 Preface of Southern Arabia. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Southern Arabia by Theodore and Mrs. Bent. If my fellow traveler had lived, he intended to have put together in book form such information as we had gathered about Southern Arabia. Now as he died four days after our return from our last journey there, I have had to undertake the task myself. It has been very sad to me, but I have been helped by knowing that, however imperfect this book may be, what is written here will surely be a help to those who, by following in our footsteps, will be able to get beyond them, and to whom I so heartily wish success and a happy homecoming, the best wish a traveler may have. It is for their information that I have included so many things about the price of camels, the payment of soldiers, and so forth, and yet even casual readers may care to know these details of explorer's daily lives. Much that is set down here has been published before, but a good deal is new. My husband had written several articles in the 19th century, and by the kindness of the editor I have been able to make use of these. Also, I have incorporated the lectures he had given before the Royal Geographical Society and the British Association. The rest is from his notebooks and from the chronicles that I always wrote during our journeys. I thought at first of trying to keep our several writings apart, but to avoid confusion of inverted commas, I decided acting on advice, just to put the whole thing into as consecutive a form as possible, only saying that the least part of the writing is mine. The bibliography is far from complete, as I can only name a few of the many books that my husband consulted on all the districts around those which we were going to penetrate. As to the spelling of the Arabic, it must be remembered that it is a very widely spread language, and there are naturally many different forms of the same word. For example, Ibn Ben Bin, and such various ways of pronouncing the name of the Muslim Prophet that I have heard it pronounce Mehmet, Mehmad, and Mahd. I must give hearty thanks in both our names to all who helped us on in these journeys, and especially to Mr. Hedlem, who has given me much assistance by going through the proofs of this book. Mr. W. C. Irvine has kindly provided the column of literary Arabic for the vocabulary. Mabel, Virginia, Ana Bent. Thirteen Great Cumberland Place, West. October 13th, 1899. End of Preface. We were attracted by stories of mysterious mounds, and we proposed to see what we could find inside them, hoping, as turned out to be the fact, that we should discover traces of Phoenician remains. The search for traces of an old world takes an excavator now and again into strange corners of the new. Out of the ground he may extract treasures, or he may not. That is not our point here. Out of the inhabitants in their strange ways he is sure, whether he likes it or not, to extract a great deal. And it is with this branch of an excavator's life we are now going to deal. We thought we were on the track of Phoenician remains, and our interest in our work was like the fingers of an aneroid, subject to sudden changes. But at the same time we had perpetually around us a quaint, unknown world of the present, more pleasing to most people than anything pertaining to the past. The group of islands known as Bahrain, dual form of Bahar, i.e. two seas, lies in a bay of the same name in the Persian Gulf, about 20 miles off the coast of Elhasa in Arabia. Bahrain is really the name of the largest of the islands, which is 27 miles long by 10 wide. The second in point of size is Maharak, which lies north of Bahrain, and is separated from it by a straight of horseshoe form, five miles in length and in a few places as much as a mile wide, but for the greater part half a mile. The rest of the group are mere rocks, citra, four miles long, with a village on it of the same name, Nabisalih, Sayeh, Chesaifa, and to the east of Maharak, Arad, with a palm grove and a large double Portuguese fort, an island or peninsula, according to the state of the tide. It was no use embarking on a steamer, which would take us direct from England to our destination, owing to the complete uncertainty of the time when we should arrive. So we planned out our way via Karachi and Muscat. Then we had to go right up to Boucher, and again change steamers there, for the boats going up the Gulf would not touch at Bahrain. At Boucher we engaged five Persians to act as servants, interpreter, and overseers over the workmen whom we should employ in excavating. We had as our personal servant and interpreter combined a very dirty Hajji Abdullah, half Persian, half Arab. He was the best to be obtained, and his English was decidedly faulty. He always said mules for meals, foals for fowls, and anyone who heard him say, What time you eat your mules today, Sahib, or I have boiled two foals for dinner, or Mim Sahib, now I go in bazaar to buy our provisions of grub, or what place I give you your grub, Mim Sahib, would have been surprised. He had been a great deal on our men of war. He also took a present of horses from the Sultan of Muscat to the Queen, so that he could boast I've been to home, and alluded to his stay in England as when I was in home. Abdullah always says chuck and never throw, and people unused to him would not take in that those peacock no good, car boys much better, refer to pickaxes and crowbars. He used to come to the diggings and say, A gubble of shakes come here in camp, Sahib. I am standing them some coffee. Shall I stand them some mixed biscuits too? I must say I pity foreigners who have to trust to interpreters whose only European language is such English as this. With the whole of our party we embarked on the steamer which took us to Bahrain, or rather as close as it could approach. For owing to the shallowness of the sea, while still far from shore we were placed in a boggola in which we sailed for about twenty minutes. Then when a smaller boat had conveyed us as near to the dry land as possible, we were in mid-ocean transferred, bag and baggage to asses, those lovely white asses of Bahrain, with tails and mains dyed yellow with henna, and grotesque patterns illuminating their flanks. We had no reins or stirrups, and as the asses, though more intelligent than our own, will not infrequently show obstinacy in the water, the rider, firmly grasping his pommel, reaches with thankfulness the slimy, oozy beach of Bahrain. Menama is the name of the town at which you land. It is the commercial capital of the islands, just a streak of white houses and bamboo huts, extending about a mile and a half along the shore. A few mosques with low minaretts may be seen, having stone steps up one side by which the priest ascends for the call to prayer. These mosques and the towers of the richer pearl merchants show some decided architectural features, having arches of the Saracenic order with fretwork of plaster and quaint stucco patterns. On landing we were at once surrounded by a jabbering crowd of negro slaves and stately Arabs with long flowing robes, and twisted camel hair cords, a call, around their heads. Our home, while in the town, was one of the best of the battle-minted towers, and consisted of a room sixteen feet square on a stone platform. It had twenty-six windows with no glass in them, but pretty lattice of plaster. Our wooden lock was highly decorated, and we had a wooden key to close our door, which pleased us much. Even though we were close upon the tropics, we found our abode chilly enough after sunset, and our nights were rendered hideous. Firstly, by the barking of dogs, secondly by cocks which crowed at an ordinately early hour, and thirdly by pious musselmen's hard at work praying before the sun rose. From our elevated position we could look down into a sea of bamboo huts, the habitations of the pearl-fishers need enough abodes with courtyards paved with helix shells. In these courtyards stood quaint large water jars, which women filled from goat skins carried on their shoulders from the wells, wobbling when full like live headless animals, and cradles like hencoops for their babies. They were a merry idle lot of folk just then, but it was not their season of work, perpetually playing games, of which tip-jack and top spinning appeared the favorite for both young and old, seemed to be their chief occupation. Stayed Arabs, with turbans and long flowing robes, spinning tops, formed a side of which we never tired. The spinning tops are made out of welk shells, which I really believe must have been the original pattern from which our domestic toy was made. The doorposts of their huts are often made of whale's jaws. A great traffic is done in sharks. The cases for their swords and daggers are all of chagrin. The gulf well deserves the name given to it by Ptolemy of the ichthyophagorum sinus. Walking through the bazaars, one is much struck by the quaint, huge iron locks, some of them with keys nearly two feet long, and ingeniously opened by pressure of a spring. In the commoner houses, the locks and keys are all of wood. In the bazaars, too, you may find that queer Alhasa money called Tawila, or long bits, short bars of copper doubled back and compressed together, with a few characters indicating the prince who struck them. The coffee pots of Bahrain are quite a specialty, also coming from Alhasa, which appears to be the center of art in this part of Arabia, with their long beak-like spouts and concentric circles with patterns on them. These coffee pots are a distinct feature. In the bazaars of Minama and Maharak, coffee vendors sit at every corner with some huge pots of a similar shape simmering on the embers. In the lid are introduced stones to make a noise and attract the attention of the passersby. Coffee