The iron locks in the bazaars are very curious and old-fashioned, with huge iron keys which push out the wards, and are made like the teeth of a comb. These locks are exceedingly cumbersome, and seem to me to be a development of the wooden locks with wooden wards found in the interior of Arabia. Some of them are over a foot long. I have seen a householder after trying to hammer the key in with a stone, at last in despair climb over his own garden wall. Perchance a shark-skin or wooden buckler may be picked up from a Bedou from the mountains, and there are chances of obtaining the products of many nationalities, for Maskat, like Aden, is one of the most cosmopolitan cities of the East. Here, as in El Matra, you find Banyans from India, Beluchi from the Mekran coast, negroes from Zanzibar, Bedouin, Persians from the Gulf, and the town itself is even less Arab than Aden. The ex-prime minister's house, which occupies a prominent position in the principal street, is somewhat more Oriental in character than most, and possesses a charmingly carved, projecting window, which gladdens the eye; and here and there in the intricacies of the town one comes across a carved door or a carved window, but they are now few and far between. The suburbs of Maskat are especially interesting. As soon as you issue out of either of the two gates which are constructed in the wall, shutting the town off from the outer world, you plunge at once into a new and varied life. Here is the fish and provision market, built of bamboos, picturesque, but reeking with horrible smells and alive with flies; hard by is a stagnant pool into which is cast all the offal and filth of this disgusting market. The water in the pool looks quite putrid, and when the wind comes from this quarter no wonder it is laden with fever germs and mephitic vapours. Consequently, Maskat is a most unhealthy place, especially when the atmosphere is damp and rain has fallen to stir up the refuse. The women with their mask-veils called _buttra_, not unlike the masks worn with a domino, pleased us immensely, so that we sought to possess a specimen. They brought us several, which, however, did not quite satisfy us, and afterwards we learnt that an enterprising German firm had made a lot of these _buttra_ for sale amongst the Maskat women; but the shape being not exactly orthodox, the women will not buy them, so the owners of these unsaleable articles are anxious to sell them cheap to any unsuspecting traveller who may be passing through. Outside the walls the sultan is in the habit of distributing two meals a day to the indigent poor; and inasmuch as the Omani are by nature prone to laziness, there is but little doubt that his highness's liberality is greatly imposed on.