Chapter 29

KALENZIA

As we had been unable to penetrate into the Mahri country, though we had attempted it from three sides, we determined to visit the offshoot of the Mahri who dwell on the island of Sokotra.

Cast away in the Indian Ocean, like a fragment rejected in the construction of Africa, very mountainous and fertile, yet practically harbourless, the island of Sokotra is, perhaps, as little known as any inhabited island on the globe.

Most people have a glimpse of it on their way to India and Australia, but this glimpse has apparently aroused the desire of very few to visit it, for the Europeans who have penetrated into it could be almost counted on the fingers of one hand. During recent years two botanical expeditions have visited it, one under Professor Balfour, and one under Dr. Schweinfurth, and the results added marvellously to the knowledge of quaint and hitherto unknown plants.

We passed two months traversing it from end to end, with the object of trying to unravel some of its ancient history so shrouded in mystery, and learn something about its present inhabitants.

Mariette Bey, the eminent Egyptologist, identifies Sokotra with To Nuter, a place to be bracketed with the land of Punt in the pictorial decorations of the temple of Deir el Bahri, as resorted to by the ancients for spices, frankincense, and myrrh; and he is probably correct, for it is pretty certain that no one given spot in reach of the ancients could produce at one and the same time so many of the coveted products of that day--the ruby-coloured dragon's blood (_Draco Kinnabari_ of Pliny), three distinct species of frankincense, several kinds of myrrh, besides many other valuable gum-producing trees, and aloes of super-excellent quality.

It is referred to by the author of the 'Periplus' as containing a very mixed and Greek-speaking population drawn together for trading purposes, trafficking with Arabia and India. Abu'lfida, Africanus, and other writers, Arabic and otherwise, mention Christianity as prevailing here, and Theodoret, writing in the beginning of the fifth century, speaks of the great missionary Theophilus as coming from the island of Diu to teach Christianity in India.

Cosmas Indicopleustes calls the island Dioscorides. He visited it in the sixth century, and accounted for the Greek-speaking population he met with by saying that they had been placed there by the Ptolemies. El Masoudi considered the Greek a purer race in Sokotra than elsewhere.

As far back as the tenth century Sokotra was a noted haunt of pirates from Katch and Gujerat Bawarij, from a kind of ship called _barja_.[13]

Traders came from Muza Lemyrica (Canara) and Barggaza (Gujerat).

Ibn Batuta gives an account of a certain Sheikh Said of Maskat being seized by Sokotran pirates, who sent him off empty-handed to Aden.

Marco Polo describes the catching of whales for ambergris. El Masoudi[14] says the best ambergris comes from the sea of Zinj in East Africa: 'The men of Zinj come in canoes and fall upon the creature with harpoons and cables, and draw it ashore and extract the ambergris.'

In the inscription of the Nakhtshe Rustam, near Persepolis, which we saw when in Persia in 1889, thirty countries are named which were conquered by Darius, the Akhemenid, amongst them Iskuduru, _i.e._ Sokotra.

Though it is Arabian politically, Sokotra geographically is African. This is the last and largest of a series of islands and islets stretching out into the Indian ocean, including the little group of Abdul Kerim. Some of these are white with guano.

Darzi, Kal Farun, Sambeh, and Samboyia are the names of some of the smaller ones. Sokotra itself is situated about 240 miles from Cape Guardafui, and is about 500 miles from Aden.

The latitude of the island is between 12° 19' and 12° 42', and the longitude between 53° 20' and 54° 30'. It is 72 miles long from east to west, and 22 miles wide from north to south. There is a coral reef nearly all the way from Africa to beyond Ras Momi.

According to the Admiralty charts the water between the islands and the mainland is 500 fathoms deep, but among the islands nowhere is it deeper than 200 fathoms.

It is an island that seems to be very much in the way as far as navigation is concerned, and many shipwrecks have been occasioned by its being confused with the mainland, one being taken for the other. The wreck of the _Aden_, and the great loss of life resulting from it, which took place so soon after we were there, is still fresh in our memories.

Our party consisted of Mr. Bennett, who was new to Eastern life, our old Greek servant, Matthaios, and two young Somali, Mahmoud and Hashi. They could talk a little English, but generally talked Arabic to us and Matthaios. We were told before starting that Mahri, or Mehri, was the language most in use, and we nearly committed the serious error of taking a Mahri man from Arabia, who could also speak Arabic, as an interpreter, but fortunately we did not do so, as he would have been quite useless, unless he could also have talked Sokoteriote.

We found it no easy matter to get there. First we were told we should, if we attempted to go by sailing-boat, have to coast to Ras Fartak, on the Arabian coast, and let the monsoon blow us to Sokotra, and this seemed impracticable. Finally we arranged with a British India steamer, the _Canara_, that it should 'deviate' and deposit us there for a consideration.

