About three miles from Maskat lies the town of El Matra, the commercial centre of the kingdom of Oman. It would be the seat of government also were it not exposed to the southern winds. The journey is nearly always made by sea; it takes much longer to go by land, for a ridge of hills has to be crossed. In a canoe it is only half an hour's paddle, and when the weather is favourable the canoe owners drive a rattling trade. The canoes, which they call _houris_, are hollowed out of a tree trunk, double-prowed, and with matting at the bottom. They are not very stable and make one think unpleasantly of sharks.
You pass the Fahl, or Stallion Rock, in the harbour, a name constantly given by Arabs to anything large and uncanny looking, and turning sharp round a rocky corner you see before you El Matra.
The town is governed by a _wali_ chosen by the imam, and in the bazaars may be seen, in hopeless confusion, Banyans from India, Omani, Bedouin, Persians and Jews. These nationalities have each their separate wards for living in, walled off to keep them from perpetual brawls, and they only meet one another in the bazaars, where the eye of the bazaar-master is upon them, ready to inflict condign punishment on disturbers of the peace, in which cases the innocent more frequently suffer than the guilty.
The Monday's market is filled with quaint countryfolk, bringing in baskets of fruit and wearing the upper garment of red cotton and the large white girdle and turban.
At El Matra live most of the richest merchants, and it is the point from which all the caravan roads into the interior start; it, too, has a Portuguese castle, and presents a much more alluring frontage than Maskat. In a nice-looking house by the shore dwelt Dr. Jayakar, an Indian doctor, who had lived for twenty-five years at Maskat, combining the post of British Vice-Consul with that of medical adviser to the few Europeans who dwell there. He said he preferred Maskat to any other place in the world, and hoped to end his days there; he was a great naturalist, and his house was filled with curious animals from the interior, and marvels from the deep. He showed us specimens of a rabbit-like animal which the Arabs call 'whabba,' and which he affirmed is the coney of the Bible, and of the oryx, which lives up on the Jebel Akhdar; it has two straight horns which for one instant and from one point of view when it is running sideways look like one, and some say the fact gave rise to the mythical unicorn.