“The vegetable and fruit market is very extensive, and kept almost exclusively by women; so are also the shops for grocery and spices. Nor do the fair sex of Bereydah seem a whit inferior to their rougher partners in knowledge of business and thrifty diligence. ‘Close-handedness beseems a woman no less than generosity a man,’ says an Arab poet, unconsciously coinciding with Lance of Verona in his comments on the catalogue of his future spouse’s ‘conditions.’ “The whole town has an aspect of old but declining prosperity. There are few new houses, but many falling into ruin. The faces, too, of most we meet are serious, and their voices in an undertone. Silk dresses are prohibited by the dominant faction, and tobacco can only be smoked within doors, and by stealth. Every now and then zealous Wahabee missionaries from Ri’ad pay a visit of reform and preaching to unwilling auditors, and disobedience to the customs of the Nedjean sect is noticed and punished, often severely. “Enough of the town; the streets are narrow, hot, and dusty; the day, too, advances; but the gardens are yet cool. So we dash at a venture through a labyrinth of by-ways and cross-ways till we find ourselves in the wide street that, like a boulevard in France, runs immediately along but inside the walls. “We stroll about in the shade, hide ourselves amid the high maize to smoke a quiet pipe unobserved by prying Nedjean eyes, and then walk on till at some distance we come under a high ridge of sand. “While on one of our suburban excursions we took the direction of ’Oneyzah, but found it utterly impossible to arrive within its walls; so we contented ourselves with an outside and distant view of this large and populous town; the number of its houses, and their size, judging by the overtopping summits that marked out the dwelling of Zamil and his family, far surpassed anything in Bereydah. The outer fortifications are enormously thick, and the girdle of palm-trees between them and the town affords a considerable additional defence to the latter. For all I could see there is little stonework in the construction; they appear almost exclusively of unbaked bricks; yet even so they are formidable defences for Arabia. The whole country around, and whatever lay northeast toward Bereydah, was more or less ravaged by the war; and we were blamed by our friends as very rash in having ventured thus far; in fact, it was a mere chance that we did not fall in with skirmishers or plunderers; and in such a case the military discipline of Kaseem would hardly have insured our safety.