We felt worn and weary when a start was made at two o'clock, and our cup of bitterness was full when we were deposited, bag and baggage, a few hundred yards from the gate, and told that we must spend the night amidst a sea of small fish drying on the shore, and surrounded on all sides by dirty Bedou huts. These fish, which are rather larger than sardines, are put out to dry by thousands along this coast. Men feed on them and so do the camels; they make lamp-oil out of them; they say the fish strengthens the camel's back, and they consider it good for camels to go once a year to the sea. Large sacks of them are taken into the interior as merchandise; they are mixed with small leaves like box, and carried in palm-leaf sacks, about 3 feet wide and 1½ feet high, and the air everywhere is redolent of their stench.
At this point we had the first of many quarrels with our camel-men; we insisted on being taken two miles farther on, away from the smells; nothing short of threats of returning and getting the sultan to beat them and put them in prison enabled us to break through the conventional Arab custom of encamping for the first night outside the city gates. However, we succeeded in reaching Bakhrein, where white wells are placed for the benefit of wayfarers, and there beneath the pleasant shade of the palm-trees we halted for the remainder of the day and recovered from the agonies of our start. Among the trees was a bungalow belonging to the sultan where we had hoped to have been able to sleep, but it was pervaded by such a strong smell of fish that we preferred to pitch our tents.
Between this place and Makalla all is arid waste, but near the town, by the help of irrigation, bananas and cocoanut trees flourish in a shallow valley called 'the Beginning of Light.' There are numerous fortresses about Bakhrein, so the road is now quite safe for the inhabitants of Makalla; the sultan has done a good deal to repress the Bedouin who used to raid right into the town. He crucified many of them.
We took a couple of hours over our start next day, the Bedouin again quarrelling over the luggage, each trying to scramble for the lightest packages and the lightest riders. They tried to make me ride a camel and give up my horse to my husband. As he was so tall, he could obtain neither a horse nor a donkey, so had perforce to ride a camel.