<h3><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></SPAN>CHAPTER XIX</h3>
<h4>THE GARA TRIBE</h4>
<p>We left Al Hafa on December 29, after waiting six days for
camels. There was much difficulty in getting a sufficient
quantity, and never before had camels been hired in this
manner. It was hard to make the people understand what
we meant or wished to do.</p>
<p>When at length the camels were assembled, they arrived
naked and bare. There were no ropes of any kind, or sticks
to tie the baggage to, no vestige of any sort of pack saddle,
and we had to wait till the following day before a few ropes
could be procured. A good many of our spare blankets had
to be used as saddle-cloths, that is to say under the baggage;
ropes off our boxes, straps, raw-hide <i>riems</i> that we had used
in South Africa, and in fact every available string had to be
used to tie it on, and the Bedouin even took the strings
which they wear as fillets round their hair, to tie round the
camels' necks and noses to lead them.</p>
<p>There was great confusion over the loading, as all that
ever yet had been done to camels in that country was to tie
a couple of sacks of frankincense together and hang them on.
The camels roared incessantly, got up before they were ready,
shook off their loads, would not kneel down or ran away
loaded, shedding everything or dragging things at their heels.
Sometimes their masters quite left off their work to quarrel
amongst themselves, bawling and shouting. Though we
were ready at seven, it was after midday before we were off,
though Wali Suleiman himself superintended the loading.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_245" id="Page_245"></SPAN>[<SPAN href="./images/245.png">245</SPAN>]</span></p>
<p>Camels in Dhofar are not very choice feeders, and have a
predilection for bones, and if they saw a bone near the path
they would make for it with an eager rush extremely
disconcerting to the rider. Fish, too, is dried for them and
given them as food (called <i>kei</i> by the Gara and <i>ohma</i> by the
Arabs), as also is a cactus which grows in the mountains,
which is cut into sections for them. They are fine sturdy
animals, and can go up and down hill better than any camels
I have ever seen. The fertile Gara range is a great breeding
place for camels, but as there is no commerce or communication
with the interior, the Bedouin do not make much use
of them themselves, but sell them to their neighbours, who
come here to purchase.</p>
<p>My husband, Imam Sherif and I had each a seat on a
separate loaded camel, with our <i>rezais</i> or <i>lahafs</i>—thick cotton
quilts—on the baggage; six of the servants rode in pairs
while one walked, all taking turns. We went about eight
miles westward the first day and considered it a wonderfully
good journey. We stopped at the edge of the plain, about
half a mile from the sea at Ras Risout, where some very
dirty water was to be obtained under a rock.</p>
<p>We passed some ruins with columns four miles west of
Al Hafa at Aukad.</p>
<p>The approach to the mountains is up narrow gulleys full
of frankincense-trees.</p>
<p>We had a stormy and quarrelsome start next day, after
a delay caused by my husband's camel sitting down constantly
and unexpectedly, and a stoppage because two possible
enemies being descried it was deemed needful to wait
till all the camels came up that we might keep together.
When they arrived we waited so long that we got up, told
them that we did not want to be kept all day on the road,
and began to mount our camels, saying we would return to
the wali at Al Hafa. In the end they began quarrelling<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_246" id="Page_246"></SPAN>[<SPAN href="./images/246.png">246</SPAN>]</span>
with each other and made peace with us, and next we set
off to a place farther north than they had before intended,
where there was good water in a small amphitheatre of
mountains. We went up a lovely gorge with ferns, trees,
and a running stream, as different as possible to the aridity
of the Hadhramout.</p>
<p>January 1, 1895, began with a wild-goose chase after
some ruins consisting of a circular wall of loose stones about
a foot in height, very likely only a sheep pen.</p>
<p>The camels were much quieter and the Bedouin very
friendly. We only travelled an hour and a half, having
gone round some spurs and found ourselves in a round
valley, back to back with that we had left, and about half a
mile distant from our last camp. It was surrounded by
some very high and some lower hills, and we were just
under a beetling cliff with good water in a stream among
bulrushes, reeds, and tropical vegetation.</p>
<p>There was a Bedou family close by with goats; they sold
us milk at an exorbitant price and asked so much for a kid
that we stuck to our tinned meat.</p>
<p>The Gara, in whose country we were now, are a wild
pastoral tribe of the mountains, travelling over them hither
and thither in search of food for their flocks. They are
troglodytes of a genuine kind and know no home save
their ancestral caves, with which this limestone range
abounds; they only live in rude reed huts like ant hills, when
they come down to the plain of Dhofar in the rainy season
for pasturage. There is a curious story connected with the
Gara tribe, which probably makes them unique in Arabia,
and that is, that a few years ago they owned a white sheikh.
