“My fair readers will be pleased to learn that the veil and other restraints inflicted on the gentle sex by Islamitic rigorism, not to say worse, are much less universal, and more easily dispensed with in Hasa; while in addition, the ladies of the land enjoy a remarkable share of those natural gifts which no institutions, and even no cosmetics, can confer; namely, beauty of face and elegance of form. Might I venture on the delicate and somewhat invidious task of constructing a ‘beauty-scale’ for Arabia, and for Arabia alone, the Bedouin women would, on this kalometer, be represented by zero, or at most 1°; a degree higher would represent the female sex of Nedjed; above them rank the women of Shomer, who are in their turn surmounted by those of Djowf. The fifth or sixth degree symbolizes the fair ones of Hasa; the seventh those of Katar; and lastly, by a sudden rise of ten degrees at least, the seventeenth or eighteenth would denote the pre-eminent beauties of Oman. Arab poets occasionally languish after the charmers of Hedjaz; I never saw anyone to charm me, but then I only skirted the province. All bear witness to the absence of female loveliness in Yemen; and I should much doubt whether the mulatto races and dusky complexions of Hadramaut have much to vaunt of. But in Hasa a decided improvement on this important point is agreeably evident to the traveller arriving from Nedjed, and he will be yet further delighted on finding his Calypsos much more conversible, and having much more, too, in their conversation than those he left behind him in Sedeyr and ’Aared. “During our stay at Hofhoof, Aboo-’Eysa left untried no arts of Arab rhetoric and persuasion to determine me to visit Oman, assuring me again and again that whatever we had yet seen, even in his favorite Hasa, was nothing compared to what remained to see in that more remote country. My companion, tired of our long journey, and thinking the long distance already laid between him and his Syrian home quite sufficient in itself without further leagues tacked on to it, was very little disposed for a supplementary expedition. Englishmen, on the contrary, are rovers by descent and habit; my own mind was now fully made up to visit Oman at all risks, whether Barakat came with me or not. Meanwhile, we formed our plan for the next immediate stage of our route. My companion and I were to quit Hofhoof together, leaving Aboo-’Eysa behind us for a week or two at Hasa, while we journeyed northward to Kateef, and thence took ship for the town of Menamah in Bahreyn. In this latter place Aboo-’Eysa was to rejoin us. Our main reason for thus separating our movements in time and in direction, was to avoid the too glaring appearance of acting in concert while yet in a land under Wahabee government and full of Wahabee spies and reporters, especially after the suspicions thrown on us at Ri’ad. The Oman arrangements were to be deferred till we should all meet again.