The poor little motherless fellows were constantly on the go, rushing hither and thither, playing with and petted by all; at one time they amused themselves with the prisoners in the courtyard, at another time they teased the Gara sheikhs who sat in the long entrance corridor, and then they came to torment us, until we gave then some trifle, which they forthwith carried off in triumph to show it to everybody. Both the little boys wore the large silver and gold daggers of Oman round their waists, and powder-flasks similarly decorated hung on their backs; and when dressed in their best silk robes on Friday, they were the most fantastic little fellows one could wish to see. Wali Suleiman was, as I have said, an austere and unlovable man, but he was the man for his position: taciturn and of few words, but these always to the point. Before he would permit us to go forth and penetrate into the recesses of the Gara mountains, he summoned the heads of all the different families into which the tribe is divided to Al Hafa, and gave us into their charge, we agreeing to pay for their escort, their protection, and the use of their camels a fixed sum _per diem_ in Maria Theresa dollars, the only coin recognised in the country. Such palavering there was over this stupendous piece of diplomacy! Wali Suleiman and the Gara sheikhs sat for hours in solemn conclave in a palm-thatched barn about fifty yards distant from the castle, which takes the place of a parliament house in the kingdom of Dhofar. The wali, his nephew, and Arab councillors smoked their _narghilehs_ complacently, whilst the Gara Bedouin took whiffs at their little pipes, which they cut out of soft limestone that hardens in the air, and all drank endless cups of coffee served by slaves in huge coffee-pots with long, bird-like beaks, and we looked on at this conference, which was to decide our fate, from our roof, with no small amount of impatience. Before starting for the mountains we wandered hither and thither over the plain of Dhofar for some days, visiting sites of ruins, and other places of interest, and greatly admired the rich cultivation we saw around us, and the capacity of this plain for producing cotton, indigo, tobacco, and cereals. Water is on the surface in stagnant pools, or easily obtainable everywhere by digging shallow wells which are worked by camels, sometimes three together, and so well trained, that at the end of the walk they turn by themselves as soon as they hear the splash of the water into the irrigation channel, and then they walk back to fill the skin bucket again. The cocoanut-palm grows admirably here, and we had many refreshing draughts of the water contained in the nuts during our hot rides; and in pools beneath the trees the fibre of the nuts is placed to rot for making ropes, giving out an odour very similar to that of the flax-pits in the north of Ireland.