shops take the place of spirit and wine shops, which in the strict Wahabi country would not be, for a moment, tolerated. In private houses it is thought well to have four or five coffee pots standing around the fire to give an appearance of riches. Besides the coffee pots, other objects of Alhasa workmanship may be seen in Bahrain. Every household of respectability has its wooden bowl with which to offer visitors a drink of water or sour milk. These are beautifully enlaid with silver in very elaborate patterns. The guns used by Bahraini sportsmen are similarly enlaid, and the camel saddles of the shakes are most beautifully decorated on the pommels in the same style. The anvils, at which the blacksmiths in the bazaars were squatting, were like large nails with heads about six inches square, driven into the ground and about a foot high. The old weapons of the Bedouin Arabs are still in use in Bahrain. The long lance, which is put up before the tent of the chief when he goes about, the shield of camel skin decorated with gold paint and brass knobs, the coat of mail, and other objects of warfare used in an age long gone by. Every other stall has dates to sell in thick masses, the chief food of the islanders. Then you may see locusts pressed and pickled in barrels. The poor inhabitants are very fond of this diet, and have converted the curse of the cultivator into a favorite delicacy. As for weights, the stall holders would appear to have none but stones, welkshells, and putchards, which must be hard to regulate. An ancient Arab author states that in Oman, men obtained fire from a spark by rolling the tender in dry Arab grass and swinging it round till it bursts into flame. We often saw this process and bought one of the little cages hanging to a long chain, which they use in Bahrain. Of course, pearl fishing is the great occupation of the islands, and Manama is inhabited chiefly by pearl merchants and divers. Bahrain has, in fact, been celebrated for its pearl fishing ever since the days of the Periples of Nearchus in the time of Alexander the Great. Albuquerque, in his commentaries, beginning of footnote one, page 164, end of footnote one, thus speaks of Bahrain pearl fishing in 1510. Bahrain is noted for its large breeding of horses, its barley crops, and the variety of its fruits, and all around it are the fishing grounds of seed pearls, and of pearls which are sent to these realms of Portugal, for they are better and more lasting than any that are found in any other of these parts. This is also the verdict of the modern pearl merchants who value Bahrain pearls as more lasting and harder than those even of Ceylon. Evidently, Albuquerque got an order from his sovereign for pearls, for he writes, beginning of footnote two, page 328, end of footnote two, in 1515, that he is getting the pearls which the king had ordered for the pontifical of Our Lady. To this day and their dealings, the pearl merchants of Bahrain still make use of the old Portuguese weights and names. The pearl oyster is found in all the waters, from Russmucendum to the head of the Gulf, but on the Persian side there are no known banks of value. They vary in distance from one to ninety miles from the low lying shore of Aribi the Blast, but the deep sea banks are not so much fished till the Chamal or near westers of June have spent their force. The three seasons for fishing are known as the spring fishing in the shallow water, the summer fishing in the deep waters, and the winter fishing, conducted principally by wading in the shoals. The pearls of these seas are still celebrated for their firmness and do not peel. They are commonly reported to lose one percent annually for fifty years in color and water, but after that they remain the same. They have seven skins, whereas the singleese pearls have only six. The merchants generally buy them wholesale by the old Portuguese weight of the show. They divide them into different sizes with sieves and sell them in India, so that, as is usually the case with specialties, it is impossible to buy a good pearl on Bahrain. Diving here is exceedingly primitive. All the necessary paraphernalia consists of a loop of rope and a stone to go down with, a curious horn thing to hold the nose, and oil for the orifice of the ears. Once a merchant brought with him a diving apparatus, but the divers were highly indignant, and leaking against him refused to show the best banks. In this way the fisheries suffer, for the best pearls are in the deeper waters, which can only be visited late in the season. The divers are mostly negro slaves from Africa. They do not live long, poor creatures, developing awful sores and weak eyes, and they live and die entirely without medical aid. At present the pearl fisheries employ about four hundred boats of from eight to twenty men each. Each boat pays a tax to the sheikh. The fishing season lasts from April to October. Very curious boats ply in the waters between Manama and Maharak. The huge ungainly bagolas can only sail in the deeper channels. The Bahrain boats have very long-pointed prows, elegantly carved and decorated with shells. When the wind is contrary they are propelled by poles or paddles, consisting of boards of any shape tied to the end of the poles with twine, and the oarsman always seats himself on the gun-wheel. Perhaps the way these boats are tied and sewn together may have given rise to the legend alluded to by Sir John Mondaville when he saw them at the Isle of Hormuz. Near that Isle there are ships without nails of iron or bonds, on account of the rocks of adamants, lodestones, for they are all abundant there in that sea that is marvellous to speak of, and if a ship passed there that had iron bonds or iron nails it would perish, for the adamant by its nature draws iron to it, and so it would draw the ship that it should never depart from it. Many of the boats have curious shaped stone anchors and water casks of uniform and doubtless Old World shape. The sheikh has some fine war vessels called Batils, which did good execution about fifty years ago when the Sultan of Oman and the rulers of El Hassa tried to seize Bahrain, and a naval battle took place in the shallow sea off the coast in which the Bahraini were victorious. Now that the Gulf is practically English and piracy at an end, these vessels are more ornamental than useful. His large baggola, which mounted ten tiny guns and was named the Dunija, is now employed in trade. Then there are the bamboo skiffs with decks almost flush with the side, requiring great skill in working. Boats are really but of little use immediately around the islands. You see men walking in the sea quite a mile out, collecting shellfish and seaweeds, which form a staple diet for both man and beast on Bahrain. The shallowness of the sea between Bahrain and the mainland has contributed considerably to the geographical and mercantile importance of the Bahrain. No big vessels can approach the opposite coast of Arabia. Hence, in olden days, when the caravan trade passed this way, all goods must have been trans shipped to smaller boats at Bahrain. Sir M. Durant, in a consular report, states it as his opinion that, under a settled government, Bahrain could be the trading place of the Persian Gulf for Persia and Arabia, and an excellent harbor near the warehouses could be formed. If the Euphrates Valley Railway had ever been opened, if the terminus of this railway had been at Kuwait, as it was proposed by the party of survey under the command of Admiral Charles Wood in General Chesney, the Bahrain group would at once have sprung into importance as offering a safe emporium in the immediate vicinity of this terminus, Bahrain is the Cyprus of the Persian Gulf, in fact. This day is, however, postponed indefinitely until such times as England, Turkey, and Russia shall see fit to settle their differences, and with a better understanding between these powers and the development of railways in the East, the Persian Gulf may yet once more become a high road of commerce, and the Bahrain Islands may again come into notice. The Portuguese, who were the first Europeans after the time of Alexander to visit the Gulf, recognized the importance of Bahrain. Up to their time the Gulf had been a closed Mohammedan lake. The history of their rule in that part has yet to be written, but it will disclose a tale of great interest, and be a record of marvelous commercial enterprise. It was Albuquerque who first reopened the Gulf to Europeans. Early in the 16th century, 1504, he urged the occupation of the Gulf. In 1506 three fleets went to the east under the command of Tristan de Cunha, with Albuquerque a second in command. Tristan soon took his departure further afield, and left Albuquerque in command. This admiral first attacked and took Hormuz, then governed by a king of Persian origin. Here, and at Muscat, he thoroughly established the Portuguese power, thereby commanding the entrance into the Gulf. From Dabato's account it would appear that the king of Bahrain was a tributary of the king of Hormuz, paying annually forty thousand per douse, and from Albuquerque's letters we read that the occupation of Bahrain formed part of his scheme. With Hormuz and Bahrain in their hand, the whole Gulf would be under their control, he wrote. In fact, Albuquerque's scheme at that time would appear to have been exceedingly vast and rather comirical, namely to divert the Nile from its course and let it flow into the Red Sea, ruin Egypt, and bring the Indian trade via the Persian Gulf to Europe. Of this scheme we have only the outline, but beyond establishing fortresses in the Gulf it fell through, for Albuquerque died and with him his gigantic projects. The exact date of the occupation of Bahrain by the Portuguese I have as yet been unable to discover, but in 1521 we