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This stream is under the northern slope of the Kalenzia range, and near it are the ruins of an ancient town, and as the water trickles on towards the lagoon it fertilises the country exceedingly, and its banks are rich in palms and other trees. The abandoned site of this old town is infinitely preferable to the modern one, and much healthier.
I was informed by a competent authority on the island that there are four hundred of these pastoral villages between Ras Kalenzia and Ras Momi, a distance of some seventy odd miles as the crow flies; and from the frequency with which we came across them during our marches up only a limited number of Sokotra's many valleys, I should think the number is not over-estimated.
After that we were to pay thirty rupees an hour, and in no case would she tarry more than twenty-four hours. If landing were impossible, we were to be carried to Bombay. We were landed in a lifeboat, through the surf at the town of Kalenzia, which lies at the western end of the island.
There must once have been a large population, to judge by the way the hills are terraced up by walls, and the many barren, neglected palm-trees about among the old fields. The Kalenzia range of mountains is quite distinct from Haghier, and is about 1,500 or 2,000 feet high. We could find no special name for it. They call it Fedahan, but that is the generic Sokoteriote word for mountain.
The men often wear their tooth-brushes tied to their turbans; a sprig of arrack serves the purpose. Whilst at Kalenzia we must have had nearly all the inhabitants of the place at our tent asking for a remedy for one disease or another; they seemed to be mostly gastric troubles, which they would describe as pains revolving in their insides like a wheel, and wounds.
The women of Kalenzia use turmeric largely for dyeing their faces and their bodies yellow, a custom very prevalent on the south coast of Arabia; they wear long robes, sometimes dyed with indigo, sometimes of a bright scarlet hue.
From one end of Sokotra to the other we never found anything the least characteristic or attractive amongst the possessions of the islanders, nothing but poor examples of what one finds everywhere on the south coast of Arabia and east of Africa. Many weddings were going on during our residence at Kalenzia, and at them we witnessed a ceremony which we had not seen before.
We took five days in getting from Kalenzia to Tamarida, and found the water question on this route rather a serious one until we reached Mori and Kadhoup, where the streams from the high mountains began. Mori is a charming little spot by the sea, with a fine stream and a lagoon, and palms and bright yellow houses as a foreground to the dark-blue mountains.