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To our surprise at twelve o'clock we stopped at a well, Bir al Ghuz, when our men began to unload the camels. They said they were only just waiting for the Hamoumi siyara to come up, and that they had already arrived at Sa'ah. The Hamoumi are a small, poor tribe of Bedouin, who occupy the lower end of Wadi Adim. They hire out camels to caravans, and do a great deal of the carrying business.
All the time we were in Sa'ah we had to remain in our tent, tightly tied in, for if we did not we were quite deprived of air by the crowd, which became thicker and thicker, driving the foremost nearly into the tent headlong. I sewed strings to the extreme edges of our doors, which lapped half a yard, and this extension of size was very welcome.
On the 8th those extortionate men of Wadi al Ain sent to say they would take us by the Wadi bin Ali, turning out of Wadi Hadhramout at Al Gran, crossing the Wadis bin Ali and Adim, and reaching Sa'ah, where we could branch off for Bir Borhut.
In this uncertainty we had to turn back and my husband complained to the sheikh of Sa'ah, who said that this blackmailing had been planned by one of our three best Jabberi, Seid-bin-Iselem, who went with us, and that he would send men of his own with us in the morning.
Talib had not been absent from us an hour when he again arrived, saying he wanted four dollars to pay a debt he owed in Bir bin Aboudan; 'it was to come out of the thirty dollars still owing for the siyara, and to be paid at Sheher, he said. He was, of course, told that the money for the siyara had been fully paid up, seventy dollars before the sultan of Shibahm, and forty at Sa'ah.
We never could ascertain whether the Tamimi had come or not, so on February 18, having given up all hope of joining them and changed ten camels, we set out, but not before nine o'clock. After Sa'ah the Wadi Adim becomes narrow, stony, and uninteresting, and our way lay for a good part along a stony river bed, gradually mounting, but almost imperceptibly.
Not one of our party, with the exception of Imam Sharif, wished to go to Bir Borhut, and they all encouraged each other in discouraging us. About a mile before reaching Sa'ah we saw an old fortress on a spur jutting out of the precipice, with a cut road leading to it, so of course we determined to visit it.
The sultan wished to fire off seven guns at our departure, but this we declined. He came about a mile with us, and then went to Shibahm, to send an answer to the letter from the Tamimi, saying, 'On their eyes they would meet us at Sa'ah. He also determined to stay away a few days, as he should find his house very dull when we were gone.
There is a large population scattered in small homesteads. They have slaves, who live in little huts made of palm branches, with the interstices plastered with mud. Ten more Jabberi joined us, so when we reached Sa'ah in two hours and a half, we were more than eighty people, with twenty-five camels, two horses, and three donkeys.
'Now all is peace, said Talib-bin-Abdullah, and in the same breath asked for two dollars for two extra camels, that we had had before we reached Sa'ah. My husband refused, but when we reached our stage Talib asked for that day's pay, and would not take it without the two dollars.
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