"كُتيّب اليمن" [و‎‎١‎٩] (١٩٠/٤٢)

25
i now,
(5) Sheikh Sa'id is important only as a telegraph station
situated on the extreme south-westerly point of Arabia, on
the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb, opposite the island of Perim,
with which latter place it is connected by a short cable.
The telegraph station stands on the west side of a small
promontory and about three miles from a fort, which latter
is situated at the point at which the Anglo-Turkish frontier
between the Aden Protectorate and Yemen meets the sea.
There are but few houses; and the port consists of an inlet
running about two miles inland, fifty yards broad at the
mouth, and widening to nearly a mile. There is a good
landing-place just south of Cape (Eas) Sheikh Sa'id.
Proceeding inland from Hodeidah by the main San ! a
highway, the traveller enters the foothills at Bajil, and
after J 6bal ascends the Maritime Range itself, through the
rich Harraz district, to Menakhah. Both left and right
of him stretch other districts not less fertile and elaborately
terraced and cultivated. Jebels Milhan north, and Bur a/a
andReimah south, of Wadi Siham, are typical Yemen coffee
hill-country of the aspect described on pages 14, 34, and
long rendered familiar by the descriptions of travellers from
Niebuhr onwards. Valleys of verdure, stepped upwards
to their heads, hills terraced from base to top and crowned
into castellated villages, succeed one another. Jebel
Reimah is reckoned the pick of this agricultural hill-country,
which thence stretches southwards with fertility diminishing
for a while to improve again in the Ta iz district.
In this maritime hill-region and the intramontane district
behind it there are numerous very large villages, and many
chains of hamlets and farms, succeeding one another so
closely as almost to rank as one long settlement. But
there are only two places of acknowledged town rank, Me
nakhah and Ta'iz,
(6) Menakhah, 7,500 feet above sea-level, on the
Hodeidah-San c a road, is about forty miles crowfly from
the latter. In addition to occupying a naturally strong