read of an Arab insurrection in Bahrain against the Persians and Portuguese in which the Portuguese factor, Ruibali, was tortured and crucified. Che Hussain Ben Said of the Arabian tribe of Benzavia was the instigator of this revolt. In the following year the Portuguese Governor, Dom Luiz de Menezes, came to terms with him and appointed him Portuguese representative in the island. A few years later, when Rass Berdadim, Wazil or Governor of Bahrain made himself objectionable, and against him Simon de Cunha was sent. He and many of his men died a fever in the expedition, but the Portuguese power was again restored. Towards the close of the 16th century the Portuguese came under the rule of Spain and from that date their power in the Persian Gulf began to wane. Their soldiers were drafted off to the wars in Flanders instead of going to the east to protect the colonies, and the final blow came in 1622 when Shah Abbas of Persia, assisted by an English fleet, took Hormuz and then Bahrain. Twenty years later a company of Portuguese merchants, eager for the pearls of these islands, organized an expedition from Goa to recover the Bahrain, but the ships were taken and plundered by the Arabs before ever they entered the Gulf. Thus fell the great Portuguese power in the Gulf, the sole traces of which now are the numerous fortresses, such as the one on Bahrain. From 1622 to the present time the control over Bahrain has been contested between the Persians and the Arabs, and as the Persian power has been on the wane the Arabian star has been in the ascendant. In 1711 the Sultan bin Saif rested Bahrain from Persia. In 1784 the Utubi of Elhasa conquered it. They have held it ever since, despite the attempts of Sayyid Said of Oman of the Turks and Persians to take it from them. The Turks have however succeeded in driving them out of their original kingdom of Elhasa on the mainland of Arabia opposite, and now the Bahrain is all that it remains to them of their former extensive territories. The royal family is a numerous one, being a branch of the El Khalifa tribe. They are the chiefs of the Utubi tribe of Arabs. Most of them, if not actually belonging to that strict sect of Arabians known as Wahabi, have strong puritanical proclivities. Our teetotalers are nothing to them in bigotry. If a vendor of intoxicating liquor started a shop on Bahrain, they would burn his house down, so that the wicked who want to drink any intoxicating liquor have to buy the material secretly from ships in the harbor. Many think it wrong to smoke and spend their lives in prayer and fasting. Church decoration is an abomination to the Wahabi. Therefore in Bahrain the mosques are little better than barns with low minaretts, for the very tall ones of other Muhammadan sects are forbidden. The Wahabi are fanatics of the deepest dye. There is one God and Muhammadan is his prophet. They say with the rest of the Muhammadan world. But the followers of Abdu'l-Wahab add, And in no case must Muhammad and the Amams be worshipped, lest glory be detracted from God. All titles to them are odious. No grand tombs are to be erected over their dead. No mourning is allowed. Hence the cemetery at Minama is but a pitiful place. A vast collection of circles set with rough stones, each with a small uninscribed headpiece and the surface sprinkled with helix shells. The Wahabi would wage, if they dared, perpetual war not only against the infidel, but against such perverted individuals as those who go to worship at Mecca and other sacred shrines. The founder of this revival is reported to have beaten his sons to death for drinking wine, and to have made his daughters support themselves by spinning. But at the same time he felt himself entitled to give to a fanatical follower who courted death for his sake in order for an emerald palace and a large number of female slaves in the world to come. In 1867 the Shah of Persia aimed at acquiring Bahrain, though his only claim to it was based on the fact that Bahrain had been an appendage of the Persian crown under the Safafian kings. He instituted a revolt on the island, adopted a claimant to the sheikhdom, and got him to hoist the Persian flag. Our ships blockaded Bahrain, intercepted letters, and obliged the rebel sheikh to quit. Then it was that we took the islands under our protection. In 1875 the Turks caused trouble, and the occupation of Bahrain formed part of their great scheme of conquest in Arabia. Our ship, the Osprey, appeared on the scene, drove back the Turks, transported to India several sheikhs who were hostile to the English rule, and placed sheikh Aisa, or Isa, on the throne under British protection, under which he rules happily to this day. We went to see him at Moharic, where he holds his court in the winter time. We crossed over in a small baggala, and had to be polled for a great distance with our keel perpetually grating on the bottom. It was like driving in a carriage on a jolting road. The donkeys trotted independently across, their legs quite covered with water. We were glad when they came alongside, and we completed our journey on their backs. The courtyard of the palace, which somewhat recalls the Alhambra in its architecture, was, when we arrived, crowded with Arab chiefs in all manner of quaint costumes. His majesty's dress was exceedingly fine. He and his family are entitled to wear their camel-hair bands bound round with gold thread. These looked very regal over the red turban, and his long black coat, with his silver-studded sword by his side, made him look every inch a king. He is most submissive to British interests, inasmuch as his immediate predecessors who did not love England were shipped off to India, and still languished there in exile. As he owes his throne entirely to British protection, he and his family will probably continue to reign as long as the English are virtual owners of the Gulf, if they are willing to submit to the English protectorate. We got a photograph of a group of them resting on their guns, and with their kandars or sickle-shaped daggers at their wastes. We took Prince Mohammed, the heir apparent, and the stout Syed bin Omar, the prime minister of Bahrain, but Sheikh Esau refused to place his august person within reach of our camera. During our visit we were seated on high armchairs of the kind so much used in India, and the only kind used here. They were white and hoary with old age and long estrangement from furniture polish. For our sins we had to drink the bitterest black coffee imaginable, which tasted like varnish from the bitter seeds infused in it. This was followed by cups of sweet syrup, flavored with cinnamon, a disagreeable custom to those accustomed to take their coffee and sugar together. Maharak is aristocratic, being the seat of government. Manama is essentially commercial, and between them in the sea is a huge dismantled Portuguese fort, now used as Sheikh Esau's stables. The town of Maharak gets its water supply from a curious source, springing up from under the sea. At high tide there is about a fathom of salt water over the spring, and water is brought up either by divers who go down with skins, or by pushing a hollow bamboo down into it. At low tide there is very little water over it, and women with large amphora and goat skins wade out and fetch what water they require. They tell me that the spring comes up with such force that it drives back the salt water and never gets impregnated. All I can answer for is that the water is excellent to drink. This source is called Bir Mahab, and there are several of a similar nature on the coast around, the Kasafah spring, and others. There is such a spring in the harbor of Syracuse, about 20 feet under the sea. The legend is that in the time of Merwan, a chief, Ibn Hakim, from Katif, wished to marry the lovely daughter of a Bahrain chief. His suit was not acceptable, so he made war on the islands and captured all the wells which supplied the towns on the bigger island. But the guardian deity of the Bahraini caused this spring to break out in the sea just before Maharak, and the invader was thus in time repulsed. It is a curious fact that Arados, or Arvod, the Phoenician town on the Mediterranean, was supplied by a similar submarine source. Sheikh Issa's representative at Minama, his prime minister or viceroy we should call him, though he is usually known there by the humble-sounding title of the bizarre master, by name, Said bin Omar, is a very stout and nearly black individual, with a European caste of countenance. He looked exceedingly grand when he came to see us, in his underrobe of scarlet cloth, with a cloak of rustling and stiff white wool with a little red woven into it. Over his head floated a white cashmere shawl with the usual camel-hair rings to keep it on, and sandals on his bare feet. He was deputed by his sovereign to look after us, and during the fortnight we were on the island he never left us for a single day, though outwardly very strict in his asceticism, and constantly apt to say his prayers with his nose in the dust at inconvenient moments, we found him by no means averse to a cigarette in the strictest privacy. And we learnt that his private life would not bear European investigation. He is constantly getting married. Though sixty years of age he had a young bride of a few weeks standing, I was assured that he would soon tire of her and put her away. Even in polygamous Arabia he has looked upon as a much married man. Southern Arabia by James and Mabel Bent Chapter 2 The Mounds of Ali And now behold us excavators on the way to the scene of our labours. Six camels conveyed our tents, a seventh carried goatskins full of water, four asses groaned under our personal effects, hence for consumption rode in a sort of lobster pot by the side of clattering pickaxes and chairs. Six policemen