At one spot, however, this is forcibly brought to one’s mind, for the road passes close to the edge of a deep narrow gorge through which flows the river Kha. This valley presents a most extraordinary appearance as seen from above, for it is nothing more or less than a huge slice cut out of the plateau. We passed it at its apex, and could see down nearly its whole course. The distance from side to side at the upper part is extraordinarily small, the sides of the valley being formed of perpendicular precipices. Far, far down below us, some thousands of feet at the nearest part, were the coffee-groves and villages, dotted here and there along the broken rocks that fringed the edge of the river, which we could follow with our eyes, a thread of silver, till it was lost in the hazy mists that lay across the valley many miles away. Beyond this again rose the torn fantastic peaks to which we were now becoming so accustomed. It was a wonderful sight, and we reined in our mules and stood, Arabs and European alike, gazing at it with wondering eyes. The Wadi Kha, unlike so many of these Yemen rivers, eventually reaches the sea. It flows into the Wadi Zebeed, and continuing its course through the city of that name, and across the Teháma, reaches the Red Sea at Ras Zebeed, opposite the island of Jibel Zukur. Just as suddenly as we had come in sight of this strange gorge, just so suddenly did we lose it again, and only a few minutes after having left its brink the surrounding scenery assumed its former appearance, that of a dusty rocky plain. Close to this spot is a mark in a rock which is supposed to be the footprint of Ali, the son-in-law and one of the successors in the Caliphate of the Prophet Mahammed, or of his horse, there seems to be no certainty which. The imprint itself is vague enough to be anything, but too large to be either of those mentioned. Below the village of Digishúb we stopped to refresh ourselves and take breakfast. A few rough stone huts have been erected by the roadside, near which some kind philanthropist has built a series of small tanks, supplied with delicious cold water by a spring. In one of these tanks live an enormous quantity of fish. The water is very shallow, and the pond small, and were it not that the passers-by feed them on crumbs, there would be but little chance of their being able to exist in such a small space. Unlike fish in the springs of Morocco, they are not held in any way sacred, and the Jews often catch and cook them, though the Arabs say that they themselves never touch them.