When I awoke the heat of the day was over, so, under the guidance of Saïd and one of my camel-men, I sauntered out to see the town of Howta. The place presents, on the whole, an appearance rather of dirt and squalor than of what one expects the capital of an Arab Sultan to be like. The streets are narrow, and built without any idea of regularity, turning and twisting as they do in every direction; nor are the houses even built in any attempt at being in line. Here one juts out into the narrow byway, there another stands back off the street behind a thick hedge of bristling thorns. Nearly all the houses are surrounded by these zarebas or yards, into which the cattle are driven of a night. Strange mangy dogs bark at one as one passes along, and their bark is echoed from within by the yelps of puppies. There is, in fact, but little to see in Howta. Perhaps the sights best worth noticing are in the market, where under the shade of an enormous _b’dam_ tree sit women selling bread, while the surrounding strip of sand is crowded by Arabs with long spears and their camels. Here also are exposed for sale vegetables, camel and horse fodder, and many other market products, which are sent on to Aden. Not far from this market are the bazaars, narrow covered-in streets with rough little mud-brick shops on either side, filled with cotton goods, for the most part of European manufacture; a few gaudy muslins from India, however, giving a brilliant hue to some of these dusky little box-like shops. A whole bazaar is put aside for the workers in metals. It forms a thatched square, divided up by low walls, some three feet in height, like sheep-pens, in which the various metal-workers sit, each with his forge. The scene is a most picturesque one. The sunlight falling in through holes in the ill-thatched roofing strikes upon the burnished metal until the daggers and spear-heads sparkle and glisten like diamonds. The air is hazy with the fumes of the forges, and rings with the never-ceasing fall of the hammer upon the metals. And what workers! Great lithe men, grand in the exposure of their bare limbs; their raven locks loosely falling upon their shoulders, and waving backwards and forwards with the motion of the workmen’s bodies. The workmanship of Howta is rough. In spear-heads they excel; but they fail in the silver-work of their dagger-sheaths to attain the results reached by the silversmiths of the larger towns inland.