or peons were in our train, each on a donkey. One carried a paraffin lamp, another a basket of eggs on the palm of his hand, and as there were no rains or stirrups, the wonder is that these articles ever survived. As for ourselves, we, like everybody else, rode sideways holding on like grim death before and behind, especially when the frisky Bahrain donkeys galloped at steeple-chase pace across the desert. For some distance around Manama, all is arid desert, on which grow a few scrubby plants, which women cut for fodder with sickle-like saws and carry home in large bundles on their backs. Sheikh Asa's summer palace is in the center of this desert, of fortress hardly distinguishable from the sand around and consisting, like eastern structures of this nature, of nothing but one room over the gateway for his majesty and a vast courtyard two hundred feet long, whereas attendants erect their bamboo huts and tents. Around the hole runs a wall with bastions at each corner, very formidable to look upon. Passing this, the palm groves, which are exceedingly fine, are soon reached and offer delicious shade from the burning sun. Here amongst the trees were women working in picturesque attire, red petticoats, orange-colored drawers down to their heels, and a dark blue covering over all this, which would suddenly be pulled over the face at our approach, if they had not on their masks or butras which admit of a good stare. The butra is kind of a mask, more resembling a bridle than anything else. In shape it is like two diamond frames made of gold and colored braids, fastened together by two of their lower edges. This middle strip comes down the nose and covers the mouth, and the sides come between the ears and eyes. It affords very little concealment, but is very becoming to most of its wares, particularly if they happen to be negrises. On their heads would be baskets with dates or citrons, and now and again a particularly modest one would dart behind a palm tree until that dangerous animal man had gone by. About halfway to the scene of our labors we halted by the ruins of an old Arab town, Baled al-Kadim. This ancient capital, dating from a period prior to the Portuguese occupation, still presents some interesting ruins. The old mosque, Madrasa e Abou Sedan, with its two slender and elegant minarets, so different from the horrible Wahabi constructions of today, forms a conspicuous landmark for ships approaching the low-lying coasts of these islands. Around the body of the mosque runs a fine inscription in kufic letters, and from the fact that the name of Ali is joined with that of the prophet in profession of faith, we may argue that this mosque was built during some Persian occupation and was a Shiite mosque. The architecture too is distinctly Persian, recalling to us in its details the ruins of Ray, the roges of Tobit, and the saltine, which we saw on the north of Persia, and has nothing Arabian about it. Ruins of houses and buildings surround this mosque, and here in the open space in the center of the palm groves, the Bahraini assemble every Thursday for a market. In fact, the place is generally known now as Souk al-Kamees, or Thursday's market. On our journey out, not a soul was near, but on our return we had an opportunity of attending one of these gatherings. Sheikh Isa has here a tiny mosque, just an open loja, where he goes every morning in summertime to pray and take his coffee. Beneath it, he has a bath of fresh, but not overly clean water, where he and his family bathe. Often during the summer heats, he spends the whole day here, or else goes to his glorious garden about a mile distant, near the coast, where acaches, hibiscus, and almonds fight with one another for the mastery and form a delicious tangle. Another mile on, closer to the sea, is the fine ruined fortress of the Portuguese, Ghibliá, as the natives now call it, just as they do one of the fortresses at mascot. It covers nearly two acres of ground, and is built out of the remains of the old Persian town. For many kufik inscriptions are led into the wall, and the deep well in the center is lined with them. It is a regular bastion fortification of the 16th century, with moat, embracers in the parapets, and casemen at embracers in the re-entering angles of the bastions, and is one of the finest specimens of Portuguese architecture in the Gulf, an evidence of the importance which they attached to this island. Among the rubbish in the fort, we picked up numerous fragments of fine Nankin and Celadon, China, attesting to the ubiquity and commerce of the former owners, and attesting also to the luxury of the men who ruled here, a luxurious fatal almost as the Flanders' wars to the well-being of the Portuguese in the east. Our road led us through miles of palm groves, watered by their little artificial conduits, and producing the staple food of the island. Saeed bin Omar talked to us much about the date. Mohamed said, he began, honor the date tree, for she is your mother, a true enough maxim in parched Arabia where nothing else will grow. When ripe, the dates are put into a round tank, called a matibash, where they are exposed to the sun and air and throw off excessive juice which collects below. After three days of this treatment, they are removed and packed for exportation in baskets of palm leaves. The Bahraini, for their own consumption, love to add sesame seeds to their dates, or ginger powder and walnuts pressed with them into jars. These are called sira, and are originally prepared by being dried in the sun and protected at night, then diluted date juice is poured over them. The fruit which does not reach maturity is called saline, and is given as food to cattle, boiled with ground date stones and fish bones. This makes an excellent sort of cake for milk cows. This and the green dates also are given to the donkeys, and to this food the Bahraini attribute their great superiority. The very poor also make an exceedingly unpalatable dish out of green dates, mixed with fish for their own table, or should I say, floor. Nature here is not strong enough for the fruitification of the palm, so at given seasons the palm is removed by cutting off the male spates. These they dry for 20 hours, and then they take the flower twigs and deposit one or two in each bunch of the female blossom. Just as we were there they were very busy with the spates, and in Thursday's market huge baskets of the male spates were exposed for sale. The palm groves are surrounded by dikes to keep the water in. The date tree is everything to a Bahraini. He beats the green spatex with wooden implements to make fiber for his ropes. In the dry state he uses it as fuel. He makes his mats, the only known form of carpet and bedding here, out of it. His baskets are made of the leaves. From the fresh spate, by distillation, a certain stuff called Tara water is obtained, of strong but agreeable smell, which is much used for the making of sherbet. Much legendary lore is connected with the date. The small round hole at the back is said to have been made by Mohammed's teeth, when one day he foolishly tried to bite one, and in some places, the expression, at the same time a date and a duty, is explained by the fact that in Ramazon the day's fast is usually broken by first eating a date. Among all these date groves are the curious air of wells with sloping runs and worked by donkeys. Tall poles to which the skins are attached are date tree trunks. Down goes the skin bucket as the donkey comes up a steep slope in the ground, and then as he goes down, up it comes again full of water, to be guided into the channel which fertilized the trees by a slave who supports himself going up and adds his weight to that of the descending donkey by putting his arm through a large wooden ring hung at the donkey's shoulder. Day after day in our camp we heard the weird creaking from these wells, very early in the morning and in the evening when the sun had gone down, and we felt as we heard it, what an infinite blessing is a well of water in a thirsty land. Leaving the palm groves and the Portuguese fortress behind us, we re-entered the desert to the southwest, and just beyond the village of Ali we came upon that which is the great curiosity of Bahrain, to investigate which was our real object in visiting the island. For there begins that vast sea of sepulchral mounds, the great necropolis of an unknown race which extends far and wide across the plain. The village of Ali forms, as it were, the culminating point. It lies just on the borders of the date groves, and there the mounds reach an elevation of over 40 feet, but as they extend further southward they diminish in size until miles away in the direction of Rufa'a. We found mounds elevated only a few feet above the level of the desert, and some mere circular heaps of stones. There are many thousands of these tumuli extending over an area of desert for many miles. There are isolated groups of mounds in other parts of the islands, and a few solitary ones are to be found on the adjacent islets, on Mohorek, Arad, etc. Complete uncertainty existed as to the origin of these mounds, and the people who constructed them, but from classical references and the result of our work there can now be no doubt that they are of Phoenician origin. Herodotus gives us as a traditional current in his time that the forefathers of the Phoenician race came from these parts. The Phoenicians themselves believe in it. It is their own account of themselves as Herodotus, and Strabo brings further testimony to bear on the subject, stating that two of the islands, now called Bahrain, were called Tyros and Arados. Pliny follows and stables steps but calls the island Tilos instead of Tyros, which may only be an errand spelling, or may be owing to the universal confusion of R with