ABSTRACT
WE had blissfully supposed that the hours of travel in the Hadhramaut would be much as in the western part of the protectorate, and that we should travel in the cool of the morning and the afternoon. We had been told in Mukalla that the usual hours were from 6 a.m. to 10.30 a.m. and from 3 p.m. to 6 or 7 p.m., but that they could be varied according to the wishes of the traveller. At any rate we expected seven or eight hours a d~y of marching. In our innocence we were up early the next morning, November 7th, and ready to move at six, but, despite the easy first day, it was not until a quarter-past seven that we were fmally on the way, climbing steadily up the right bank of the wadi. The walls of the wadi are awe-inspiring in their height and their slopes are studded with loose enormous boulders down to the wadi bed, where we could glimpse the green ofsumr and other bushes. The massive boulders took curious forms and in places the hills were undercut as if they had been quarried with tools. In many places these cliffi looked as if they bore giant inscriptions where they were weathered in regular lines, and some of the boulders by the wayside seemed to have measles, being covered with red metallic pimples.
