My husband and I were always occupied. He used to sketch in water-colours, and I had plenty of work developing photographs in a delightful little dark room, where I lived and enjoyed as many skins of water as I could use, till I had to stop and pack my celluloid negatives like artificial flowers, for they curled up and the films contracted and split, from the alkaline water. I had to put glycerine on them when I reached Aden. Our botanist nearly died of dulness and impatience; Mahmoud was quite contented to sit quite still, and I do not think the Indian servants minded much. Poor Imam Sharif used to gaze up at half a dozen stars from a yard, but he dared not venture on the roof to see more. We took a stroll with the sultan one day, no crowd being allowed, and remarked how many things were grown for spices, those spices which were becoming rather wearisome to us. There was _zamouta_, an umbelliferous plant, the seed of which is used in coffee, and _habat-assoba_ for putting in bread; coriander, chili, fennel, and _helf_, a plant very like tall cress, which is used in cookery and also raw, and which we liked as a salad; also _attar_, a purple creeping bean, very pretty and good to eat. There was also another low-growing bean, _brinjol_ (egg plant), cucumber, water-melon, henna, and indigo. The sultan has besides a private inclosure where he has some lime-trees, not our kind of lime-tree of course, but the one which bears fruit; and I must not forget cotton, from which the place originally took its name, as it is abundant in a wild state. At last another polite letter came from the Kattiri, and a letter from the sultan of Terim. 'I have both your letters _and you can do as you like_, my answer is the same.' This did away with all hope of progress in that direction. Our spirits, however, were much cheered by hearing that the sultan had received a letter from a seyyid at Meshed (probably the nice one who had been in India and had leprosy in his legs), telling him how very badly the sultan of Hagarein had behaved about us. As this was spontaneous, we hoped that the negotiation our sultan was going to undertake about our making excavations at Meshed, Raidoun, or Kubar al Moluk (for some part of the ruins is called Tombs of the Kings), would turn out successfully. The sultan of Hagarein was summoned to Al Koton, but we were away before he came. I believe in the end he was turned out of his place, former misdeeds counting against him. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 12: II., 100.] CHAPTER XII THE CITY OF SHIBAHM