conductors, who crouched in an inert mass round log fires which they made. We were obliged to remain inactive, for they said the camels would not move during this wind, though I believe the cause of inaction rose more from their own dislike to travel in the cold; and so inert were they that we could hardly get them to fetch us water from the neighbouring spring, their whole energy being expended in fetching huge logs of wood to keep the fires burning, and I think they were all pleased when the time came to descend to the lower regions again and a warmer atmosphere.

We were afraid to start before the sun was up for fear the camels would be too cold to move, and he did not visit us very early.

Sheikh Sehel promised to take us across the Gara border into Nejd if we wished; but as it would have entailed a considerable delay and parley with the sheikhs of the Nejd Bedouin, and as we could see from our present vantage ground that the country would afford us absolutely no objects of interest, we decided not to attempt this expedition.

On leaving our very exposed and nameless camping-ground, we pursued our course in a north-east direction, still passing through the same park-like scenery, through acres and acres of lovely hay, to be had for nothing a ton. It is exceedingly slippery, and dangerous foothold for the camels; consequently numerous falls were the result, and much of our journey had to be done on foot.

We and they used involuntarily to sit down and slide and be brought up suddenly by a concealed rock.

To the south the descent is abrupt and rocky to the plain of Dhofar and the Indian Ocean, and the horizon line on either side is remarkably similar, for in the far, far distance the sandy desert becomes a straight blue line like a horizon of water. To the east and west the arid barrenness of Arabia soon asserts itself, whereas the undulating Gara range, like the Cotswold, is fertile, and rounded with deep valleys and ravines running into it full of rich tropical vegetation.

On the second day we began again to descend a hideously steep path, and a drop of about 1,500 feet brought us to a remarkable cave just above the plain, and only about ten or twelve miles from Al Hafa. This cave burrows far into the mountain side, and is curiously hung with stalactites, and contains the deserted huts of a Bedou village, only inhabited during the rains. Immediately below this cave in the Wadi Nahast are the ruins of an extensive Sabæan town, in the centre of which is a natural hole 150 feet deep and about 50 feet in diameter; around this hole are the remains of walls, and the columns of a large entrance gate. We asked for information about this place, but all we could get in reply was that it was the well of the Addites, the name always associated with the ruins of the bygone race. They also said the Minqui had lived in the town. In my opinion this spot is the site of the oracle mentioned by Ptolemy and others, from which the capital of Dhofar took its name. It much resembles the deep natural holes, which we found in Cilicia in Asia Minor, where the oracles of the Corycian and Olbian Zeus were situated. It is just below the great cave I have mentioned, and, as a remarkable natural phenomenon, it must have been looked upon with awe in ancient days, and it was a seat of worship, as the ruined walls and gateway prove; furthermore, it is just half a day's journey east of the city of Mansura or Zufar, where, Ibn Batuta somewhat contemptuously says, 'is Al Akhaf, the abode of the Addites,' and there is no other point on the plain of Dhofar where the oracle could satisfactorily be located from existing evidence. Some time, perhaps, an enterprising archæologist may be able to open the ruins about here, and verify the identification from epigraphical evidence.

When we reached the valley Imam Sharif said: 'We do not know how we got down that place, for all of our feet was each 36 inches from the other foot.' We had such trouble squeezing through the trees, too.

We encamped not at all far from the deep hole, and at first were too hot and tired after our tremendous clamber to look round, but my husband found it in his sunset stroll, and came and called to me to hurry out while light yet lingered in such joyful tones that I asked, 'Is it Dianæ Oraculum?'

Before starting in the morning we went to visit some troglodytes, dirty, but pleasant, and willing for us to see all there was to be seen, and as anxious to see us; indeed, they wished to see more of me than I thought convenient, but fortunately my husband's collar-stud came undone and they all crowded to see his white chest amid shouts of 'Shouf Theodore!' (Look at Theodore).

One of these people had fever and another neuralgia. We found neuralgia pretty common in Arabia. Quassia-chips were given to each to steep in water, but carefully tied up in different coloured cotton bags. Our way was very uninteresting, due south to the sea at Rizat.

My husband's camel required repacking, and he and Hassan managed to lose sight of the rest of the _kafila_. Imam Sharif and I went on without perceiving that the rest had stopped. We had to wait an hour to be found. I dismounted, and sat in a circle of thirteen men. When one of them wished to attract my attention he tapped me on the knee with sword or stick, saying, 'Ya (oh), Mabel!'

One of the first days I heard them consulting what my name might be; several were suggested, but at last they thought it must be 'Fàtema' and to try called 'Ya Fàtema!' I said 'My name is not "Fàtema";' then they asked, and thus they learnt our names.

They said they did not wish us to give them orders of any kind as they were sheikhs; certainly not through the soldiers. 'We are gentlemen, and they are slaves, and if we choose we can kill them. What is it to us? We shall have to pay 400 reals, but we can give a camel each and can well afford it. We are rich.'

I must say these men were often very kind to me.