The Gharah tribe inhabit the coast between Moseirah island and the Kuria-Muria islands. Their country is mountainous and cavernous and consists of a white stratified limestone formation 4,000 or 5,000 feet above the sea-level. The upper part of the mountains are covered with good pasturage and their slopes with a dense thicket of small trees among which frankincense and other gum trees are plentiful. The whole tribe are _troglodytes_, “cave-dwellers,” since nature gives them better dwellings than the best mud-hut, and cooler than the largest tent of Kedar. They are largely nomadic, however, and shift from cave to cave in their wanderings. Their wardrobe is not an incumbrance as it consists of a single piece of coarse blue cotton wrapped around the loins like a short kilt. The women wear a loose frock of the same texture and color with wide sleeves, reaching a little below the knee in front and trailing on the ground behind; the veil is unknown. Children go about entirely naked. Both men and women tattoo their cheeks. For weapons they have swords, spears, daggers, and matchlocks. Their food consists of milk, flesh and honey with the wild fruits of the mountains. This entire region has been justly celebrated for honey since the days of the Greek geographers who enumerate honey and frankincense as its chief products. The wild honey of South Arabia collected from the rocks and packed in large dry gourds, is fit for an epicure. On Ptolemy’s map of Arabia the region inland from this coast is called _Libanotopheros Regio_, the place of incense; and by Pliny is termed _regio thurifera_, the region of frankincense. From the earliest times this has been the country that produces real frankincense in abundance. Once its export was a source of wealth to the inhabitants, for incense was used in the temples of Egypt and India as well as by the Jews, and by all the nations of antiquity. So important was this commerce in the early history of the world that Sprenger devotes several pages in his Ancient Geography of Arabia to describing the origin, extent, and influence of frankincense on civilization. The Arabs were then the general transport agents between the east and the west, _i.e._, India and Egypt. The Queen of Sheba’s empire grew rich in frankincense-trade; she brought to Solomon “spices in abundance,” nor was there “any such spice” or brought in “such abundance” as that which Queen Sheba gave to Solomon. (B.C. cir. 992.)