Theodore Bent Receiving Visitors at the Mounds, Bahrein 24 The Interior of Sheikh Saba's House at Rufa'a, Bahrein 34 The Castle of the Sultan of Shibahm at Al Koton 110 The Castle of the Sultan of Makalla at Shibahm 125 A Sabaean Altar 145 A Gara Forge 247 The Abyss of Abyssapolis, Dhofar 271 Elba Mountains From Shellal 304 Flute-Players in the Wadi Koukout, Soudan 337 The Plain of Eriosh, Sokotra 354 Theodore Bent making the Vocabulary at Fereghet 365 Vegetation in Sokotra 379 The Breakwater at Fereghet 383 Dragon's-Blood Trees at Yehazahaz 387 The Haghier Mountains from Suk 394 Castle at Kanfar 402 Dirgheg 408 Old Na'ab 413 Fadhli at Shariah, Wadi Reban, with Curious Sandal 418 Village of Mis'hal 421 Plain of Mis'hal and Aodeli Tribe 425 Fragment of Alabasteroid Limestone 435 Sabaean Antiquities 436 MAPS Arabia, showing the Routes of Mr. J. Theodore Bent _to face p._ xii Hadramut 70 Dhofar and the Gara-Range 226 Mount Erba and Surrounding Country 286 Sokotra 342 The Fadhli Country, South Arabia 400 [Illustration: Map of ARABIA showing the routes of M^r. J. THEODORE BENT. Stanford's Geog.^l Estab.^t, London London: Smith, Elder & Co.] SOUTHERN ARABIA CHAPTER I MANAMAH AND MOHAREK The first Arabian journey that we undertook was in 1889, when we visited the Islands of Bahrein in the Persian Gulf; we were attracted by stories of mysterious mounds, and we proposed to see what we could find inside them, hoping, as turned out to be the fact, that we should discover traces of Phoenician remains. The search for traces of an old world takes an excavator now and again into strange corners of the new. Out of the ground he may extract treasures, or he may not--that is not our point here--out of the inhabitants and their strange ways he is sure, whether he likes it or not, to extract a great deal, and it is with this branch of an excavator's life we are now going to deal.