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Updated: June 1, 2025
I was riding with Imam Sharif, two Indians, four soldiers, and the groom leading Zubda, whose back was still sore, when we came to a fork in the way. The soldiers asked a passing man, 'Which is the way to Ghail? The man looked puzzled; so were we. I said, 'We want to know the way to Bir Baokban. 'No, no! Ghail, said the soldiers, and when I said 'Baokban! again they laughed scornfully.
First they said we should stay where we were, then that we should go only a short distance, and on a different way to that already settled. After that we were told we could not go to Al Figra or Al Madi, as these were recognised places for murders, and we were told the same of Ghail Babwazir; also a good many different numbers of days were mentioned for our journey.
'Oh! said Saleh, 'I only read them something from the preface of the Koran! We are not bound at all. If I had to swear falsely on the Koran, I should have to be given a great many guineas! We never knew the name of the place where we slept that night. Talib came in the morning and said he could not persuade the Bedou Hamoumi to go to Ghail Babwazir.
Ghail Babwazir is an oasis or series of oases of rank fertility, caused by a stream the water of which is warm and bitter, and which is conducted by channels cut in the rock in various directions. Acres and acres of tobacco, bananas, Indian corn, cotton, and other crops are thus produced in the wilderness, and this cultivation has given rise to the overgrown village.
They consist of a large fort, circular on one side and about 40 feet in diameter, built of round, water-worn stones set in very strong cement, dating from the same period as those at Ghail Babwazir. Evidently the mediæval inhabitants of Arabia chose these two points for good water. Tobacco is also grown here, besides other things. The water is really good and sweet.
We passed plenty of people coming up, and one day we met a caravan of 150 camels from Sheher with Hadhrami merchants returning from India to enjoy the fruits of their rascality, and end their days on the sacred soil of Arabia. There were little tents on the camels for women, and they seemed to us to have very few armed men. The stream Ghail Omr is the first running one we saw since Al Ghail.
Here the Bedou inhabitants cultivate the date palm, and have green patches of lucerne and grain, very refreshing to the eye. We had come up one of the narrowest of gorges, but with hundreds of palm-trees around Al Ghail, the first of the two villages, which is in the end of the Wadi Howeri.
It is an uninteresting collection of stone huts, with many pretty little fields, and maidenhair fern overhanging the wayside. There are little enclosures with walls round them, and small stones in them, on which they dry the dates before sending them to Aden. The rocky river-bed itself is waterless, the ghail being used up in irrigation.
Talib, not knowing of our little plan of going with the Hamoumi to Al Madi, came and told us how very dangerous Al Madi was, and that it would be far better to go by Ghail Babwazir, if only the camel-drivers would agree. If they would not, he would put all our most necessary things, i.e. our money, on his own camel, and we would ride secretly off together.
We went on ten miles to Al Ghail, rising to an altitude of 2,000 feet above the sea-level. This word ghail begins with the Arabic ghin, which is a soft sound between r and g. There are two villages near the head of the Wadi Howeri, where there is actually a ghail that rare phenomenon in Arabia, a rill or running stream.
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