We had entered Arabia Felix! On all sides of us were tiny streams, splashing and tumbling through fern-covered banks over pebbles and stones. One does not realise what music there is in the sound of running water until one has travelled, as the writer has once or twice in his life, over deserts where the muddy pools are two and three days apart. But the deserts and rocky valleys were all forgotten now—they seemed merely the imaginings of the past. Everywhere were green fields in which the young barley showed promise of rich crops, everywhere great shady trees and jungle covered the slopes. The sun was hot, but at that great altitude the freshness of the air compensated for it. My men went merrily on, singing and laughing, and now and again running races and brandishing their spears—and yet we had rested only two or three hours after our march of nearly twelve hours, during which we had covered some thirty miles of road, and what a road! [Illustration: MAN AND WOMAN OF THE HIGHLANDS OF THE YEMEN.] Here we came in contact for the first time with the mountaineers, a much finer people than those of the plains. They are, as a rule, taller and better built, their limbs being freer in action and their legs more gracefully formed, no doubt owing much to the fact that they are great walkers. Like the people of the plains, the men wear their hair long, shaving their upper lip but allowing a small beard to grow on the points of their chins. As well as the dark-blue loin-cloth, stuck full of daggers, they wear a thick sheepskin coat, the wool on the inside, the rough skin being coarsely embroidered in black thread. This forms a very necessary precaution against the cold, to which these high altitudes expose them. The women, like their sisters of the plains, wear dark-blue skirts, embroidered round the neck and sleeves and on the breasts in coloured silks, and now and again in gold or silver thread. Their heads they cover with dark-blue hoods, often richly but coarsely embroidered. While the men are often almost divinely handsome, the women are just the contrary, being generally thickly built. No doubt the hideous tight blue trousers and the oil and paint on their faces tends not a little to disfigure them. In the cold early mornings the oil on their hair hangs in little solid drops on the points of their fringes; but as the heat of the day increases it trickles down their faces, washing away the red-lead-coloured powder, with which they so thickly smear their faces, in long streaks. From Beit en-Nedish we proceeded on a three hours’ ride, and crossing the river at a ford that might have been in the upper waters of the Tay, we ascended the opposite bank to Beit Saïd, a large and prosperous-looking village, situated on the west bank of the river amidst groves of shady trees.