The ss. _Canara_ promised to await the arrival of the P. and O. steamer before leaving Aden, and would, for one thousand rupees (62_l._), take us to Sokotra and remain four hours. After that we were to pay thirty rupees an hour, and in no case would she tarry more than twenty-four hours. If landing were impossible, we were to be carried to Bombay.

We were landed in a lifeboat, through the surf at the town of Kalenzia, which lies at the western end of the island. It is a wretched spot, a jumble of the scum of the East; Arab traders, a Banyan or two, a considerable Negroid population in the shape of soldiers and slaves, and Bedouin from the mountains, who come down with their skins and jars of clarified butter, to despatch in dhows to Zanzibar, Maskat, and other butterless places.

Butter is now the chief product and almost the sole export of the island, and Sokotra butter has quite a reputation in the markets along the shores of Arabia and Africa. The sultan keeps a special dhow for the trade, and the Bedouin's life is given up to the production of butter. Nowhere, I think, have I seen so many flocks and herds in so limited a space as here.

Kalenzia (the place has been spelt in so many ways that we took the liberty of spelling it phonetically as we heard it pronounced) has an apology for a port, or roadstead, facing the African coast, which is the most sheltered during the prevalence of the north-east monsoon. Separated from the shore by a bar of shingle is a lagoon, fed by the waters coming down from the encircling mountains, which reach an altitude of 1,500 or 2,000 feet. The lagoon is very prettily embowered with palms and mangroves, and the waters are covered with wild duck, but it is a wonder that all the inhabitants do not die of fever, for the water is very fetid-looking and they drink from nothing else. I believe this is the water which is supplied to ships. The shore is rendered pestiferous by rotting seaweed, and the bodies of sharks, with back fin cut out and tail cut off, which are exposed to dry on the beach. We preferred the brackish water from a well hard by our camp until we discovered a nice stream under the slopes of the mountains, about three miles away, to which we sent skins to be filled. This stream is under the northern slope of the Kalenzia range, and near it are the ruins of an ancient town, and as the water trickles on towards the lagoon it fertilises the country exceedingly, and its banks are rich in palms and other trees. The abandoned site of this old town is infinitely preferable to the modern one, and much healthier.

We were received in a most friendly way by the inhabitants, and hoped that, as we were English and the island was to some extent under British protection, we should be able to proceed inland at once. Our nationality, however, made not the slightest difference to them, and we were told we must encamp while our letters were taken to the sultan, who lives beyond Tamarida, and await his permission to proceed farther. The eight days we had to remain here were the most tedious of those we spent on the island.

One of our amusements was to watch boat-building accomplished by tying a bundle of bamboos together at each end and pushing them out into shape with wooden stretchers.

They have enormous lobster-pots, 6 feet to 8 feet in diameter, made of matting woven with split bamboo, in patterns something like the seats of our chairs. The men often wear their tooth-brushes tied to their turbans; a sprig of arrack serves the purpose.

Whilst at Kalenzia we must have had nearly all the inhabitants of the place at our tent asking for a remedy for one disease or another; they seemed to be mostly gastric troubles, which they would describe as pains revolving in their insides like a wheel, and wounds. The Sokotra medical lore is exceedingly crude. One old man we found by the shore having the bowels of a crab put on a very sore finger by way of ointment. A baby of very tender age (eleven months) had had its back so seared by a red-hot iron that it could get no rest, and cried most piteously.

The poor little thing was wrapped in a very coarse and prickly goat-hair cloth, and its mother was patting its back to stop its cries, quite ineffectually, as you may well imagine. I spread some vaseline on a large sheet of grease-proof paraffin paper and applied it most gently. Its whole family then wrapped it up in the goat-hair cloth in such a way as to crush and put aside the dressing, and the mother laid it on its back, though I had warned her not to do it, on her knees, and jumped it up and down. The baby was none the better, but all around seemed pleased, and I could only sadly think that I had done my best. I find the grease-proof paper most valuable to spread ointment for man and beast where rags are scarce.

One old lady, with an affection of the skin, would only have the 'bibi' as her doctor, so she came to me with a good many men to show her off, but would have nothing to do with my husband. I said the first treatment must consist in a thorough washing all over with warm water and soap: but behold! I heard there was no soap in the island, so halves and quarters of cakes of Pears' soap as well as whole ones, were distributed as a precious ointment.

They have no soap, no oil, no idea of washing or cleansing a wound, and cauterisation with a hot iron appears to be their panacea for every ailment.

