As for the soldiers, they sent, as if it were a matter of course, for some money to buy tobacco and were given two or three dollars each, and we gladly parted from them friends. The sultan of Makalla had paid them for a fortnight's food, and had written to Sultan Salah to pay what was owing. My groom was dismissed also without bakshish: he was only a rough fellow taken from the mud brick works at Makalla, and my poor Basha would have fared ill if really dependent on M'barrek for care. My entreaties alone saved him from being publicly bastinadoed, as the sultan wished, when he heard of all his rudeness and disobedience. The sultan was most anxious to arrange for our onward journey, and wrote seven letters to different sheikhs and sultans, and sent them to us to read, but we could not read them ourselves, and would not let Saleh, so we were none the wiser. The sultans of Siwoun and Terim are brothers, of the Kattiri tribe, but have no real authority outside their towns. We were anxious to proceed along the Hadhramout valley and to reach the tomb of the prophet Houd. The sultan also went to Shibahm to meet some of the arbiters of our fate, and the sultan of Siwoun agreed to let us pass: but others said we had five hundred camels loaded with arms, and all sorts of other fables, and they all quarrelled dreadfully about us, so the sultan returned to Al Koton to await replies to his letters. The day the sultan was absent, the women were determined to have a little enjoyment from our presence themselves, so a great many servants came bringing the sultan's ten-year-old daughter Sheikha, a rather pretty little girl, with long earrings all round her ears, which, like all the other women's, hang forward like fringed bells. An uneven number is always worn, and a good set consists of twenty-three. They are rings about two inches in diameter, with long drops attached. Her face was painted with large dots, stripes, and patterns of various colours, and she had thick antimony round the eyes. Her neck, arms, and shoulders were yellow, and her hands painted plain black inside and in a pattern like a lace mitten on the back, the nails being red with henna. I was also asked to pay a visit to the ladies. I went upstairs. Every floor is like a flat, with its bath-room containing a huge vase called _kazbah_, and the bath is taken by pouring over the person, from a smaller utensil, water which runs away down drain-holes to the wooden spouts. I found myself in some very narrow passages, among a quantity of not over-clean women, who all seized me by the shoulders, passing me on from one to the other till I reached a very large carpeted room, with pillows round it, some very large looking-glasses and a chandelier.