United States or Greece ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Many-coloured volcanic rocks of fantastic form protect the horseshoe-shaped harbour, whilst behind the white town, as far as the eye can reach, stretch deeply serrated, arid mountains, which culminate in the heights of Jebel Akhdar, or the 'Green Mountains, some fifty miles, as the crow flies, inland, reaching an elevation of 9,000 feet.
Oman was included in Yemen by these earlier geographers, doubtless from the fact that Arabs from Yemen were its first colonisers; but all that is known with any certainty is that, from the ninth century a.d. a long line of imams ruled over Oman, with their capitals at Nezweh or Rostok, at the foot of Jebel Akhdar.
We could not procure any information about our journey to the Jebel Akhdar, as it does not appear to be the fashion at Maskat to go inland. However, both our old friend the Sultan Feysul and Colonel Sadler took infinite trouble to arrange for our journey; camels were hired and a horse for me, and the sheikhs of the tribes through whose country we should have to pass were summoned to escort us.
Of course we did not mind, but there was much laughter at the expense of the others, in which indeed they joined, for they bore their adversity amiably when it brought strange cooking-fellows. On reaching Aden we still desired to penetrate into the Jebel Akhdar, so looked out for a ship going to Maskat. We could find none, therefore we embarked for India with all our company.
We were told that snow sometimes falls in the winter-time on Jebel Akhdar, and it rejoices in a certain amount of verdure, from which it derives its name. This range forms the backbone of Oman, and at its foot lie Nezweh and Rostok, the old capitals of the long line of imams of Oman, before Maskat was a place of so much importance as it is at present.
He showed us specimens of a rabbit-like animal which the Arabs call 'whabba, and which he affirmed is the coney of the Bible, and of the oryx, which lives up on the Jebel Akhdar; it has two straight horns which for one instant and from one point of view when it is running sideways look like one, and some say the fact gave rise to the mythical unicorn.
We intended first of all to penetrate into the regions of the Jebel Akhdar, and then to pass through the territory of the Jenefa tribe to Ghubbet el Hashish, which takes its name not from land grass, but from seaweed. There a boat was to meet us and take us westward; in this way we should avoid a stretch of desert which the Bedouin themselves shrink from, and which is impassable to Europeans.
Word Of The Day