_en route_. Also from Oman and Hadramaut the modern Sinbads run their craft into Aden to exchange produce or to lay in supplies for their voyages to the coast of Africa. The distance from Aden to Yemen’s old capital, Sana is nearly 200 miles in a direct line, but on my second journey thither, in 1894, I was obliged to take a roundabout journey to Taiz, because of an Arab uprising. This and the mountainous character of the country made the distance over 250 miles. This route passes through, or near, all the important towns of Yemen south of Sana. With my Bedouin companion, Nasir, I left Sheikh Othman early on the second morning of July. We reached a small [Illustration: TRAVELLING IN SOUTHERN ARABIA] [Illustration: THE KEITH FALCONER MEMORIAL CHURCH IN ADEN] village, Wahat, at noon, the thermometer registering 96° in the shade. After a short rest we mounted the camels at seven o’clock in the evening for an all-night journey. Our course was through a barren region, and at daylight we entered Wady Mergia, with scanty vegetation, resting at a village of the same name under a huge acacia tree. The next day we entered the mountains, where rich vegetation showed a cooler climate. We passed several villages, Dar El Kadim, Khoteibah, Suk-el-Juma and others. As this was said to be a dangerous part of the road all the caravan, which we joined at Wahat, was on the lookout, with lighted rope-wicks for their flint-locks swinging from their shoulders and looking in the dark like so many fireflies. At three A.M. we had ascended to the head of the wady and rested for the day at Mabek. All the houses here are of stone, the booths of date-mats and twigs being only found on the maritime plain of Yemen. During the night there had been talk among the wild Arabs of the village of holding me as a hostage to obtain money from the English at Aden! But Nasir quieted them with a threefold Bedouin oath that I was not a government official nor an Englishman, but an American traveller.