'File 35/64 Mineral deposits in Dhofar' [‎5r] (11/126)

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have this year, however, become general because the large sums
Ox money brought into the country to pay for labour working on
the aerodromes and the curtailment of imports have made cash
more plentiful than goods.
Merchants of the town who advance sardines in the
autumn remove with their families to the hills in the summer,
when grazing is plentiful, and encamp with the bedouin to
supervise the collection of their milk and its manufacture into
ghi for export. They also purchase the yea^s accumulations of
hides for the same purpose.
They take with them quantities of Indian millet and
indigo-dyed cloth sheets to advance against the frankincense
which the tribesmen collect from the dry wadis on the northern
slopes of the hills. The ghi, hides and incense go to India
and grain and cloth for the bedouin, and tea, coffee, sugar,
rice and luxuries for the townsmen, are purchased with the
foreign exchange thus secured.
AGrlil OULTURS .
The coastal belt contains valuable groves of cocoa-
nuts, a few date gardens, and open fields closely cultivated
by the servants of the well-to-do shaikhs and merchants of the
town. Sugar-cane, cotton and indigo were until recently the
most valuable field crops grown but indigo has now given way
to such food crops as maize, millet and sweet potatoes. The
hills and desert plain, on the other hand, although their
cultivation is comparatively simple, have in recent years been
entirely neglected. Collecting incense and bartering it x'or
grain was preferred by the bedouin; and, in return for their
exports, the merchants could in peace time obtain ample
quantities of rice and other food from India. The little
capital available could be more profitably employed in this
trade than in building irrigation works. Nov/ that these
supplies have dried up efforts are being made to re-establish
cultivation. Old water courses have been repaired and new
ones constructed to bring the water of the Jerzeez and other
springs/