Beyond this place Wellsted was accompanied by a guard of seventy armed men, for the country was considered insecure. For two days and a half he passed many small villages, separated by desert tracts, and then reached the town of Minnà, near the foot of the Green Mountains. “Minnà,” he says, “differs from the other towns in having its cultivation in the open fields. As we crossed these, with lofty almond, citron, and orange trees yielding a delicious fragrance on either hand, exclamations of astonishment and admiration burst from us. ‘Is this Arabia?’ we said; ‘this the country we have looked on heretofore as a desert?’ Verdant fields of grain and sugar-cane stretching along for miles are before us; streams of water, flowing in all directions, intersect our path; and the happy and contented appearance of the peasants agreeably helps to fill up the smiling picture. The atmosphere was delightfully clear and pure; and, as we trotted joyously along, giving or returning the salutations of peace or welcome, I could almost fancy that we had at last reached that ‘Araby the Blessed’ which I had been accustomed to regard as existing only in the fictions of our poets. “Minnà is an old town, said to have been erected at the period of Narhirvan’s invasion; but it bears, in common with the other towns, no indications of antiquity; its houses are lofty, but do not differ from those of Ibrah or Semmed. There are two square towers, about one hundred and seventy feet in height, nearly in the centre of the town; at their bases the breadth of the wall is not more than two feet, and neither side exceeds in length eight yards. It is therefore astonishing, considering the rudeness of the materials (they have nothing but unhewn stones and a coarse but apparently strong cement), that, with proportions so meagre, they should have been able to carry them to their present elevation. The guards, who are constantly on the lookout, ascend by means of a rude ladder, formed by placing bars of wood in a diagonal direction in one of the side angles within the interior of the building.”