About the beginning of this century an American ship was
wrecked on this coast, and all the occupants were killed save
the cabin boy, who was kept as a slave. As years went on
his superior ability asserted itself, and gained for him in his<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_247" id="Page_247"></SPAN>[<SPAN href="./images/247.png">247</SPAN>]</span>
later years the proud position of sheikh of all the Garas. He
lived, married, and died amongst them, leaving, I believe,
two daughters, who still live up in the mountains with their
tribe. The life and adventures of this Yankee boy must have
been as thrilling and interesting as any novelist could desire,
and it is a great pity that the white sheikh could not have
been personally interviewed before his death, which occurred
over twenty years ago.</p>
<p class="figcenter"><SPAN href="./images/ill-10.jpg"><ANTIMG src="./images/ill-10_th.jpg" alt="A GARA FORGE" title="A GARA FORGE" /></SPAN></p>
<p class="figcenter"><span class="smcap">A Gara Forge</span></p>
<p>Sprenger (§ 449) supposes that the tribal name Gara
or Kara corresponds to the ancient Ascites whom Ptolemy
places on this coast; but as the Ascites were essentially a
seafaring race, and the Gara are a pastoral tribe of hill
Bedouin, the connection between them does not seem very
obvious. It is more probable that they may correspond to
the Carrei mentioned in the campaign of Aelius Gallus as a
race of Southern Arabia, possessing, according to Pliny, the
most fertile country.</p>
<p>As for weapons, the Gara have three, and every male of
the tribe carries them. One is a small shield (<i>gohb</i>) of wood
or shark's skin, deep, and with a wooden knob at the centre,
so that when they are tired and want a rest they can turn it
round and utilise it as a stool; the second is a flat iron
sword with a wooden handle, actually made in Germany,
for we saw a dhow arrive from Zanzibar whilst we were at
Dhofar which brought a cargo of such swords; the
Bedouin purchased them with avidity, and were like
children with a new toy for some time after, bending them
across their naked shoulders, and measuring them with their
neighbours, to see that they were all equally long; handing
them safely about by their blades. These swords are simply
flat pieces of iron, made narrower at the top to leave a place
for the hand to grip them; there is no form of hilt of any
kind. They are used to cut down trees, split logs, scrape
sticks, and cut meat into joints. They have scabbards<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_248" id="Page_248"></SPAN>[<SPAN href="./images/248.png">248</SPAN>]</span>
covered with white calico, which are not always used, and
there are no straps to attach the sword to the person. The
third weapon is a wooden throw-stick, made of a specially
hard wood called <i>miet</i>, which grows in the mountains; it
is about a yard long, and pointed at both ends; it is called
<i>ghatrif</i>. The Gara are wonderfully skilful at hurling it
through the air, and use it both in battle and for the chase
with admirable precision. They have hardly any guns
amongst them, and what they have are only of the long
matchlock class; in fact, they do not seem to covet the possession
of firearms, as our friends in the Hadhramout did the
year before. Every man clutched the sword and ghatrif in
one hand very tightly as there was nothing to prevent their
slipping, being both pointed.</p>
<p>The little pipes which they use are of limestone, soft
when cut and hardening in the air. They are more like
cigarette holders than pipes.</p>
<p>The thorn-extractors used by the Gara tribe are like those
used by most of the other Bedouin: a knife, a sort of stiletto,
and tweezers. They sit down on the wayside and hack
most heartily at their feet, and then prod deeply with the
stiletto before pulling the thorn out with the tweezers.</p>
<p>Certainly black skins are not so sensitive as white, and
though, of course, I do not approve of slavery, I do think a
great deal of unneeded pity has been wasted on slaves by
people who took it for granted that being men and brothers
they had the same feelings as ourselves, either in mind or
body. No one with the same feelings as we could go so
readily through the burning cure (<i>kayya</i>). In Mashonaland
I have seen people walking on narrow paths only
suited to people who have never learnt to turn out their toes,
all overhung with thorny bushes which not only tore our
clothes but our skins. The black people only had white
scratches as if they were made of morocco leather. If by<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_249" id="Page_249"></SPAN>[<SPAN href="./images/249.png">249</SPAN>]</span>
any chance a knock really brought a bit of flesh or skin off,
and blood annoyed them by streaming down, they would
