Whilst on the subject of camels and camel-trappings, I may add that each owner has his own mark painted and branded on his own property. Some of these marks consist purely of Himyaritic letters, whilst others are variants, which would naturally arise from copying a very old-world alphabetic original. I take these marks to be preserved by the steady conservatism of the Oriental; we copied many of them, and the result looks like a partial reproduction of the old Sabaean alphabet, and they may be seen in an appendix. Scattered over Sokotra there are numerous villages, each being a little cluster of from five to ten round or oblong houses and round cattle-pens. I was informed by a competent authority on the island that there are four hundred of these pastoral villages between Ras Kalenzia and Ras Momi, a distance of some seventy odd miles as the crow flies; and from the frequency with which we came across them during our marches up only a limited number of Sokotra's many valleys, I should think the number is not over-estimated. If this is so, the population of the island must be considerably over the estimate given, and must approach twelve or thirteen thousand souls; but owing to the migratory nature of the inhabitants, and their life half spent in houses and half in caves, any exact census would be exceedingly hard to obtain. The east of the island is, however, decidedly more populous than the west, as the water supply is better. We were constantly passing the little round-housed villages, with their palm-groves and their flocks. CHAPTER XXXII WE DEPART FOR THE LAND'S END--_i.e._ RAS MOMI After leaving Tamarida we spent a night at a place the name of which has been variously spelt. We decided to spell it Dihelemnitin. It has otherwise been called Dishelenata, &c. It is a lovely spot, at the confluence of two streams in a wood of palms, and we had a nice little flat field to camp in. When I say a field, I mean a wall-supported place once used as such. We saw very little cultivation except gardens at the villages, and the palm-trees were for the most part quite neglected. Near Tamarida we saw just a few fan-palms, and one I remember looked very odd, as it still retained every leaf it had ever had, and looked like a yellow tower, with the green leaves at the top. All the rest were bristling, withered down to the ground. In South Arabia people are punished if they steal each other's palm-leaves, as the ribs are valuable for many things as well as the leaves themselves, but here there are no restrictions of that kind. There was a good deal of climbing up and down to Saiehen, our next camp. While we stayed there my husband went about everywhere that he was told there were ruins or supposed inscriptions, but saw nothing worth mentioning except the inscribed crosses already alluded to.