Shibahm is the frontier town of the Yafei tribe, the Kattiri occupying the valley about two miles to the east, and these two tribes are constantly at war. Sultan Salah's big standard was in one of our dwelling-rooms ready to be unfurled at a moment's notice. He has cannons on his walls pointed in the direction of his enemy--old cannons belonging to the East India Company, the youngest of which bore the date of 1832. From the soldiers we obtained a specimen of the great conch shells that they use as trumpets in battle, and which are hung to the girdle of the watchmen, who are always on the look-out to prevent a surprise. The Kattiri are not allowed to stay in the town at night, for we heard that seven months before some of them were detected in an attempt to blow up the palace with gunpowder. There was a fight also, about a quarter of a mile outside the town, in which five Kattiri and seven Yafei were killed. There are three or four armed soldiers to protect Shibahm, the sultan has erected bastions and forts all about it, and the walls are patrolled every night. There are many ruined houses in the plain, relics of the great war forty years ago, when the Kattiri advanced as far as Al Koton and did great damage. The sultan of Siwoun was invited, with seven sheikhs, to the palace of Shibahm on friendly terms and there murdered in cold blood, while forty of his followers were killed outside. The inhabitants of Shibahm were not at all friendly disposed to us. On the day of our arrival my husband ventured with two of the sultan's soldiers into the bazaar, and through the narrow streets; but only this once, for the people crowded round him, yelled at him, and insulted him, trying their best to trip him up and impede his progress; he was nearly suffocated by the clouds of filthy dust that the mob kicked up, and altogether they made his investigations so exceedingly disagreeable that he became seriously alarmed for his safety, and never tried to penetrate into the heart of Shibahm again. On the whole I should accredit Shibahm with a population of certainly not less than six thousand souls: there are thirteen mosques in it, and fully six hundred houses, tall and gaunt, to which an average population of ten souls is but a moderate estimate. The slave population of Shibahm is considerable; many slaves have houses there, and wives and families of their own. The sultan's soldiers are nearly all slaves or of slave origin, and one of them, Muoffok, whose grandfather was a Swahili slave, and who had been one of our escort from Makalla, took us to his house, where his wife, seated unveiled in her coffee corner, dispensed refreshments to quite a large party there assembled, whilst Muoffok discoursed sweet music to us on a mandoline, and a flute made out of the two bones of an eagle placed side by side.