For our journey inland we were entrusted by the sultan to a tribe of Bedouin and their camels. Mokaik was the name of our Mokadam or head-man, and his tribe rejoiced in the name of Khailiki. They were tiny spare men, quite beardless, with very refined, gentle faces; they might easily have been taken for women, so gentle and pretty were they. They were naturally dark, and made darker still by dirt and indigo. Their long shaggy hair was twisted up into a knot and bound by a long plaited leather string like a bootlace, which was wound round the hair and then two or three times round the head, like the fillet worn by Greek women in ancient times. They were naked save for a loin-cloth and the girdle to which were attached their brass powder flasks, shaped like a ram's horn, their silver cases for flint and steel, their daggers, and their thorn extractors, consisting of a picker and tweezers, fastened together. They are very different from the stately Bedouin of Syria and Egypt, and are, both as to religion and physique, distinctly an aboriginal race of Southern Arabia, as different from the Arab as the Hindoo is from the Anglo-Saxon. Our ideas as to _Bedouin_ and _Bedawi_, which latter word we never heard while we were in Southern Arabia, were that they were tall, bearded men, not very dark in colour, and our imaginations connected them with hospitality and much clothes. None of these characteristics are found among the Bedouin of this district. _Bedouin_ is not a word in use, but _Bedou_ for both singular and plural. They speak of themselves as _el Bedou_, and when they have seen us wondering at some strange custom, they have said apologetically, 'Ah! Bedou, Bedou!' I have heard them address a man whose name they did not know 'Ya Bedou.' I mean to use _Bedou_ for singular and _Bedouin_ for plural. Besides the Bedouin we were accompanied by five soldiers, Muofok-el-Briti, Taisir-i-Fahari, Bariki, and an old man. For the twenty-two camels we paid 175 dollars to Hagarein, a journey, we were told, of twenty days. It would have been useless to have had riding camels, as one could get no faster than the baggage and soldiers, and travelling so far daily, and up such rocks, one had to go at foot-pace. We should have had to wait longer at Makalla while more camels were collected, and the more camels you have the farther they stray when food is scarce, and the more chance there is of the annoyance of waiting for lost camels to be found, and sometimes found too late to start that day. We need not have had twenty-two camels, and once, later, all the baggage was sent on ten, but this was to suit the purposes of the Bedouin. Before proceeding further with our journey, I will here say a few words concerning the somewhat complex body politic of this portion of Arabia, the inhabitants of which may be divided into four distinct classes.