L. Ptolemy and his map places Gara, the mark of ancient Indian trade, and the starting point for caravans on the great road across Arabia, on the coast just opposite these islands, near where the town of El Katif is now, and accepts Strabo's and Pliny's names for the Bahrain Islands, calling them Tharos, Tilos, or Tyros, and Arados. The fact is that all our information on the islands, prior to the Portuguese occupation, comes from the paraplas of Nearchus. Arasthenes, a naval officer of Alexander, states that the gulf was 10,000 stadia long, from Cape Armoslum, i.e. Hermos, to Pteridon, Kuwait, and the mouth of the Euphrates. Arasthenes of Thassos, who was of the company of Nearchus, made an independent geographical survey of the gulf on the Arabian side, and his statements are that on an island called Icaros, now Palugid, just off of Kuwait, he saw the temple of Apollo. Southwards at a distance of 2400 stadia, or 43 nautical leagues, he came on Gara, and close to it the islands of Tyros and Arados, which have temples like those of the Phoenicians, who were, the inhabitants told him, colonists from these parts. From Nearchus too, we learn that the Phoenicians had a town called Cedon, or Cedodona in the gulf, which he visited, and on an island called Tyrene, was shown the tomb of Erythrus, which he describes as an elevated hillock covered with palms, just like our mounds, and Erythrus was the king who gave his name to the gulf. Justin accepts the migration of the Phoenicians from the Persian gulf as certain, and M. Renan says the primitive abode of the Phoenicians must be placed on the lower Euphrates, in the center of the great commercial and maritime establishments of the Persian gulf. As for the temples, there are no traces of them left, and this is also the case in Syrian Phoenicia, doubtless they were all built of wood, which will account for their disappearance. As we ourselves, during the course of our excavations brought to light objects of distinctly Phoenician origin, there would appear to be no longer any room for doubt that the mounds which lay before us were a vast necropolis of this mercantile race. If so, one of two suppositions must be correct, either firstly that the Phoenicians originally lived here before they migrated to the Mediterranean, and that this was the land of Pont from which the Punei got their name, a land of palms like the Syrian coast from which the race got their distorted Greek appellation of Phoenicians, or secondly that these islands were looked upon by them as a sacred spot for the burial of their dead, as the Hindu looks upon the Ganges, and the Persian regards the shrines of Kerbala and Meshad. I am much more inclined to the former supposition, judging from the mercantile importance of the Bahrain Islands, and the excellent school they must have been for a race that was to penetrate all the then known corners of the globe, to brave the dangers of the open Atlantic, and to reach the shores of Britain in their trading ventures, and, if nomenclature goes for anything, the name Tyros and the still existing name of Arad ought to confirm us in our belief and make certainty more certain. Our camp was pitched on this desert among the tumuli. The ground was hard and rough, covered with very sharp stones, though dry it sounded hollow and it seemed as though there were water under it. Our own tent occupied a conspicuous and central place. Our servant's tent was hard by, liable to be blown down by heavy gusts of wind, which event happened the first night after our arrival, to the infinite discomforture of the Bazaar Master, who, by the way, had left his grand clothes at home and appeared in the desert clad in a loose coffee-collar dressing gown, with a red band about his waist. Around the tents swarmed turban diggers, who looked as if they had come out in their nightgowns, dressing gowns, and bath sheets. These lodged at night in the bamboo village of Ali, hard by, a place for which we developed the profoundest contempt, for the women thereof refused to pollute themselves by washing the clothes of infidels, and our garments had to be sent all the way to Manama to be cleansed. A bamboo structure formed a shelter for the kitchen, around which on the sand lay curious coffee pots, bowls, and cooking utensils, which would have been eagerly sought after for museums in Europe. The camel which fetched the daily supply of water from afar, grazed around on the coarse desert herbage. The large white donkey which went into town for marketing by day, and entangled himself in the tent ropes by night, was also left to wander at his own sweet will. This desert camp was evidently considered a very peculiar sight indeed, and no wonder that for the first week of our residence there we were visited by all the inhabitants of Bahrain who could find time to come so far. It was very weird to sit in our tent door the first evening, and look at the great mound we were going to dig into the next morning, and think how long it had stood there, in the peace its builders hoped for it. There seemed to be quite a mournful feeling about disturbing it, but archaeologists are a ruthless body, and this was to be the last night it would ever stand in its perfect shape. After all, we were full of hope of finding out the mystery of its origin. The first attack the next morning was most amusing to behold. My husband headed the party, looking very tall and slim, with his legs outlined against the sky as he, with all the rest, in single file, and in fluttering array wound first round the mound to look for a good place to ascend, and then went straight up. They were all amazed when I appeared and gave orders to the division under my command. They looked very questioningly indeed, but as the Persians had learnt to respect me, the Bahraini became quite amenable. The dimensions of the mound on which we began our labours were as follows, thirty-five feet in height, seventy-six feet in diameter, and one hundred and fifty-two paces in circumference. We chose this in preference to the higher mounds, the tops of which were flattened somewhat and suggested the idea that they had fallen in. Ours, on the contrary, was quite rounded on the summit, and gave every hope that in digging through it we should find whatever was inside in statue quo. At a distance of several feet from most of the mounds are traces of an outer encircling wall or bank of earth, similar to walls found around certain tombs in Lydia, and also around a tumulus in Tara in Ireland, and this encircling wall was more marked around some of the smaller and presumably more recent tombs at the outer edge of the necropolis. In some cases several mounds would appear to have been clustered together, and to have had an encircling wall common to them all. We dug from the top of our mound for fifteen feet, with great difficulty, through sort of a conglomerate earth, nearly as hard as cement before we reached anything definite. Then suddenly this close earth stopped, and we came upon a layer of large loose stones, entirely free from soil, which layer covered the immediate top of the tombs for two feet. Beneath these stones, and immediately on the flat slabs forming the roof of the tomb, had been placed palm branches, which in the lapse of ages had become white and crumbly, and had assumed the flaky appearance of asbestos. This proved that the palm flourished on Bahrain at the date of these tombs, and that the inhabitants were accustomed to make use of it for constructive purposes. Six very large slabs of rough unhewn limestone, which had obviously come from Jebel Ducan, lay on the top of the tomb, forming a roof. One of these was six feet in length, and two feet two inches in depth. The tomb itself was composed of two chambers, one immediately over the other, and approached by a long passage, like the Drumos of rock cut Greek tombs, which was full of earth and small stones. The entrance, as was that of all the tombs, was towards the sunset. This passage was fifty-three feet in length, extending from the outer rim of the circle to the mouth of the tomb. Around the outer circle of the mound itself ran a wall of huge stones, evidently to support the weight of earth necessary to conceal the tomb, and large unhewn stones closed the entrance to the two chambers of the tomb at the head of the passage. We first entered the upper chamber, the floor of which was covered with gritty earth. It was thirty feet long, and at the four corners were recesses two feet ten inches in depth, and the uniform height of this chamber was four feet six inches. The whole surface of the interior to the depth of two or three inches above the other debris was covered with yellow earth, composed of tiny bones of the Jerboa, that rat-like animal which is found in abundance on the shores of the Persian Gulf. There was no sign of any recent ones, and only a few fragments of skulls to show what this yellow earth had been. We then proceeded to remove the rubbish and sift it for what we could find. The chief objects of interest consisted in innumerable fragments of ivory, fragments of circular bones, pendants with holes for suspension, obviously used as ornaments by this primitive race. The torso of a small statue in ivory, the hoof of a bull fixed onto an ivory pedestal, evidently belonging to a small statue of a bull, the foot of another little statue, and various fragments of ivory utensils. Many of these fragments had patterns inscribed on them, rough patterns of scales, rosettes, and circling chains, and the two parallel lines common to so many ivory fragments found at Khmeriros, and now in the British Museum. In fact, the decorations on most of them bear a close and unmistakable resemblance to ivories found in Phoenician tombs on the shores of the Mediterranean, and to the ivories in the British