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The spearmen in front danced with all manner of light and graceful antics, and we were nearly stifled with the dust; and the din was so appalling that we arrived quite dazed at our tents after this welcome, which had lasted fully an hour. We were the first white people who had been at Mis'hal.
My husband, who went for a climb, came to pretty close quarters with a striped hyena. We were encamped about 380 yards off from the well, and thought it a very pretty place, with acacia-trees and creepers hanging in long trails and making arbours of all of them. The women do all the work here, having to fetch water from Bir Lammas and Ghenab for Mis'hal.
The Aòdeli are a very large tribe, and say they have 4,000 men for war; the Markashi can put 500 or 600 in the field; and the Fadhli 2,000. Lauda, the chief town of the Aòdeli, is much bigger than Shibahm; there are many Arabs. The sultan is Mohamed-bin-Saleh. It is six hours from Mis'hal thirty-four miles and is situated below the mountains. Above it is El Betha Sultan Saleh.
We descended, but not much, into the lovely Wadi Hadda, full of trees smothered with a kind of vine with thick glossy indiarubber-like leaves; then we went on straight up Akaba Hadda to the huge plain of Mis'hal, full of villages, but ill-supplied with water. There are only some very bad wells for the cattle, and they have to fetch drinking-water from afar, from Ghenab and Lammas.
We were very thankful for a large pot of coffee and ginger, sent by a sultan, and a fat lamb. The princes ventured to leave us in charge of Abdullah-bin-Abdurrahman, and abode in the tower. Sultan Haidar went home from here. The tableland of Mis'hal is approached by three akabas: Sauda, to 2,000 feet; Beva, to 2,500 feet; Hadda, to 2,750 feet.
The range must run for thirty or forty miles from east to west, with few breaks and no peaks. We were not well the last day at Mis'hal. The Aòdeli women paint red lines under their eyes and down their noses and round their foreheads with a kind of earth-dye which they call hisn. Sometimes there is a round spot on the forehead and red triangles on the cheeks.
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