clutch up a handful of grass with a dry leaf or stick, and
wipe the wound out quite roughly.</p>
<p>We had never put ourselves into the charge of such
wild people as the Garas—far wilder in every way than the
Bedouin of the Hadhramout, inasmuch as they have far less
contact with civilisation. The Bedou of Southern Arabia is,
to my mind, distinctly of an aboriginal race. He has nothing
to do with the Arabs, and was probably there just as he is
now, centuries before the Arabs found a footing in this
country. He is every bit as wild as the African savage, and
not nearly so submissive to discipline, and is endowed with
a spirit of independence which makes him resent the slightest
approach to legal supervision.</p>
<p>When once away from the influence of Wali Suleiman,
they paid no heed to the orders of the soldiers sent by him,
and during the time we were with them we had the unpleasant
feeling that we were entirely in their power. They would
not march longer than they liked; they would only take us
where they wished, and they were unpleasantly familiar;
with difficulty we kept them out of our tents, and if we
asked them not to sing at night and disturb our rest, they
always set to work with greater vigour.</p>
<p>Seventeen of these men, nearly naked, armed as I have
described, and wild-looking in the extreme, formed our
bodyguard, and if we attempted to give an order which did
not please them, they would independently reply, 'We are
all sheikhs, we are not slaves.' At the same time they paid
the greatest deference to their chief, the old Sheikh Sehel,
and expected us to do the same.</p>
<p>Sheikh Sehel was the head of the Beit al Kathan, which is
the chief of the many families into which the Gara tribe is
divided, and consequently he was recognised as the chief of all<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_250" id="Page_250"></SPAN>[<SPAN href="./images/250.png">250</SPAN>]</span>
the Garas. He was a wizened, very avaricious-looking old
man, who must have been close upon seventy, and though he
owned 500 head of cattle and 70 camels, he dressed his old
bones in nothing save a loin-cloth, and his matted grey locks
were adorned and kept together by a simple leather thong
twisted several times round his forehead. Despite his appearance
he was a great man in his limited sphere, and for the
weeks that were to come we were completely in his power.</p>
<p>He had the exclusive charge of me and my camel, which
he led straight through everything, regardless of the fact
that I was on several occasions nearly knocked off by the
branches of trees; and if my seat was uncomfortable, which
it often was, as well as precarious—for we all sat on luggage
indifferently tied on—we had the greatest work to make
Sheikh Sehel stop to rectify the discomfort, for he was the
sheikh of all the Garas, as he constantly repeated, and his
dignity was not to be trifled with.</p>
<p>The seventeen sheikhs got half a dollar a day each for
food, their slaves a quarter.</p>
<p>Our expedition nearly came to an untimely end a very
few days after our start, owing, as my husband himself
confessed, to a little indiscretion on his part; but as the
event serves to illustrate the condition of the men we were
with, I must not fail to recount it. During our day's march
we met with a large company of the Al Khathan family
pasturing their flocks and herds in a pleasant valley. Great
greetings took place, and our men carried off two goats for
an evening feast. When night approached they lit a fire of
wood, and piled stones on the embers so as to form a heated
surface. On this they placed the meat, cut in strips with
their swords, the entrails, the heads, and every part of the
animal, until their kitchen looked like a ghastly sacrifice
to appease the anger of some deity. I must confess that
the smell thereof was exceeding savoury, and the picture<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_251" id="Page_251"></SPAN>[<SPAN href="./images/251.png">251</SPAN>]</span>
presented by these hungry savages, gathered round the lurid
light of their kitchen, was weird in the extreme. Daggers
were used for knives, two fingers for forks, and we stood at
a respectful distance and watched them gorge; and so
excited did they become as they consumed the flesh, that
one could almost have supposed them to be under the
influence of strong drink. Several friends joined them from
the neighbouring hills, and far into the night they carried on
their wild orgy, singing, shouting, and periodically letting
off the guns which the soldiers sent by Wali Suleiman
brought with them.</p>
<p>We retired in due course to our tent and our beds, but
not to sleep, for in addition to their discordant songs, in
rushing to and fro they would catch in our tent-guys, and
give us sudden shocks, which rendered sleep impossible.
