ABSTRACT
THE next day we were due to depart, and again we were embarrassed by the wholesale kindness of our hosts who paid our transport to Shibam. From now onwards, with the exception of one brief spell on our journey to the north of the main Hadhramaut valley, we were to wander for weeks through a world of wadis, never seeing further than their walls. The wadi was as fertile as the jol had been barren. There were signs of life all our way the first day, village after village on one side or the other of the wadi, and much cultivation round each, dates, durra (great millet, Sorghum vulgar) and hashish. Cows and sheep and black and ,vhite goats in the charge ofwomen grazed all along our way and there were any number of fine'elb trees.
