Page:The journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London. Volume 34, 1864. (IA s572id13663720).pdf/350

140 dition, would merit a much ampler description than 1 can here afford to give. The enormous quadrangular fort of Hofhouf, forming itself a very considerable quarter of the town, with its massive towers, about sixteen on each side, its keep, its deep surrounding trench, and its well-guarded portals, is a most imposing monument, and a reminiscence of bye-gone days of strength and power.

Pasture-lands are here of far less frequent occurrence than in the Nejed, and cultivation occupies a much larger proportion of the soil. Hence sheep are fewer, and meat dearer. But a very good breed of asses, much resembling those of Egypt, abounds here; their ordinary colour is white or gray. This same asinine race extends down along the coast to ’Oman, where they are even more plentiful, and supply a constant export to the island of Mauritius and elsewhere. Oxen are also often to be met with, and I saw a few buffaloes in the marsh-lands near Hofhouf. However the choice animals of Hasa are its dromedaries, which are only inferior to those of ’Oman. Light in colour, graceful (so far as such a creature can be) in form, easy, most easy, in pace, and wonderfully docile, with hair almost as fine and soft as a cat’s, they are as good specimens of that species as one could wish to see. But, like all the camel race, they never acknowledge the smallest attachment to their master or rider, and if once turned fairly loose, will never take their way home again; their docility is, in fact, of a merely passive kind, and not arising from any sort of sympathy or gratitude, such as is at times found in the horse or elephant.

The people of the land are of quieter and more industrial and commercial propensities than the dwellers of Nejed. Good poets and learned men, at least in Arab lore, are not uncommon here, and they are all “in battles much delighting,” but in verse, and when seated in the shade, pleasure-parties, songs, and much dissipation, often diversify their life, otherwise a busy one; in intelligence they are no less superior to the Nejdeans than they are inferior to them in military qualities and in physical force. Accordingly they submit without resistance to the Wahhabite tyranny, though hating it bitterly, and not without cause, since it has ruined them. Besides they are nowise indifferent to the pleasure of wearing gold and silk, and smoking tobacco—both abominations in the eyes of the Wahhabites, who put them down wherever they can. Unable to venture on open opposition, the people of Hasa bear it all as they may, and wait for better times.

Of their religious tenets—a most curious and complicated question—I say nothing here, for fear of being led too far by the historical research or philosophical explanation requisite in a serious examen of this point. But those who consider the close neighbourhood and intimate connexion between this coast and Persia, and who remember the origin of the Batiniens and Carmathians in