Exasperated at this beyond all bearing, my husband at
length rushed out and caught a Bedou in the very act of
tumbling over a guy. Needless to say a well-placed kick
sent him quickly about his business, and after this silence
was established and we got some repose.</p>
<p>Next morning, however, when we were prepared to start,
we found our Bedouin all seated in a silent, solemn phalanx,
refusing to move. 'What is the matter?' my husband
asked, 'why are we not ready to start?' and from amongst
them arose a stern, freezing reply. 'You must return to Al
Hafa. We can travel no more with you, as Theodore has
kicked Sheikh Sehel,' for by this time they had become
acquainted with our Christian names, and never used any
other appellative.</p>
<p>We felt that the aspect of affairs was serious, and that in
the night season he had been guilty of an indiscretion which
might imperil both our safety and the farther progress of
our journey. So we affected to take the matter as a joke,
laughed heartily, patted Sheikh Sehel on the back, said that<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_252" id="Page_252"></SPAN>[<SPAN href="./images/252.png">252</SPAN>]</span>
we did not know who it was, and my husband entered into
a solemn compact that if they would not catch in our guys
again, he would never kick his majesty any more. It was
surprising to see how soon the glum faces relaxed, and how
soon all ill-feeling was forgotten. In a very few minutes
life and bustle, chattering and good humour reigned in our
camp, and we were excellent friends again.</p>
<p>It was on the third day after leaving Al Hafa that we
passed through one of the districts where frankincense is still
collected, in a narrow valley running down from the mountains
into the plain of Dhofar. The valley was covered for
miles with this shrub, the trunk of which, when punctured,
emits the odoriferous gum. We did not see any very large
trees, such as we did in Sokotra. The Bedouin choose the
hot season, when the gum flows most freely, to do this
puncturing. During the rains of July and August, and
during the cool season, the trees are left alone. The first
step is to make an incision in the trunk, then they strip off
a narrow bit of bark below the hole, so as to make a receptacle
in which the milky juice, the <i>spuma pinguis</i> of Pliny,
can lodge and harden. Then the incision is deepened, and
after seven days they return to collect what are, by that time,
quite big tears of frankincense, larger than an egg.</p>
<p>The shrub itself is a picturesque one, with a leaf not
unlike an ash, only stiffer; it has a tiny green flower, not red
like the Sokotra flowers, and a scaly bark. In all there are
three districts in the Gara mountains where the tree still
grows; anciently, no doubt, it was found in much larger
quantities, but the demand for frankincense is now so very
limited that they take no care whatever of the trees. They
only tap the most promising ones, and those that grow
farther west in the Mahri country, as they produce an
inferior quality, are not now tapped at all.</p>
<p>The best is obtained at spots called Hoye and Haski,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_253" id="Page_253"></SPAN>[<SPAN href="./images/253.png">253</SPAN>]</span>
about four days' journey inland from Merbat, where the Gara
mountains slope down into the Nejd desert. The second in
quality comes from near Cape Risout, and also a little farther
west, at a place called Chisen, near Rakhiout, frankincense
of a marketable quality is obtained, but that farther west
in the Mahri country is not collected now, being much
inferior. The best quality they call <i>leban lakt</i>, and the
second quality <i>leban resimi</i>, and about 9,000 cwt. are exported
yearly and sent to Bombay. It is only collected in the hot
weather, before the rains begin and when the gum flows
freely, in the months of March, April, and May, for during
the rains the tracks on the Gara mountains are impassable.
