Page:The journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London. Volume 34, 1864. (IA s572id13663720).pdf/356

146 of Ras Mesandom, namely, the three provinces of Sharja, Roo’s-elDjebal, and Kalhat, which compose it.

The narrative of Captain Wellsted gives a tolerable idea of much of Oman; but it is not a complete one, for that enterprising traveller visited the kingdom at the time when the Wahhabee armies were harassing its Northern and Western provinces; and besides ill-health abridged his researches, already much narrowed in their sphere by his avowed European character: for though the excessive jealousy against foreign and especially against European travellers prevailing throughout Nejed is much mitigated in ’Oman, there yet remains even here enough of such a feeling to render the natives very unwilling to let foreigners see the best of their land or the wealthiest of their towns, for fear lest cupidity should thus be over-excited and occasion given to encroachment or other disagreeable results.

Nor was I myself able to examine in person the interior regions so fully and extensively as I should have much desired. Of this the main reason was, that a long-protracted journey and the endurance of much hardship of every kind, had so far weakened my health and undermined my strength, that I felt at last hardly able to bear up from day to day. In fact, the ultimate resolution of the matter was in a typhoid fever. However, I managed to pass nearly two months in this angle of Arabia before my final break-down, and in addition to what this period of time gave me opportunity of visiting in person, an easy intercourse with the unsuspecting inhabitants gained me much and valuable information on many other points. I will now accordingly specify some of the more remarkable features of this land and people, so far as I then became acquainted with them, and thus conclude the present narrative.

’Oman, to take this denomination in its widest territorial application, is a development of the coast-range which girds Arabia; and nowhere else does the mountain-chain attain equal height or breadth. The main back-bone of this region is the ridge named Djebel Akhdar, or “the Green Mountain,” whose highest peaks rise inland behind Barka and Maskat at a distance of about 60 miles from the coast, while its bold summits extend in an uninterrupted line north-west by north to Cape Mesandom, and south¬ east down to the neighbourhood of Ras-el-Hadd. Its average distance from the sea is about 40 miles; but it approaches much nearer at Ras Mesandom, in which it finally merges, while towards the Batinah and Djaïlan it recedes far inland.

This central chain gives off several others, which afford the skeleton plan, so to speak, of the whole region. Thus, near its northern extremity, it furnishes a series of hills named Djebel ’Okdah, and