Museum from Nimrod in Assyria. Universally accepted as having been executed by Phoenician artists, those cunning workers in ivory and wood, whom Solomon employed in the building of his temple, and before the spread of Egyptian and Greek art, the traveling artists of the world, the ivory fragments we found were given into the hands of Mr. A. S. Murray of the British Museum, who wrote to my husband as follows, I have not the least doubt, judging from the incised patterns, from bull's foot, part of a figure, etc., that the ivories are a Phoenician workmanship. The pottery found in this tomb offered no very distinctive features, being coarse and unglazed, but the numerous fragments of ostrich egg shells, colored and scratched with rough patterns and bands, also pointed to a Phoenician origin, or at least to a race of wide mercantile connection, and in those days the Phoenicians were the only people likely to combine in their commerce ostrich egg shells and ivory. We also found small shapeless pieces of oxidized metal, brass or copper. There were no human bones in the upper chamber, but those of a large animal, presumably a horse. The chamber immediately beneath was much more carefully constructed. It was the exact same length, but was higher, being six feet seven inches, and the passage was wider. It was entirely coated with cement of two qualities, the upper coat being the finest, in which all round the walls at intervals of two feet were holes sloping inward and downward. In similar holes, in one of the other tombs we opened, we found traces of wood, showing that poles on which to hang drapery had been inserted. The ground of this lower chamber was entirely covered with a thin brown earth of a fibrous nature, in appearance somewhat resembling snuff. It was a foot in depth and evidently the remains of the drapery which had been hung around the walls. Prior to the use of coffins, the Phoenicians draped their dead, and amongst this substance we found traces of human bones. Thus we were able to arrive at the system of sepulcher employed by this unknown race. Evidently, their custom was to place in the upper chamber broken utensils, and the body of an animal belonging to the deceased, and to reserve the lower chamber for the corpse and shrouded in drapery. For the use of this upper chamber, our parallels are curiously enough all Phoenician. Perot gives us an example of two storied tombs in the cemetery of Amrit in Phoenicia, where also bodies were embedded in plaster to prevent decay prior to the introduction of the sarcophagus, reminding us of the closely cemented lower chambers in our mounds. A mound containing a tomb with one chamber over the other was, in 1888, observed in Sardinia, and is given by Della Mamora as of Phoenician origin. Here, however, the top of the tomb is conical, not flat as in our mounds, which would point to a latter development of the double chamber, which eventually blossomed forth into the lofty mausoleia of the later Phoenician epoch, and the grandiose tombs of Hellenic structure. Also at Carthage, that very same year that we were in Bahrain, i.e. 1889, excavations brought to light certain tombs of early Phoenician settlers, which also have the double chamber. In answer to Perot's assertion that all early Phoenician tombs were a hypogea, we may say that as the Bahrain islands offer no facility for this method of sepulcher, the closely covered-in mound would be the most natural substitute. Before leaving the tombs, we opened a second, and a smaller one of coarser construction, which confirmed in every way the conclusions we had arrived at in opening the larger tomb. Near the village of Ali, one of the largest mounds has been pulled to pieces for stones. By creeping into the cavities opened, we were able to ascertain that the chambers in this mound were similar to those in the mound we had opened. Only they were double on both stories, and the upper story was also coated with cement. Two chambers ran parallel to each other, and were joined at the two extremities. Sir M. Durand also opened one of the mounds, but unfortunately the roof of the tomb had fallen in, which prevented him from obtaining any satisfactory results. But from the general appearance, it would seem to have been constructed on exactly the same lines as our larger one. Hence we had the evidence of four tombs to go upon, and felt that these must be pretty fair specimens of what the many thousands were which extended around us. 3. Our Visit to Rufa During the time that we spent at Ali, we had numerous visitors. The first day came five camels with two riders apiece, and a train of donkeys, bringing rich pearl merchants from the capital. These sat in a circle and complacently drank our coffee and ate our mixed biscuits, without in any way troubling us, having apparently come for no other object than to get this slender refreshment. Next day came Sheikh Mohammed, a young man of seventeen, a nephew of Sheikh Issa, who was about to wed his uncle's daughter, and was talked of as the heir apparent to the throne. He was all gorgeous in a white embroidered robe, red turban, and head rings bound in royal gold. He played with our pistols with covetous eyes, ate some English cake, having first questioned the Bazaar Master as to the orthodoxy of its ingredients, and then he promised us a visit next day. He came on the morrow, on a beautifully comparisoned horse, with red trappings and gold tassels. He brought with him many followers, and announced his intention of passing the day with us, rather to our distress. But we were appeased by the present of a fat lamb with one of those large, bushy tails which remind one forcibly of a lady's bustle, and suggests that the ingenious milliner who invented these atrocities must have taken for her pattern an eastern sheep. This day Prince Mohammed handled the revolver more covetously than ever, and got so far as exchanging his scarlet embroidered case with red silk belt and silver buckle for my leathern one. Sheikh Mohammed was very anxious to see how I could shoot with my revolver, so a brown pot containing about half a pint of water was put on a lump of rock as a mark. I was terrified, for I knew, if I missed, as I surely expected, I should bring great discredit on myself and my nation, and there was such a crowd! My husband said I must try, and I am sure no one was more astonished than I was that I shattered the pot. If I had not, it would have been said that I only carried the revolver for show. That afternoon a great cavalcade of gazelle huntsmen called upon us. The four chief men of these had each a hooded falcon on his arm, and a tawny Persian greyhound, with long, silky tail at his side. They wore their sickle-like daggers in their waistbands, their bodies were enveloped in long cloaks, and their heads in white cloths bound round with the camel-hair straps. They were accompanied by another young Sion of the El Khalifa family, who bestowed a white Arab steed with the gayest possible trappings. Thus was this young prince attired, on his head a cashmere kerchief with gold a call. He was almost smothered in an orange cloth gown trimmed with gold and lined with green, the sleeves of which were very long, cut open at the ends and trimmed. Over this robe was cast a black cloth cloak, trimmed with gold on the shoulders, and a richly inlaid sword dangled at his side, almost as big as himself, for he was but an undersized boy of fifteen. The sportsmen made a very nice group for our photography, as did almost everything around us on Bahrain. Any excavator would have lost patience with the men of Bahrain with whom we had to deal. Tickets had to be issued to prevent more men working than were wanted, and claiming pay at the end of the day. Ubiquity was essential, for they loved to get out of sight and do nothing. With unceasing regularity the pipe went round, and they paused for a drink at the bubble-bubble, as the Arabs express it. Morning, noon-tide, and evening prayers were, I am sure, unnecessarily long. Accidents would happen, which alarmed us at first, until we learned how ready they were to cry wolf. One man was knocked over by a stone. We thought by his contortion some limb must be broken, and we applied Vaseline, our only available remedy to the bruise. His fellow workmen then seized him by the shoulders, he keeping his arms crossed the while, shook him well to put the bones right again as they expressed it, and he continued his work as before. The Bazaar Master and the Policeman would come and frantically seize a tool, and work for a few seconds with her Culean vigor by way of example, which was never followed. Yalla, hurry on, in other words, oh God. Mahaba, very good, the men would cry, and they would sing and scream with a vigor that nearly drove us wild. But for the occasional application of a stick by the Bazaar Master in great firmness we should have got nothing out of them but noise. One day we had a mutiny because my husband dismissed two men who came very late, the rest refused to work, and came dancing round us, shouting and brandishing spades. One had actually got hold of a naked sword, which weapon I did not at all like, and I was thankful Prince Mohammed had not yet got the revolver. For some time they continued this wild weird dance, consigning us freely to the lower regions as they danced, and then they all went away, so that the Bazaar Master had to be sent in search of other and more amenable men. Evidently, Sheikh Issa, when he entrusted us to the charge of the Bazaar Master and sent Policeman with us, was afraid of something untoward happening. Next day we heard that his majesty was coming in person with his tents to encamp in our vicinity, and I fancy we were in more danger from those men than we realized at the moment, fanned as they are into hatred of