United States or Sint Maarten ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Then sunrise began to paint the rocks red, and black shadows came and changed their shapes, and presently all became hard and stony looking. Passing Ras Hamar, which is the next cape to Risout, we had seen easily how it had acquired the name, for it looks like a donkey drinking, with its nose in the water and its ears cocked. This shows particularly from the west.
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 leban lakt, and the second quality leban resimi, and about 9,000 cwt. are exported yearly and sent to Bombay.
This name is obviously a Greek translation of the Sabæan for some well-known oracle which anciently existed here, not far, as Ptolemy himself tells us, from Cape Risout. This name eventually became Zufar, from which the modern name of Dhofar is derived. In a.d. 618 the town was destroyed and Mansura built, under which name the capital was known in early Mohammedan times.
The great drawback to the country is the want of harbours; during the north-east monsoons dhows can find shelter at Merbat, and during the south-west monsoons at Risout, but the rest of the coast is provided with nothing but open roadsteads, with the surf always rolling in from the Indian Ocean.
Between Capes Risout and Merbat we found the sites of ruined towns of considerable extent in no less than seven different points, though at the two capes where now is the only anchorage, there are no ruins to be seen, proving, as we afterwards verified for ourselves, that anchorage of a superior nature existed in the neighbourhood in antiquity, which has since become silted up, but which anciently must have afforded ample protection for the boats which came for the frankincense trade.
The wali of Takha received us well, and placed his house at our disposal, but it was so dirty we elected to pitch our tents, and encamped some little distance from the village. On the following morning the wali sent us with a guide to inspect some ruins round the neighbouring headland which forms one end of the bay, of which Ras Risout is the other.
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. We passed some ruins with columns four miles west of Al Hafa at Aukad. The approach to the mountains is up narrow gulleys full of frankincense-trees.
Word Of The Day