Page 79 - Travels in Arabis (Vol I)

40 TRAVELS IN OMAN. [CH.

CHAPTER IV.

Departure for Stir — Devil's Gap — Timidity of Arab Mariners
—Kilhat—Ancient Gold Coins—Breakfast with a Sheikh—
Account of Sur — Hospitable treatment—Market — Date
Groves—Exports and Imports—Arab Shepherds—Anecdote of
Arab Girls—Departure—Babel Rufsur— Watch Dogs—Feuds
— The Bent-Abu -Hasan Tribe—Their numbers — Interview
with the Sheikh—Attempts to deter the Author from proceed­
ing.

November 25th. A boat having been prepared

for me, I left Maskat, with no small satisfac­
tion, for Sur; for its climate, at all times

unfavourable to the European constitution,

was particularly insalubrious at this period,
and the number of deaths which occurred

daily, even among the natives, was very con­
siderable. A poor Frenchman who had fled

here, after escaping a hundred dangers sub­
sequent to the defeat of the Turks in the

Assair country, was dying in a vessel along­
side of that which I had quitted, and a con­