At length we drew up at the village khan of Maaber, our resting-place, and climbing a rough outside staircase, found ourselves in a clean whitewashed room, cool and airy, where our carpets were quickly spread and coffee on the boil. The people were very inquisitive, and at last I was obliged to give peremptory orders that no one was to be allowed to enter my room. But this did not seem to be of much avail, and eventually I posted a guard outside the door, armed with a long stick. The village is a poor enough place, built of mud-bricks, with a little stone masonry showing here and there. The people seemed poor and dirty, and there was little or nothing of interest to be seen. Very different are these villages of the plateau to the well-built and fortified towers of the country we had passed through to the south of Yerim, nor were the people of this part half so clean or genial or handsome as the wild mountaineers. Early the next morning we were on our way again, the road continuing over the dusty plain. A mile or two from Maaber we witnessed some skirmishing between the Turkish troops and the hillmen of Jibel Anis, one of the last tribes to hold out, and one that probably will never surrender to the Turkish Government. The country inhabited by this tribe consists of wild inaccessible country, into which the Osmanli troops are powerless to penetrate. The battle we witnessed was not apparently a very bloody affair, for it consisted principally in a small field-battery of the Turks firing into a few hill villages, from which a desultory and ill-aimed fire was kept up by the Arabs. This was the first active sign we had as yet seen of the rebellion; for although Turkish garrisons were to be found in Dhamar and Yerim, their reconquest of these cities from the Arabs had been accomplished almost without bloodshed. For a time we stayed and watched the little battle, listening to the sharp cracking of the rifles and the louder tones of the field-guns, until, as it was apparent that the Turks had no idea of trying to climb to the villages or the Arabs of descending to the level, we continued our journey. The plain ends in an abrupt line of high rocky mountains, over which we could see our path twisting and turning in serpentine coils. Entering a narrow gorge, we passed close under the grandly situated village of Kariat en-Negil, its every rock crowned by stone towers—a striking and wild-looking place. Here it is that the old pilgrim-road from Aden and the Hadramaut probably joins the track I had travelled on. We had left the old road at Lahej, whence it continues _viâ_ Ibb, our route lying more to the east. I have mentioned elsewhere this great pilgrim-track, founded by Huseyn ibn Salaamah in the fifth century A.H., and there is no further need of description here. Suffice it to say that at every night’s _nzala_, or resting-place, was built a mosque, while tanks refreshed the weary with water by the way. [Illustration: KHADAR.]