It is only just to say we had no need to fear such honest and friendly people. Sultan Salem of Sokotra, the nephew of old Sultan Ali of Kishin, the monarch of the Mahri tribe, whom we had visited two years before on the south coast of Arabia, governed the island as his uncle's deputy. He had a castle at Tamarida of very poor and dilapidated appearance, which he rarely inhabited, preferring to live in the hills near Garriah, or at his miserable house at Haula, some eight miles along the coast from Tamarida. Haula is as ungainly a spot as it is possible to conceive--without water, without wood, and invaded by sand--quite the ugliest place we saw on the island, its only recommendation being that during the north-east monsoons the few dhows which visit the island anchor there, since it affords some sort of shelter from the winds in that direction, and Sultan Salem has a keen eye to business. His Majesty came to visit us, shortly after our arrival at Tamarida, from his country residence, and favoured us with an audience in the courtyard of his palace, with all the great men of the island seated around him. He was a man of fifty, with a handsome but somewhat sinister face; he was girt as to his head with a many-coloured _kefieh_, and as to his waist with a girdle supporting a finely inlaid Maskat dagger and a sword. His body was enveloped in a clean white robe, and his feet were bare. His conversation, both then and when he returned our visit at our camp, on which occasion he received a few presents, was solely about the price of camels and how many we should need. He did not ask us one other question. He talked little Arabic, being of the Mahri tribe. We gave him an Enfield carbine of 1863. On the plain behind Tamarida there is a conical hill about 200 feet high called Hasan, which has been fortified as an Acropolis, and was provided with cemented tanks. These ruins have also been called Portuguese, but they looked to us more Arabic in character. When one has seen the very elaborate forts erected by the Portuguese on the coasts of the Persian Gulf and East Africa one feels pretty confident in asserting that they took no steps to settle themselves permanently in Sokotra; in fact, their occupation of it only extended over a period of four years, and the probability is that, finding it harbourless, and worth little for their purposes of a depot on the road to India, they never thought it worth their while to build any permanent edifices. In the neighbourhood there is a hill where the English are said to have encamped, and where there are traces of a more ancient civilisation, probably Portuguese. There are walls of small stones, cased with cement, and, inside them, a tank with conduits. Opposite to this hill, and across the stream, is a ruined village, only one house of which is still inhabited; it has circular walls and a circular paddock adjoining it for cattle.