Thanks to English commerce and gunboats these fanatic Wahabis have become more tame, and most of them have long given up piracy and turned to pearl-diving for a livelihood. Hindu traders have settled among them, foreign commerce reaches their bazaars, and the black tent is making room for the three or four important towns of Dabai, Sharka, Abu Thubi and Ras-el-Kheima, with growing population and increasing wealth. The cape of Musendum and the land back of it, called Ras-el-Jebel is very mountainous, but beyond Ras-el-Kheima, the coast is low and flat all the way up the gulf. The villages are all built near the entrance of salt-water creeks or marshes, which serve as harbors at high-tide. For the most part the coast is unfertile, but near Sharka there are palm-groves, and further inland are oases. The islands off this coast are most of them uninhabited. The Batina coast is the exception to all the maritime plains that surround so large a part of the peninsula; in western and eastern Arabia these low sandy plains are nearly barren of all vegetation, but here extensive date plantations and gardens extend almost to the very ocean beach. Back of the rising plain are the lofty ranges of Jebel Akhdar. This fertile coast begins at Sib, about twenty-five miles from Muscat, and extends for 150 miles to the neighborhood of Khor Kalba with an average width of about twelve miles. It has many towns and villages; the principal ones are the following. Sib is a scattered town chiefly built of mat-huts with two small detached forts. It has a very small bazaar, but extensive date-groves and gardens. Back of Sib on the way up the coast one sees the great bluff of Jebel Akhdar, 9,900 feet high, and visible over 100 miles out at sea. Barka has a lofty Arab fortress, but for the rest mat-huts among date-plantations characterize its general appearance. Large quantities of shell fish are collected and sent inland; the bazaar is good and some Banian traders are settled here. Passing several islands the next town is Suaik. After it the larger town of Sohar, with perhaps 4,000 people. This town is walled with a high fort in the middle, the residence of the Sheikh. A high conical peak, of light color, rises conspicuously about twelve miles west of the town, and with the surrounding date gardens and other trees makes a pretty picture, altogether more green than one would expect on Arabian coasts. Beyond Sohar the chief villages are, in order, Shinas, Al Fujaira, Dibba. The two latter are already beyond the Batina and are between the high cliffs and the deep sea.