The trees belong to the various families of the Gara tribe;
each tree is marked and known to its owner, and the product
is sold wholesale to Banyan merchants, who come to Dhofar
just before the monsoons to take it away.</p>
<p>One must imagine that when this industry was at its
height, in the days when frankincense was valued not only
for temple ritual but for domestic use, the trade in these
mountains must have been very active, and the cunning old
Sabæan merchants, who liked to keep the monopoly of this
drug, told wonderful stories of the phœnix which guarded
the trees, of the insalubrity of the climate and of the deadly
vapours which came from them when punctured for the
gum. Needless to say, these were all false commercial
inventions, which apparently succeeded admirably, for the
old classical authors were exceedingly vague as to the
localities whence frankincense came. Merchants came in
their ships to the port of Moscha, which we shall presently
visit, to get cargoes of the drug, but they probably knew as
little as we did of the interior of the hills behind, and one
of the reasons why Aelius Gallus was sent to Arabia by
Augustus on his unsuccessful campaign was 'to discover
where Arabian gold and frankincense came from.'<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_254" id="Page_254"></SPAN>[<SPAN href="./images/254.png">254</SPAN>]</span></p>
<p>Early Arabian authors are far more explicit, and we
gather from Makrisi, Ibn Khaldun, and others, something
more definite about Dhofar and the frankincense trade, and
of the prince of this district who had the monopoly of the
trade, and punished its infringement with death. These
writers, when compared with the classical ones, assist us
greatly in identifying localities.</p>
<p>The Portuguese knew about Dhofar and its productions,
for Camoens, in his Tenth Lusiad, 716, writes:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">'O'er Dhofar's plain the richest incense breathes.'<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>But not until Dr. Carter coasted along here some fifty years
ago was it definitely known that this was the chief locality
in Arabia which produced the drug.</p>
<p>Myrrh, too, grows in large quantities in the Gara range,
and we obtained specimens of it in close proximity to the
frankincense-tree. The gum of the myrrh-tree is much
redder than ordinary gum Arabic, whereas the frankincense
gum is considerably whiter. The commerce of Dhofar must
have been exceedingly rich in those ancient days, as is
evidenced by the size and extent of the Sabæan ruins on the
plain. They are the most easterly ruins which have been
found in Arabia of the Sabæan period, and probably owe
their origin entirely to the drug trade.</p>
<p>For the first few days of our journey, we suffered greatly
from the unruliness of the camels. They danced about like
wild things at first, and scattered our belongings far and wide,
and all of us in our turns had serious falls, and during those
days, boxes and packages kept flying about in all directions.
Imam Sharif had his travelling trunk broken to pieces and
the contents scattered right and left, and some treasured
objects of jewellery therein contained were never recovered.
So scarce did rope become during our journey, that the
Bedouin had actually to take the leather thongs which<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_255" id="Page_255"></SPAN>[<SPAN href="./images/255.png">255</SPAN>]</span>
bound their matted locks together, to lead the camels with,
and rope was almost the only thing they tried to steal from
us while we were in their company. At length our means
of tying became so exhausted that we had to send a messenger
back to buy rope from Wali Suleiman, and obtained a large
sackful for two reals.</p>
<p>Our new supply of rope was made of aloe-fibre, barely
twisted in one thin strand, and at every camp we had to set
up a rope-walk to make ropes that would not break. The
Garas were always cutting off short bits to tie round their
hair or their necks. The servants, headed by Lobo, had to
be very sharp in picking up all the pieces lying about after
unloading, or we should soon have been at a loss again.</p>
<p>We originally understood that Sheikh Sehel was going
to take us up to the mountains by a valley still farther west,
but for some reason, which we shall never know, he refused;
some said the Mahri tribe was giving trouble in this direction,
others that the road was too difficult for camels. At any
rate, we had partially to retrace our steps, and following
along the foot of the mountains, found ourselves encamped
not so many miles away from Al Hafa.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_256" id="Page_256"></SPAN>[<SPAN href="./images/256.png">256</SPAN>]</span></p>
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