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Near Ras Momi, to the east of the island, we discovered a curious form of ancient sepulture. Caves in the limestone rocks have been filled with human bones from which the flesh had previously decayed. These caves were then walled up and left as charnel-houses, after the fashion still observed in the Eastern Christian Church.
The latitude of the island is between 12° 19' and 12° 42', and the longitude between 53° 20' and 54° 30'. It is 72 miles long from east to west, and 22 miles wide from north to south. There is a coral reef nearly all the way from Africa to beyond Ras Momi.
About five miles from Ras Momi, and hidden by an amphitheatre of low hills on the watershed between the two seas, we came across the foundations of a large square building, constructed out of very large stones, and with great regularity. It was 105 feet square; the outer wall was 6 feet thick, and it was divided inside into several compartments by transverse walls.
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.
We could not help thinking of the 'Moskophoros' when one came up to look at us with a lamb round his neck. We settled there for several days, not being able to go nearer Ras Momi for reasons connected with water. I cannot think it could have been really pleasant to the people of Saihon that we should have drunk up nearly all their water, and only left a little the colour of coffee behind us.
The hills all about Ras Momi are divided into irregular plots by long piles of stones stretching in every direction, certainly not the work of the Sokotrans of to-day, but the work of some people who valued every inch of ground, and utilised it for some purpose or other.
The eastern end of Sokotra is similar in character to the western, being a low continuation of the spurs of Haghier, intersected with valleys, and with a plateau stretching right away to Ras Momi about 1,500 feet above the sea-level.
Aloes are still abundant about Fereghet and the valleys of Haghier, but near Ras Momi there are none, and it is hard to think what else could grow there now; but these mountain slopes may not always have been so denuded.
Ras Momi somewhat reminded us of Cape Finisterre, in Brittany, and as a dangerous point for navigation it also resembles it closely. Near the summit of one hill we passed an ancient and long disused reservoir, dug in the side of it, and constructed with stones; and during our stay here we visited the sites of many ancient villages, and found the cave charnel-houses already alluded to.
Before leaving this corner of the island we journeyed to the edge of the plateau and looked down the steep cliffs at the eastern cape, where Ras Momi pierces, with a series of diminishing heights, the Indian Ocean.
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