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Updated: June 6, 2025
Really Al Hafa and the Dhofar were ruled over autocratically by Wali Suleiman, who was sent out there about eighteen years before as governor, at the request of the feud-torn inhabitants, by Sultan Tourki of Maskat. In his small way Wali Suleiman was a man of great capacity; a man who has made history, and could have made more if his sphere had been larger.
At any rate, we had partially to retrace our steps, and following along the foot of the mountains, found ourselves encamped not so many miles away from Al Hafa.
The rice was turned out of the pot, and as soon as the cook had scraped it all out with his hands they sat round, and fed themselves with handfuls of it. After another day, spent over sketching, photography, and measurements, we felt we had thoroughly explored the neighbourhood of the abyss, so we started back to Al Hafa to prepare for our departure from Dhofar.
Perhaps in Scotland one might be more inclined to call them mountain tarns, for neither of them is more than a mile in length, and in parts they are very narrow; yet they are deep, and, as the people at Al Hafa proudly told us, you could float thereon any steamer you liked, which may or may not be true, but their existence in a country like Arabia is, after all, their chief cause for renown.
On the second day we began again to descend a hideously steep path, and a drop of about 1,500 feet brought us to a remarkable cave just above the plain, and only about ten or twelve miles from Al Hafa. This cave burrows far into the mountain side, and is curiously hung with stalactites, and contains the deserted huts of a Bedou village, only inhabited during the rains.
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.
These pungent odours were relieved from time to time by burning huge chafing dishes of frankincense, a large cargo of which was aboard for transport to Bombay after we had been deposited at Al Hafa.
When they arrived we waited so long that we got up, told them that we did not want to be kept all day on the road, and began to mount our camels, saying we would return to the wali at Al Hafa.
Down by the coast at Al Hafa there is a square enclosure or bazaar where piles of frankincense may still be seen ready for exportation, miniature successors of those piles of the tears of gum from the tree-trunks which are depicted on the old Egyptian temple at Deir al Bahari as one of the proceeds of Queen Hatasou's expeditions to the land of Punt.
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