The Bahrein islands also produce quantities of dates, and there is an export trade in a remarkably fine breed of asses, celebrated all over the Persian Gulf. A good Bahrein donkey is easy to ride and almost as good a roadster as an average horse. The only manufactures, beside sail-sheeting, are coarse cloth for turbans, and reed-mats of very fine texture. The chief imports are rice, timber and piece-goods for which Bahrein is the depot for all eastern Arabia. Three sights are shown to the stranger-tourist to the islands of Bahrein: the pearl-fisheries, the fresh-water springs, and the ancient ruins of an early civilization at the village of Ali. These ruins are the “_bayoot el owalin_” the dwellings of the first inhabitants, who are believed to have been destroyed by Allah because of their wickedness. An hour’s ride through the date gardens and past the minarets brings us to the village of Ali. It can generally be seen from a good distance because of the smoke which rises from the huge ovens where pottery is baked. The potter turns his wheel to-day and fashions the native water-jars with deft hand utterly ignorant and careless of the curious sepulchral tumuli which cast their shade at his feet. South and west of the village the whole plain is studded with mounds, at least three hundred of them, the largest being about forty feet in height. Only two or three have ever been opened or explored. Theodore Bent in company with his wife explored these in 1889, with meagre results, but no further investigations have been made though it is a field that may yet yield large results. M. Jules Oppert, the French Assyriologist, and others regard the island as an extremely old centre of civilization and it is now well known that the first settlements from ancient Babylonia were in the Persian Gulf which then extended as far north as Mugheir, near Suk-es Shiukh. But those first settlers probably went to the coasts of Africa and to the kingdoms of Southern Arabia, in which case Bahrein was on their line of travel. It must always have been a depot for shipping because of its abundant water-supply in a region where fresh-water is generally scarce. The mounds at Ali probably date from this very early period; although no corroboration in the shape of cylinders or bricks bearing inscriptions has yet been found, the character of the structures found in the mounds is undoubted proof of their great antiquity.