This building is a huge block of houses, built entirely of sun-dried mud-bricks, but plastered and decorated to such an extent as to give it the appearance of being of much greater solidity than a large hole here and there in the wall points out to be really the case. The principal building is covered with domes and cupolas, with the effect of a conglomeration of a cheap Italian villa and a stucco Constantinople mosque. However, from a distance the place has a very imposing look, and so large is it that on clear days it is visible from Aden. It is not until one approaches it closely that one discovers the incompetency with which it is built; for pretentious as it is, there are places where quite large portions of the mud-brick walls have come away, and at one spot one obtained an excellent view of the interior of a room on the first floor through one of these enormous gaps. Passing through a large courtyard, we entered by a small door, and after ascending a rough staircase, and wandering along intricate passages, found ourselves in the presence of Ali Mhasen el-Abdali, Sultan of Lahej. The room in which the Sultan was seated was a large square chamber. A heavy beam of carved teak-wood ran down the centre of the ceiling, supported on pillars of the same material. The floor was richly carpeted in oriental rugs, and silk divans were arranged along the walls. Light was admitted by large windows, over the lower portion of which was trellis-work. At one corner of the room sat a group of men, some five or six in all; while on a table close by were three handsome silver hubble-bubble pipes from Hyderabad, tended and kept alight by a half-nude Arab in a blue loin-cloth.