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It was curious to hear their morning greeting, 'Sabakh, Theodore! Sabakh, Mabel! The women of the Gara tribe are timid creatures, small, and not altogether ill-looking; in fact the Garas are, as a tribe, undersized and of small limbs, but exceedingly active and lithe.
We rode cautiously, as is customary, amongst the yeaning she-camels, who are injured by a sudden start, and about 8 A.M. arrived at our guide's kraal, the fourth station, called "Gudingaras," or the low place where the Garas tree grows. Raghe disappeared, and the Bedouins flocked out to gaze upon us as we approached the kraal.
He had the exclusive charge of me and my camel, which he led straight through everything, regardless of the fact that I was on several occasions nearly knocked off by the branches of trees; and if my seat was uncomfortable, which it often was, as well as precarious for we all sat on luggage indifferently tied on we had the greatest work to make Sheikh Sehel stop to rectify the discomfort, for he was the sheikh of all the Garas, as he constantly repeated, and his dignity was not to be trifled with.
During the time we were with them they never performed either the prayers or the ablutions required by the Moslem creed, and the only thing approaching a religious festival amongst them that we heard of, is an annual festival held by the Garas in November by the side of one of their lakes, to which all the members of the different families repair, and at which a magician sits on a rock in the centre of a group of dancing Bedouin, to propitiate, with certain formulas, the jinni of the lake.
The Garas were always cutting off short bits to tie round their hair or their necks. The servants, headed by Lobo, had to be very sharp in picking up all the pieces lying about after unloading, or we should soon have been at a loss again.
Sheikh Sehel was the head of the Beit al Kathan, which is the chief of the many families into which the Gara tribe is divided, and consequently he was recognised as the chief of all the Garas.
As years went on his superior ability asserted itself, and gained for him in his later years the proud position of sheikh of all the Garas. He lived, married, and died amongst them, leaving, I believe, two daughters, who still live up in the mountains with their tribe.
We had never put ourselves into the charge of such wild people as the Garas far wilder in every way than the Bedouin of the Hadhramout, inasmuch as they have far less contact with civilisation. The Bedou of Southern Arabia is, to my mind, distinctly of an aboriginal race.
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