The town of Shibahm offers a curious appearance as one approaches; above its mud brick walls, with bastions and watch towers, appear the tall houses of the wealthy, whitewashed only at the top, which make it look like a large round cake with sugar on it. Outside the walls several industries are carried on, the chief of which is the manufacture of indigo dye. The small leaves are dried in the sun and powdered, and then put into huge jars and filled with water. Next morning these are stirred with long poles, producing a dark-blue frothy mixture; this is left to settle, and then the indigo is taken from the bottom and spread out on cloths to drain; the substance thus procured is taken home and mixed with dates and saltpetre. Four pounds of this indigo to a gallon of water makes the requisite and universally used dye for garments, the better class of which are calendered by beating them with wooden hammers on stones. This noise was a great mystery to us till we traced our way to it and found out what it was. They used also to beat the dried leaf of a kind of acacia called _kharrad_, and, when pounded, make of it a paste which has a beautiful pea-green appearance; it is used for giving a polish to leather. [Illustration: A SABAEAN ALTAR] Another industry carried on outside Shibahm is rope-making out of the fibres of the fan palm (_saap_) which grows wild in the narrower valleys; the leaves are first left to soak in water, and then beaten till the fibres separate. Yet another is that of making lime for whitewash kilns--it is curious to watch the Bedouin beating the lime thus produced with long sticks, singing quaint little ditties as they thump, in pleasant harmony to the beating of their sticks.