the infidel by the fanatical Wahabi. Thirty years ago, I was told, no infidel could have ventured into the center of Bahrain with safety. Another important visitor came on Saturday in the shape of Sheikh Khalid, a cousin of the ruling chief, with a retinue of ten men from Rufah, an inland village. We sat for a while on our heels and rose, conversing and smiling, and finally accepted an invitation from Sheikh Khalid to visit him at his village, and make a little tour over the island. Accordingly, on Sunday morning we started, accompanied by the Bazaar Master, for Rufah, and we were not a little relieved to get away before Sheikh Issa was upon us and escape the formalities which his royal presence in our midst would have necessitated. We had an exceedingly hot ride of it, and the wind was so high that our position on our donkeys was rendered even more precarious than usual. The desert sand whirled around us. We shut our eyes, tied down our hats, and tried to be patient. For miles our road led through the tumuli of those mysterious dead, who once in their thousands must have peopled Bahrain. Their old wells are still to be seen in the desert, and evidences of a cultivation which has long ago disappeared. As we approached the edge of this vast necropolis, the mounds grew less and less, until mere heaps of stones marked the spot where a dead man lay, and then we saw before us the two villages of Rufah. Of these one is known as Rufah Sherga, or Southwestern Rufah. The other, which belongs to the young prince Muhammad, is called Rufah Shabali. The Rufah are much older than Maharik or Manama. They are fortified with castellated walls of mud brick. Many of the El Khalifa family reside here in comfortable houses. Southwestern Rufah is quite a big place, and as our arrival became known all the village turned out to see us. The advent of an English lady among them was something too excessively novel. Even close veiled women forgot their prudery, and peered out from their blue coverings, screaming with laughter, and pointing as they screamed to the somewhat appalled object of their mirth. Hey, D. B. B., there goes the lady, shouted they again and again. No victorious potentate ever had a more triumphant entry into his capital than the English B. B. had on entering Southwestern Rufah. Sheikh Khalid was ready to receive us in his kahwah, or reception room, furnished solely by strips of matting and a camel-hair rug with coarse embroidery on it. Two pillows were produced for us, and Arabs squatting on the matting all round the wall, for it was Sheikh Khalid's morning reception, or Majlis, just then, and we were the lions of the occasion. Our host, we soon learnt, rather to our dismay, was a most rigid ascetic, a wahabi to the backbone. He allows of no internal decorations in his house. No smoking is allowed, no wine, only perpetual coffee and perpetual prayers. Our prospects were not of the most brilliant. Some of the wahabi think even coffee is wrong. After a while all the company left, and Sheikh Khalid intimated to us that the room was now our own. Two more large pillows were brought, and rugs were laid down. As for the rest, we were dependent on our own very limited resources. We had brought our own sheets with us. Sheikh Saba, who had married Sheikh Khalid's sister, was a great contrast to our host. He had been in Bombay and had imbibed in his travels a degree of worldliness which ill became a wahabi. He had filled his house, to which he took us, with all sorts of baubles, gilt-looking glasses hanging on the walls, coloured glass balls in rows and rows up to the ceiling, each on a little-looking glass, lovely pillows and carpets, Zanzibar date baskets, Bombay in laid chests, Elhasa coffee-pots, and a Russian tea urn, a truly marvelous conglomeration of things which produced on us a wonderful sense of pleasure and repose after the bareness of our hosts abode. Sheikh Saba wore only his long white shirt and turban, and so unconventional was he, that he allowed his consort to remain at one end of the room whilst my husband was there. The courtyards of these houses are architecturally interesting. The Saracenic arch, the rosettes of openwork stucco, the squares of the same material with intricate patterns, great boons in a hot land to let in the air without the sun. There is also another contrivance for obtaining air. In building the house a niche three feet wide is left in the outer wall, closed in on the inner side except for about a foot. It is funny to see the heads of muffled women peering out of these air-shafts into which they have climbed to get an undisturbed view. Here some of the women wear the Arabian butra, or mask, which, while it hides their features, give their eyes full play. They are very inquisitive. Some of the women one meets on Bahrain are highly picturesque when you see them without the dark blue covering. I was fetched to one harem after the other, always followed by a dense crowd, to the apparent annoyance of my hostesses, who, however, seem powerless to prevent the intrusion. I saw one woman holding on to the top of the door and standing on the shoulders of one who was squatting on the floor. One good lady grew enraged at the invasion and threw a cup of hot coffee in an intruder's face. In the afternoon we rode over to mountainous, and it might be added, ruinous, rufa. It is built on a cliff, 50 feet above the lowest level of the desert. From here there is a view over a wide, bleak expanse of sand, occasionally relieved by an oasis, the result of a well and derogation. And beyond this, the eye rests on Jabal Dukhain, the mountain of mist, which high sounding name has been given to a mass of rocks in the center of Bahrain, rising 400 feet above the plain, and often surrounded by a sea-fog. For Bahrain, with its low-lying land, is often in a mist. Some mornings, on rising early, we looked out of our tent to find ourselves enveloped in a perfect London fog. Our clothes were soaking, the sand on the floor of our tent was soft and adhesive. Then, in an hour, the bright orb of heaven would disperse all this, for we were very far south indeed, on the coast of Arabia. Alas! On arrival we found that our young friend, Sheikh Mohammed, was out, for he had to be in attendance on his uncle, Sheikh Issa, who had just arrived at his tent near our encampment, and he had to provide all his uncle's meals. We saw a donkey with a cauldron on its back, large enough to boil a sheepen, large copper trays, and many other articles dispatched for the delectation of the sovereign and his retinue. Sheikh Mohammed's mother, quite a queenly-looking woman, was busying herself about the preparation of these things. And when she had finished, she invited us to go into the harem. My husband felt the honour and confidence reposed in him exceedingly, but, alas! all the women were veiled. All he could contemplate was their lovely hands and feet dyed yellow with henna, their rich red shirts, their aprons adorned with coins, their gold bracelets, and turquoise rings. However, I assured him that with one solitary exception, he had lost nothing by not seeing their faces. In one corner of the women's room was the biggest bed I ever saw. It had eight posts, a roof, a fence, a gate, and steps up to it. It is a sort of dais, in fact, where they spread their rugs and sleep, and high enough to lay beds under it, too. Occasionally we got a good peep at the women as they were working in the fields, or cutting with semi-circular saws the scrub that grows in the desert for their cattle. Halfway between the two roofahs we halted at a well, the great point of concourse for the inhabitants of both villages. It was evening, and around it were gathered crowds of the most enchanting people in every possible costume. Women and donkeys were groaning under the weight of skins filled with water. Men were engaged in filling them. But it seems to be against the dignity of a male Arab to carry anything. With the regularity of a steam crane, the woodwork of the well creaked and groaned with the sound like a backpipe, as the donkeys toiled up and down their slope, bringing to the surface the skins of water. It was a truly Arabian sight, with the desert all around us, and the little garden hard by which Sheikh Saba cultivates with infinite toil, having a weary contest with the surrounding sand which invades his enclosure. The sun was getting low when we returned to our bear room at Sheikh Khalid's, and to our great contentment we were left alone, for our day had been a busy one and a strain on our conversational powers. Our host handed us over to the tender mercies of a black slave, zam zam by name, wonderfully skilled at cooking with a handful of charcoal on circular stoves colored red, and bearing a marked resemblance to the altars of the Persian fire-worshippers. He brought us in our dinner. First he spread a large round mat of fine grass on the floor. In the center of this he deposited a washing-basin filled with boiled rice and a bowl of ghee or rancid grease to make it palatable. Before us replaced two tough chickens, a bowl of dates, and for drink we had a bowl of milk with delicious fresh butter floating in it. Several sheets of bread about the size and consistency of back towels were also provided, but no implements of any kind to assist us in conveying these delicacies to our mouths. With pieces of bread we scooped up the rice, with our fingers we managed the rest, and we were glad no one was looking on to witness our struggles save zam zam with a yewer of water, with which he washed us after the repast was over, and then we put ourselves away for the night. Very early next morning we were on the move for our trip across the island. The journey would be too long for donkeys, they said, so Sheikh Khalid mounted us on three of his best