ABSTRACT
SHORTLY after His Higlmess returned in September to India to see his mother, who was seriously ill, trouble starred with some of the foreign Yafa'i mercenaries. It w~ be remembered, perhaps, that the Qu'aiti dynasty is itself Yafa'i, and that Yafa'i had come to the country about four hundred years before. The families that had long settled there had hecQ,me as Hadhrami as the indigenous Hadhrami themselves, but others had been in the habit of coming for a period of years from the Yafa'i mountains and enlisting as mercenaries. They received eight dollars a month pay and, being like all members of their tribe good money makers outside their OWll country, had settled down to 5crewing money out of the local inhabitants in no very scrupulous ways. Some of the leaders realized that, as good order and Government were now on a fair way to being established, they would be likely to find their wings clipped. They therefore started intrigues which, later, were to cause considerable trouble among the Hatnumi tribe.
