'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' [‎246] (295/552)

246 DHOFAR AND THE GARA MOUNTAINS
with each other and made peace with us, and next we set
off to a place farther north than they had before intended,
where there was good water in a small amphitheatre of
mountains. We went up a lovely gorge with ferns, trees,
and a running stream, as different as possible to the aridity
of the Hadhramout.
January 1, 1895, began with a wild-goose chase after
some ruins consisting of a circular wall of loose stones about
a foot in height, very likely only a sheep pen.
The camels were much quieter and the Bedouin very
friendly. We only travelled an hour and'a half, having
gone round some spurs and found ourselves in a round
valley, back to back with that we had left, and about half a
mile distant from our last camp. It was surrounded by
some very high and some lower hills, and we were just
under a beetling cliff with good water in a stream among
bulrushes, reeds, and tropical vegetation.
There was a Bedou family close by with goats ; they sold
us milk at an exorbitant price and asked so much for a kid
that we stuck to our tinned meat.
The Gara, in whose country we were now, are a wild
pastoral tribe of the mountains, travelling over them hither
and thither in search of food for their flocks. They are
troglodytes of a genuine kind and know no home save
their ancestral caves, with which this limestone range
abounds; they only live in rude reed huts like ant hills, when
they come down to the plain of Dhofar in the rainy season
for pasturage. There is a curious story connected with the
Gara tribe, which probably makes them unique in Arabia,
and that is, that a few years ago they owned a white sheikh.
About the beginning of this century an American ship was
wrecked on this coast, and all the occupants were killed save
the cabin boy, who was kept as a slave. As years went on
his superior ability asserted itself, and gained for him in his