A favourite remedy with them here, as in Arabia, is to stop up the nostrils with plugs fastened to a string round the neck to prevent certain noxious scents penetrating into it; but, as far as we could see, they make no use whatsoever of the many medicinal herbs which grow so abundantly on the island.

The women of Kalenzia use turmeric largely for dyeing their faces and their bodies yellow, a custom very prevalent on the south coast of Arabia; they wear long robes, sometimes dyed with indigo, sometimes of a bright scarlet hue. The pattern of their dress is the same as that worn in the Hadhramout, _i.e._ composed of two pieces of cotton cloth wide enough to reach the finger-tips and with a seam down each side. The front piece is longer than in the Hadhramout, coming down to within a foot of the ground, but the train is also very much longer, and must lie more than a yard and a half on the ground. These ladies get good neither from the length nor the breadth of their dresses, for as the train evidently incommodes them, they twist the dress so tightly round their bodies that the left side seam comes straight or rather lop-sidedly behind and one corner of the train is thrown over the left shoulder all in a wisp. There is nothing to keep it up, so down it comes continually, and is always being caught up again. I never saw a train down, except once for my edification.

Their hair is cut in a straight fringe across the forehead and is in little plaits hanging behind. They wear a loose veil of a gauzy nature, with which they conceal half their faces at times. Silver rings and bracelets of a very poor character, and glass bangles, complete their toilet, and the commoner class and Bedou women weave a strong cloth in narrow strips of goat-hair, which they wrap in an inelegant fashion round their hips to keep them warm, sometimes as their only garment. They do not cover their faces. From one end of Sokotra to the other we never found anything the least characteristic or attractive amongst the possessions of the islanders, nothing but poor examples of what one finds everywhere on the south coast of Arabia and east of Africa.

Many weddings were going on during our residence at Kalenzia, and at them we witnessed a ceremony which we had not seen before. On the morning of the festive day the Sokotrans, negro slaves being apparently excluded, assembled in a room and seated themselves round it. Three men played tambourines or tom-toms of skin called _teheranes_, and to this music they chanted passages out of the Koran, led by the 'mollah'; this formed a sort of religious preliminary to a marriage festival; and in the evening, of course, the dancing and singing took place to the dismal tune of the same tom-toms, detrimental, very, to our earlier slumbers. The _teherane_ would seem to be the favourite and only Sokotran instrument of music--if we except flutes made of the leg-bones of birds common on the opposite coast, and probably introduced thence--and finds favour alike with Arab, Bedou, and Negro.

The people here did not torment us by staring at and crowding round us. They came only on business, to be doctored, to sell something, or to bring milk wherewith to purchase from us lumps of sugar.

The houses are pleasantly shaded amongst the palm groves, and have nice little gardens attached to them in which gourds, melons, and tobacco grow; and in the middle of the paths between them one is liable to stumble over turtlebacks, used as hencoops for some wretched specimens of the domestic fowl which exist here, and which lay eggs about the size of a plover's.

Though a poor-looking place it looks neat with its little sand-strewn streets.

It contains a single wretched little mosque, in character like those found in third-rate villages in Arabia; Kadhoup or Kadhohp possesses another, and Tamarida no less than two; and these represent the sum total of the present religious edifices in Sokotra, for the Bedouin in their mountain villages do not care for religious observances and own no mosques.

Owing to the scarcity of water in the south-western corner of the island we were advised not to visit it; the wells were represented to us as dry, and the sheep as dying, though the goats still managed to keep plump and well-looking. Perhaps the drought which had lately visited India may have affected Sokotra too; and we were told before going there that a copious rainfall might be expected during December and January, for Sokotra gets rain during both monsoons; but during our stay on the island we had little rain, except when up on the heights of Mount Haghiers.

One day we two went some distance in the direction of the mountains, and came on a large upright rock with an inscription upon it, evidently late Himyaritic or Ethiopic, and copied as much of it as was distinguishable. Not far off was the tidy little hamlet of Haida. The walls of the yards there are circular.

Farther on, behind the village of Kissoh, are the ruins of an ancient village with a long, well-built, oblong structure in the middle, possibly a tomb; and it was behind this again that we found the good water that we drank afterwards.

There must once have been a large population, to judge by the way the hills are terraced up by walls, and the many barren, neglected palm-trees about among the old fields.

The Kalenzia range of mountains is quite distinct from Haghier, and is about 1,500 or 2,000 feet high. We could find no special name for it. They call it Fedahan, but that is the generic Sokoteriote word for mountain.

The highest peak is called Màtala.

We were very glad when a venerable old sheikh named Ali arrived bringing us a civil letter from the sultan and saying he had been sent to escort us to Tamarida.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 13: Elliot, i. 65.]

[Footnote 14: i. 136.]