'Southern Arabia, by Theodore Bent, F.R.G.S., F.S.A., Author of 'The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland' 'The Sacred City of the Ethiopians' 'The Cyclades, Or Life Among the Insular Greeks' etc. and Mrs Theodore Bent' [‎91] (132/552)

THE AKABA
91
deposits washed down from the salt hills at Shahwa, at the
head of the main valley.
The steep, reddish sandstone cliffs which form the walls
of these valleys are themselves almost always divided into
three distinct stories or stratifications, which can be
distinctly seen on the photographs. The upper one is very
abrupt, the second slightly projecting and more broken, and
the third formed by deposit from above. The descent into
the valley is extremely difficult at all points. Paths down
which camels can just make their way have been constructed
by the Bedouin, by making use of the stratified formation
and the gentler slopes ; but only in the case of the Wadi A seasonal or intermittent watercourse, or the valley in which it flows. Adim,
of all the valleys we visited, is there anything approaching
a gradual descent.
It appears to me highly probable that the systematic
destruction of the frankincense and myrrh trees through
countless generations has done much to alter the character
of this Akaba, and has contributed to the gradual silting up
of the Hadhramout and its collateral valleys, to which fact
I shall again have occasion to refer. The aspect of this
plateau forcibly recalled to our minds that portion of
Abyssinia which we visited in 1892-93; there is the same
arid coast-line between the sea and the mountains, and the
same rapid ascent to a similar absolutely level plateau, and
the same draining northwards to a large river-bed—in the
case of Abyssinia, into the valleys of the Mareb and other
tributaries of the Nile, and in the case of this Arabian
plateau into the Hadhramout. Only Abyssinia has a more
copious rainfall, which makes its plateau more productive.
It had not been our intention to visit the Wadi A seasonal or intermittent watercourse, or the valley in which it flows. A1 Aisa,
but to approach the Hadhramout by another valley called
Doan, parallel and further west, but our camel-men would
not take us that way, and purposely got up a scare that the
men of Khoreba at the head of Wadi A seasonal or intermittent watercourse, or the valley in which it flows. Doan were going to