My guard of Turkish soldiers had been intrusted with letters to the governors respectively of Menakha and Hodaidah, and no sooner was our missive presented than I was shown into the presence of the Kaimakam. I found him pleasant, as nearly all Turks can be when they like, and an hour or so passed very cheerily. Meanwhile he had given orders for a room to be prepared for me within the precincts of the Government offices, and on leaving him I was shown to a large, comfortable, airy chamber on the ground-floor, with a window looking over a sort of drill-yard, beyond which was a fine view of the mountains, the opposite spur of which, at an altitude of some hundreds of feet above the town, was crowned with a Turkish fort, near which some artillerymen were drilling. It should have been mentioned already that the road we had been following from Sanaa was almost identically the line taken by the Sanaa and Hodaidah telegraph-wire, which, like all provincial Turkish telegraphs, is, I believe, worked by the Government, from a representative of whom one is obliged to obtain permission before making use of it. This permission had been refused me at Sanaa. At Menakha there is quite a pretentious office. After leaving the Kaimakam I went for a stroll in the town, followed of course by a guard, who, however, did not in the least interfere with my actions, and in whose presence I was venturesome enough to sketch, without calling forth any sterner reproof than that if they were caught allowing me to draw they might get into trouble, so that I had better creep behind a rock and make any sketches I wanted from a spot where I would not be seen. Of all the places it has ever been my lot to see, Menakha is the most wonderfully situated. The town is perched on a narrow strip of mountain that joins two distinct ranges, and it forms the watershed of two great valleys—that up which we had proceeded on our arrival, and the second to the west. So narrow is the ridge on which the town stands, that the walls of the houses on both sides seem almost to hang over the precipices; and there are spots—for instance, near the military hospital—where one can sit and look down absolutely into the two great valleys at the same time. Curious and wonderful as this is, the grand effect of the scene is doubly increased by the extraordinary peaks which rise above the place—enormous pinnacles, for no other word can express their fantastic shapes and forms. Great, bare, rocky crags they are, perpendicular, and ending, like sugar-loafs, in points, on which, in several places, the natives have built their strange towers. How they ever ascend or descend seems incredible, or from whence they obtain their water-supply.