ABSTRACT
When I had rambled about the above-mentioned city, on parting thence I went to another place, distant from this one day’s journey, which is called Reame,1 and is for the most part inhabited by black people, who are very great mer chants. This country is extremely fertile, excepting in fire wood, and the city contains about two thousand families. On one side of this city there is a mountain, upon which stands a very strong castle. And here there is a kind of sheep, some of which I have seen, whose tails alone weigh forty-four pounds. They have no horns, and cannot walk on account of their size.2 Here also is found a kind of white
1 This is undoubtedly Yerim, which Niebuhr describes as “ une petite ville mal batie, taunie d’une forteresse sur un rocher escarpS ; et situee dans une plaine assez vaste, et h 4 lieues d’ Allemagne de Dam&r nevertheless it was the residence o f a Dowlat or governor, o f the Imam. He adds, that as the name o f this town resembles that o f the famous garden o f Irem mentioned in the 89th chapter o f the Korstn, it is inferred by some that the terrestrial paradise stood in this region ; but having himself travelled through the district, he considers that it is less fertile than many others in Yemen. It was at Yerim that one o f his com panions, the lamented Forskal, died on the 11th o f July 1763, just a century ago. Niebuhr gives a view o f the town in vol. i. o f his Voyage en Arabie.
