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Updated: June 7, 2025
If irrigated it would yield enormously. The well is of great depth, but the water very bad. My husband ascended a mountain about 3,000 feet high, but only 400 feet above the plain, with a most remarkable view of the Aòdeli mountains, about twenty miles away, towering up to a great height far higher than the Yafei range, which Mr. Tate gives as 7,000 feet: these are probably 10,000 feet.
The pass goes uphill, west to east, and the steepest end is at the east. A spur runs out west on the north side about 50 feet high, convenient to shoot over. The approaches are quite open. It leads through Wadi Goddam to Wadi Hassan, and at the entrance to Wadi Hassan, Fadhli Bedouin are for ever stationed to watch for Yafei attacks on a tiny jutting hill.
We joined the camels on the way, and after two hours of stones ascended the very steep Akaba Beva. The view from the hills above about 2,500 feet is splendid, all the Yafei mountains and the Goddam range ending at Haide Naab, and giving place to the higher mountains of Rekab and Ghiuda.
It is considered too near the Yafei frontier to be safe, and the Fadhli always used a narrow pass called Tarik al Kaha, going round Mount Gherash. It gets narrower and steeper as it goes on zigzagging up slabs of shale, with only room for one camel at a time. There are any amount of ambush places, especially on the north side.
Belad el Megheba, in the upper Yafei country, is under Sultan Hakam Mohamed-bin-Ali. Neither is Sahib Lauda under the Turks; the inhabitants are Augheri. This has a very soft guttural the Arabic ghin. Our next stage was Bir Lammas, about four miles off, mostly across the monotonous plain. We passed four dars and villages. In time of war the Fadhli sultan comes and occupies one of these dars.
Three men of ours, sheikhs who had come to meet us, galloped forward to explain to them who we were, and ascertain that all was safe. They fired a gun over our heads. There were a few baboons about. We saw several little heaps of stones, and were told they marked spots where Fadhli had been shot by Yafei. A very large heap is formed by those who pass the valley safely for good luck.
The animosity still continues and there is little intercourse between Siwoun and Shibahm, though only twelve miles apart. The Kattiri have more of the Bedou about them and the Yafei have more of the Arab. Our siyar was twenty-five dollars.
Since leaving the British Empire we had been in the Fadhli country till we reached the Wadi Banna, or Benna, the boundary between the Beled Fadhli and Beled Yafei, then winding indeed was our way, for we were in thick wood; swords and daggers had to be used to cut a path, and we were brought to a standstill more than once, with our heads bent under trees, not daring to lift them.
It is larger than most Hamoumi villages, and has palm-trees and many large b'dom-trees. Besides the Hamoumi, Jabberi, and Yafei, there are many small subsidiary tribes, or rather families, forming little independent communities of their own, in this region. To continue the life of Talib-bin-Abdullah.
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