The glory of Mount Haghier is undoubtedly its dragon's-blood tree (_Dracaenia cinnabari_), found scattered at an elevation of about 1,000 feet and upwards over the greater part of Sokotra. Certainly it is the quaintest tree imaginable, from 20 feet to 30 feet high, exactly like a green umbrella which is just in the process of being blown inside out, I thought. One of our party thought them like huge green toadstools, another like trees made for a child's Noah's Ark. The gum was called _kinnabare_, but the Arab name is _katir_. The Sokoteri name is _edah_. It is a great pity that the Sokotrans of to-day do not make more use of the rich ruby-red gum which issues from its bark when punctured, and which produces a valuable resin, now used as varnish; but the tree is now found in more enterprising countries--in Sumatra, in South America, and elsewhere. So the export of dragon's blood from its own ancient home is now practically _nil_. If the dragon's-blood tree, with its close-set, radiating branches and stiff, aloe-like leaves, is quaint--and some might be inclined to say ugly--it has, nevertheless, its economic use; but not so its still quainter comrade on the slopes of Mount Haghier, the gouty, swollen-stemmed _Adenium_. This, I think, is the ugliest tree in creation, with one of the most beautiful of flowers: it looks like one of the first efforts of Dame Nature in tree-making, happily abandoned by her for more graceful shapes and forms. The swollen and twisted contortions of its trunk recall with a shudder those miserable sufferers from elephantiasis; its leaves are stiff and formal, and they usually drop off, as if ashamed of themselves, before the lovely flower, like a rich-coloured, large oleander blossom, comes out. The adenium bears some slight resemblance, on a small scale, to the unsightly baobab-tree of Africa, though it tapers much more rapidly, and looks as if it belonged to a different epoch of creation to our own trees at home. Then there is the cucumber-tree, another hideous-stemmed tree, swollen and whitish; and the hill-slopes covered with this look as if they had been decorated with so many huge composite candles which had guttered horribly. At the top of the candle are a few short branches, on which grow a few stiff crinkly leaves and small yellow flowers, which produce the edible fruit. This tree, in Sokoteri _kamhan_, the _Dendrosicyos Socotrana_ of the botanist, is like the language of the Bedouin, found only on Sokotra, and is seldom more than 10 or 12 feet in height. It is a favourite perch for three or four of the white vultures which swarm in the island, and the picture formed by these ungainly birds on the top of this ungainly tree is an odd one.