With the aid of Sprenger's 'Alte Geographie Arabiens,' the best guide-book the traveller can take into this country, there is no difficulty in identifying this ancient capital of the frankincense country as the Manteion Artemidos of Claudius Ptolemy. This name is obviously a Greek translation of the Sabaean for some well-known oracle which anciently existed here, not far, as Ptolemy himself tells us, from Cape Risout. This name eventually became Zufar, from which the modern name of Dhofar is derived. In a.d. 618 the town was destroyed and Mansura built, under which name the capital was known in early Mohammedan times. Various Arab geographers also assist us in this identification. Yakut, for example, tells us how the Prince of Zufar had the monopoly of the frankincense trade, and punished with death any infringement of it. Ibn Batuta says that 'half a day's journey east of Mensura is Alakhaf, the abode of the Addites,' probably referring to the site of the oracle and the last stronghold of the ancient cult. Sprenger sums up the evidence of old writers by saying that the town of Zufar and the later Mansura must undoubtedly be the ruins of Al Balad. Thus, having assured ourselves of the locality of the ancient capital of the frankincense country--for no other site along the plain has ruins which will at all compare in extent and appearance with those of Al Balad--we shall, as we proceed on our journey, find that other sites fall easily into their proper places, and an important verification of ancient geography and an old-world centre of commerce has been obtained. The ruins at Al Balad and Robat were last inhabited during the Persian occupation, about the time of the Crusades, 500 of the Hejira. They utilised the old Himyaritic columns to build their mosques. Some of the tombs have beautiful carving on them. In the ruins of one temple the columns were elaborately carved with a kind of _fleur-de-lis_ pattern, and the bases decorated with a floral design, artistically interwoven. I had dreadful difficulty with a photograph which I took of these columns. I developed it at night, tormented by mosquitoes, and in the morning it was all cracked and dried off its celluloid foundation. I put it in alum, and it floated off half an inch too large in both directions. If I had had a larger plate on which to mount it, it would have been an easy enough job, but I had not, so I was obliged to work it down on to the original plate with my thumbs. It took me seven solid hours, and I had to be fed with two meals, for I could never move my thumbs nor eyes off my work. I felt very proud that the cracks did not show when a magic-lantern slide was made from it. There was a great deal of vegetation among the ruins. Specially beautiful was a very luxuriant creeper called by the inhabitants _asaleb_. It has a luscious, large, pear-shaped red fruit with seeds which, when bitten, are like pepper. It has large flowers, which are white at first, and then turn pink.