Page:First Footsteps in East Africa, 1894 - Volume 1.djvu/104

58 trees surrounds the only cultivated ground near Zayla: as Ibn Sa'id declared in old times, "the people have no gardens, and know nothing of fruits." The variety and the luxuriance of growth, however, prove that industry is the sole desideratum. I remarked the castor-plant—no one knows its name or nature —the Rayhan or Basil, the Kadi, a species of aloe, whose strongly-scented flowers the Arabs of Al-Yaman are fond of wearing in their turbands. Of vegetables, there were cucumbers, egg-plants, and the edible hibiscus; the only fruit was a small kind of water-melon.

After enjoying a walk through the garden and a bath at the well, I started, gun in hand, towards the jungly plain that stretches towards the sea. It abounds in hares, and in a large description of spur-fowl ; the beautiful little sand antelope, scarcely bigger than an English rabbit, bounded over the bushes, its thin legs