camels, with lovely saddles of inlaid El-Hasa work, with two pommels, one in front and one behind, like little pillars, capped and inlaid with silver. We, that is to say my husband and I and the Bazaar Master, ambled along at a pretty smart pace across the desert in the direction of a fishing village called Asker, on the east coast of the island, near which were said to exist ancient remains. These, of course, turned out to be myths, but the village was all that could be desired in quaintness. The houses were all of bamboo, and the floors strewn over with little white helix shells. In one of them we were regaled with coffee, and found it delicious after our hot ride. Then we strolled along the shore and marveled at the bamboo skiffs, the curiously fashioned oars and water casks, the stone anchors, and other primitive implements used by the seafaring race. The Bazaar Master would not let us tarry as long as we could have wished, for he was anxious for us to arrive before the mid-day heat at a rocky cave in the mountain of Mist, in the center of the island. We dismounted from our camels, and proceeded to examine Jebel Duchenne, an ascarped mass of limestone rocks with rugged outlined and deep caves. From the gentle elevation of the Misty Mountain, one gets a very fair idea of the extent and character of Bahrain. The island has been likened to a sheet of silver in a sea of pearl, but it looked to us anything but silvery, and for all the world like one of the native sheets of bread, oval and tawny. It is said to be twenty-seven miles long and twelve wide at its broadest point. From the clearness of the atmosphere and the distinctness with which we saw the sea all around us, it could not have been much more. There are many tiny villages dotted about here and there, recognizable only by their nest of palm trees and their strips of verger. In the dim distance, to our left, arose the mountains of Arabia, beyond the flat coastline of El Hassa, encircling that wild, mysterious land of Nezhd, where the Wahabi Dwell, a land forbidden to the infidel globetrotter. Yet another sheikh of the El Khalifa family was introduced to us, by name Abdullah. He owns the land about here, and having been advised of our coming, had prepared a repast for us, much on the lines of the one we had had the evening before. We much enjoyed our cool rest and repast in Abdullah's cave, and for two hours or more our whole party lay stretched on the ground, courting slumber, whilst our camels grazed around. Another sheikh was anxious to take us to his house for the night, but we could not remain, as our work demanded our return to camp that night, so we compromised matters by taking coffee with him on a green oasis near his house, under a blazing sun, without an atom of shade, and without a thing against which to lean our tired backs. Then we hurried back to Rufa to take leave of our friend, Sheikh Khalid, and started off late in the evening for our home. Soon we came in sight of Sheikh Issa's tent. His majesty was evidently expecting us, for by his side in the royal tent were placed two high thrones, formed of camel saddles covered with sheepskins for us to sit upon, whilst his Arabian majesty and his courteous sat on the ground. As many as could be accommodated sat round within the walls of the tent. Those for whom there was no room inside continued the line, forming a long loop which extended for some yards outside the tent. Here all his nephews and cousins were assembled. That gay youth, Sheikh Muhammad, on ordinary occasions as full of fun as an English schoolboy sat there in great solemnity, incapable of a smile though I maliciously tried to raise one. When he came next morning to visit us he was equally solemn until his uncle had left our tent. Then his gayity returned as if by magic, and with it his covetousness for my pistol. Eventually an exchange was affected, he producing a coffee pot and an inlaid bowl which had taken our fancy as the price. On the surrounding desert a small gazelle is abundant. One day we came across a cavalcade of Bahraini sportsmen who looked exceedingly picturesque in their flowing robes and floating red cafeas, and riding gaily comparison horses with crimson trappings and gold tassels. Each had on his arm a hooded falcon and by his side a Persian greyhound. When the gazelle is sighted the falcon is let loose. It skims rapidly along the ground, attacks the head of the animal, and so confuses it that it falls an easy prey to the hounds in pursuit. Albuquerque and his commentaries says, There are many who hunt with falcons about the size of our goss hawks, and take by their aid certain creatures smaller than gazelles, training very swift hounds to assist the falcon in catching the prey. In their ordinary life the Bahrain people still retain the primitiveness of the Bedouin. There are about fifty villages scattered over the islands, recognizable from a distance by their patch of cultivation and groups of date palms. Except at Manama and Maharik they have little or nothing to do with the pearl fisheries, but are an exceedingly industrious race of peasants who cultivate the soil by means of irrigation from the numerous wells with which the island is blessed. There are generally three to six small wheels attached to the beam, which is across the well, over which the ropes of as many large leathered buckets pass. When these buckets rise full they tilt themselves over. The contents are then taken by little channels to a reservoir which feeds the dykes, transferred thence to the palms in buckets raised by the leverage of a date trunk lightly swung by ropes to a frame, and balanced at one end by a basket of earth into which it is inserted. It is so light to lift that women are generally employed in watering the trees. To manure their date groves they use the fins of a species of ray fish called owl, steeped in water till they are putrid. Owl, by the way, was an ancient name of the island of Bahrain, perhaps because it was the first island of the group in size, owl in Arabic, meaning first. The area of fertility is very rich and beautiful. It extends all along the north coast of the island and the fishing village of Nayim, with its bamboo huts nestling beneath the palm trees is highly picturesque. And all this fertility is due to the number of fresh water springs which burst up here from underground, similar no doubt to those before alluded to which spring up in the sea. The Arabs will tell you that these springs come straight from the Euphrates, by an underground channel through which the Great River flows beneath the Persian Gulf. Doubtless being the same legend alluded to by Pliny when he says, flumen perquad euphratum emerge putant. There are many of them, the Ghassari well, Umishan, Abu Zaidan, and the Adari, which last supplies many miles of date groves through a canal of ancient workmanship. The Adari well is one of the great signs of the Bahrain being a deep basin of water twenty-two yards wide by forty long, beautifully clear and full of prismatic colors. It is said to come up with such force from underground that a diver is driven back, and all around it are ruins of ancient date, proving that it was prized by former inhabitants as a bath. The water is slightly brackish, as is that of all these sources, so that those who can afford it send for water to a well between Rufa Gebelli and Rufa Sherga, called Hanaini, which is exceedingly good, and camels laden with skins may be seen coming into Minama every morning with this treasure. We obtained our water supply thence. The other well, Abu Zaidan, is situated in the midst of the ruins known as Baled al-Qadim, or Old Town. Two days later our camp was struck, and our long cavalcade with Sayid bin Omar, the Bazar master, at its head returned to Minama. He had ordered for us quite a sumptuous repast at his mansion by the sea, and having learned to our taste for curiosities he brought us his presence a buckler of camel skin, his eight-foot-long lance, and a lovely bowl of al-Hassa work, that is to say, minute particles of silver inlaid and wonderful patterns in wood. This inlaying is quite a distinctive art of the district of Arabia along the northeastern coast known as al-Hassa. Curious old guns, saddles, bowls, and coffee pots, in fact everything with an artistic tendency comes from that country. The day following was the great Thursday's market at Baled al-Qadim, near the old minarets and the wells. Mounted once more on donkeys, we joined the train of peasants thither-bound, I being as usual the object of much criticism, and greatly interfering with the business of the day. One mail-starrer paid for his inquisitiveness by tumbling over a stall of knick-knacks and precipitating himself in all the contents to the ground. The minarets and pillars of the old mosques looked down on a strange scene that day. In the half-ruined domed houses of the departed race, stallholders had pitched their stalls, lanes and cross lanes of closely packed vendors of quaint crockery, newly cut lucerne, onions, fish, and objects of European fabric, such as only Orientals admire. And amongst all was a compact mass of struggling humanity. But it was easy to see that the date-palm and its produce formed the staple trade of the place. There were all shapes and sizes of baskets made of palm-leaves, dates and perfusion, fuel of the dried spades, the male spades for fructifying the palm, and palm-leaf matting, the only furniture and sometimes the only roofing of their comfortless huts. The costumes were dazzling in their brilliancy and quaintness. It was a scene never to be forgotten, and one of which a photograph, which I took from a gentle eminence, gives but a faint idea. It was our last scene on Bahrain, a fitting conclusion to our sejourn thereon. End of Chapter 3 Southern Arabia