We had many an interesting stroll round the sultan's gardens at Al Koton, and watched the cultivation of spices and vegetables for the royal table, or rather floor; the lucerne and clover for his cattle, the indigo and henna for dyeing purposes, and the various kinds of grain. But on the cultivation of the date-palm the most attention is lavished; it was just then the season at which the female spathe has to be fructified by the male pollen, and we were interested in watching a man going round with an apron full of male spathes. With these he climbed the stem of the female palm, and with a knife cut open the bark which encircles the female spathe, and as he shook the male pollen over it he chanted in a low voice, 'May God make you grow and be fruitful.' No portion of the palm is wasted in the Hadhramout: with the leaves they thatch huts and make fences, the date stones are ground into powder as food for cattle, and they eat the nutty part which grows at the bottom of the spathes, and which they called _kourzan_. On a journey a man requires nothing but a skin of dates, which will last him for days, and, when we left, Sultan Salah gave us three goat-skins filled with his best dates, and large tins of delicious honey--for which the Hadhramout was celebrated as far back as Pliny's time[11]--which he sent on camels to the coast for us, as well as a large inscribed stone that I now have in my house. Innumerable wells are dotted over this cultivated area, the water from which is distributed over the fields before sunrise and after sunset. The delicious creaking noise made by heaving up the buckets greeted us every morning when we woke, delicious because it betokened plenty of water: and these early morning views were truly exquisite. A bright crimson tinge would gradually creep over the encircling mountains, making the parts in shade of a rich purple hue, against which the feathery palm-trees and whitewashed castles stood out in strong contrast. All the animals belonging to the sultan are stabled within the encircling wall, and immediately beneath the palace windows; the horses' stable is in the open courtyard, where they are fed with rich lucerne and dates when we should give corn. Here also reside the cows and bullocks, which are fed every evening by women, who tie together bunches of dried grass and make it appetising by mixing therewith a few blades of fresh lucerne; the sheep and the goats are penned on another side, whilst the cocks and hens live in and around the main drain. All is truly patriarchal in character. The sultan only possesses four horses, and one of these, a large white mare, strangely enough came from the Cape of Good Hope, _via_ Durban and Bombay. The sultan of Makalla had three. The 'Arab courser' lives farther north.