After Sa'ah the Wadi Adim becomes narrow, stony, and uninteresting, and our way lay for a good part along a stony river bed, gradually mounting, but almost imperceptibly. For several days we pursued the course of this valley, and had we known what would befall us as we approached the head of the Wadi Adim, I think nothing would have induced us to take this route. It appears that a very wicked branch of the Hamoumi tribe hold a portion of this valley, and determined that their enemies, the Jabberi, who stole their cattle and plundered their caravans, should not have the exclusive patronage of the lucrative English travellers on their way to the coast. To our surprise at twelve o'clock we stopped at a well, Bir al Ghuz, when our men began to unload the camels. They said they were only just waiting for the Hamoumi siyara to come up, and that they had already arrived at Sa'ah. The Hamoumi are a small, poor tribe of Bedouin, who occupy the lower end of Wadi Adim. They hire out camels to caravans, and do a great deal of the carrying business. Their villages consist of miserable little hovels gathered round forts, placed at intervals down the valleys, so that they can see from one to another. They have many flocks and herds, for there is actually pasturage for them, and many of the shepherds live in caves, there being plenty in the sides of the valley, which are composed of pudding-stone; they wall up the front. We considered that, as Talib-bin-Abdullah, the chief of the Jabberi and so notorious a robber, was our Mokadam, we had better keep friends with him, therefore we spoke him fair. He and his companions came and wrote their names after a list of stages, and made a most solemn oath they would do anything we liked; and after we had sat for an hour or more in the sun, waiting for the Hamoumi, they said we must pass the night at Bir al Ghuz, still swearing to the seven days. We therefore encamped, and very soon the Jabberi came and asked my husband for a sheep, but he said he would not give one now, but later in the journey he would do so if he found we were getting on well; so they went away, but soon came back for twenty-seven dollars, as _siyar_ to the Hamoumi. My husband said he had agreed for twenty-five, but they said they had spent two dollars on a messenger to fetch the Hamoumi. The Jabberi were by way of having 110 dollars for their _siyar_, forty first and the rest at Sheher. They would not move next morning (the 20th) without the whole of the money, so they had to be given that and the twenty-seven dollars for the Hamoumi. Besides this they always demanded their camel-hire every evening.