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The sultan has besides a private inclosure where he has some lime-trees, not our kind of lime-tree of course, but the one which bears fruit; and I must not forget cotton, from which the place originally took its name, as it is abundant in a wild state. At last another polite letter came from the Kattiri, and a letter from the sultan of Terim.
The Kattiri are not allowed to stay in the town at night, for we heard that seven months before some of them were detected in an attempt to blow up the palace with gunpowder. There was a fight also, about a quarter of a mile outside the town, in which five Kattiri and seven Yafei were killed.
The animosity still continues and there is little intercourse between Siwoun and Shibahm, though only twelve miles apart. The Kattiri have more of the Bedou about them and the Yafei have more of the Arab. Our siyar was twenty-five dollars.
Secondly, we have the Arabs proper, a decidedly later importation into the country than the Bedouin. They live in and cultivate the lands around the towns; many of them carry on trade and go to India and the Straits Settlements, and some of them are very wealthy. They also are divided into tribes. The chief of those dwelling in the Hadhramout are the Yafei, Kattiri, Minhali, Amri, and Tamimi.
The following evening we were thrown into some excitement by the arrival of the sultan in our room with seven letters, the general tenor of which was that eight of the Tamimi had come, with the siyara of four Amri only, and no siyara of Kattiri, as far as Siwoun, and asked to be passed on, but that the Kattiri refused them safe conduct; they asked the sultan of Shibahm to go to Shibahm and arrange for them to reach us.
Even I never saw her face: she always wore her mask and her hat, and looked a most ungainly object. I dare say I looked the same to her. The sultan of Shibahm had sent a man on horseback up that dreadful wadi to our last camp to thank us for the gun, and to warn us by all means to keep on the highlands for fear of the hostile Kattiri.
Our very faint hope of this was only founded on the fact that the seyyids of Meshed are at enmity with those of Siwoun. On February 1, the Tamimi sent to say they had really started to fetch us, but the Kattiri told them they would declare war on them unless they retired.
Bir Borhut is not far from Kabr Houd, which is said by some to be even longer and wider than Kabr Saleh. The route lies through the territory of the Kattiri, and the Yafei are quite ignorant of it; it would be quite unsafe for them to go to the sea along the valley, and they always use the road over the tableland.
The Jabberi thus defied the Kattiri: 'As sure as we come from Jabberi fathers and Jabberi mothers, we will take these people safely to Bir Borhut; and as sure as you come from Kattiri fathers and Kattiri mothers, you may do your worst but still we will keep them safe'; to which the Kattiri replied: 'We do not wish to make war on you, and we do not care where you take them so long as it is not into our country.
One source of enmity between the Kattiri and the Yafei is, I believe, a debt which the Kattiri owe and will not pay.
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