The country hereabouts shows signs of cultivation, large fields being green with the durra. As the sun was very hot, we halted in the middle of the wide bed of the Khoreiba river, and settled ourselves down under a clump of oleander-bushes. The scenery was prettier here than any we had seen, as there were more trees to vary the dull monotony of the reddish-black rock and the yellow land. We had been seated about an hour when there came skimming along the river-bed, mounted on a beautiful camel, a veritable Apollo of an Arab, a specimen of the finest type of the Yemen race, whom perhaps it is scarcely justifiable to call Arabs at all, so much has their blood become mixed since the days of Kahtan, the founder of the Yemenite tribes, and Adnan, that of the Arab. However, the term Arab can be generally used, as there are scarcely any discernible differences, except in traditions, between the Arab and the Yemen blood. Noticing us, the man alighted from his camel and crawled into the shade in which we were sitting. After coffee, wishing to give the new-comer an example of the powers of the Christian tribes—as he called them—I unpacked an electric machine I had with me in my sack of bedding, and administered a gentle shock to the beautiful Arab. He never lost his presence of mind,—he merely smiled, rose and girded up his loins, mounted his camel, and sped as fast as the slight little desert dromedary could carry him down the river-bed. The camels of the southern district of the Yemen are famous for their breed and fleetness. They are slightly built, with fine legs, the very opposite to the heavy slow-paced camels of North Africa. Many are especially kept and trained for riding purposes, and their fleetness is extraordinary. However, this breed seems not to exist any farther in the interior than about eighty miles, as where the country becomes mountainous we find a heavy, shaggy, black camel, the very opposite to his brother of the Teháma, as the plains which divide the highlands of the Yemen from the sea are called.