Page 28 - A Hand book of Arabia Vol 1 (iii) Ch 1,2

PHYSICAL FEATURES 15
p
rn'ist lias curved some distance NE. towards the mountainous
district of Rift el-Jebel. From this point, under the influence of
drainage from the heights of the Pirate Coast on the north and the
inland'mountains of Oman on the west, as well as of its own periodic
rains, there is a fertile littoral, the Batinah district of Oman. More­
over, inland, under the main chain of Jebel Akhdhar and its double
coastal continuation towards Pas el-Hadd, and also in tlie Dhahirah
country north of this, behind the Batinah coast, there are many rich
valleys and broad oasis tracts.
•••
On tfhe south, desert reigns unbroken along the shore-line for
some distance1Vest of Ras el-Hadd ; but as the general level of the
inner land shelves upwards towards the western watershed, more
. fertile wadi-mouths .and vegetated littoral slopes begin to appear
here and there. After the mouth of the Wadi Hadhramaut is
passed, the littoral becomes fertile in patches and vegetation runs
inland up valleys leading*towards the plateaij fencing the upper
HjulhrannTut basin, whose main and tributary valleys, fed by drain­
age from the eastward and northward slopes of the southern massif
cti Yemen, are ribbons of green, interrupted by considerable urban
r settlements.
From the mouth of Wadi Hadhramaut onwards, we are in the
western part of the peninsula—the upper edge of the great land-
sheff. A short, steep return, falling some thousands of feot towards
the shore along the rest of the south coast, and along the whole
of the Red Sea shore, imparts to the littocal the appearance
of a mountain coast. We have before us, as we round*the south­
western angle of the peninsula, a low coastal strip, fertile where
wadis come down from the heights, but for the rest of steppe char­

acter, and behind it towering slopes, fertile not only in their valley-
bottoms but also on their ridges, so long as we are still in the south­
western angle, which gets the fringe of the monsoon rhins. Behind
.*. thbse again is a plateau country of great elevation (San‘a lies over
. :* >- ; • •
7,500 feet), backed by a ridge which is the main watershed. The
country begins to be less uniformly fertile as its level falls away
inland from this ridge, but still conserves perennial vegetation in its
valleys, to a distance of about two hundred miles from the W. coast.
Thereafter, steppes rapidly degenerate into the utter desert of Ruba‘
el-Khali. This belt of fertile mountain and plateau land, together
with its slope towards the Indian Ocean, was the ‘ Happy Arabia 5
of mediaeval geographers, and is the Yemen of to-day with the
addition of the Aden-Makalla hinterland on the one hand and Asir
on the other.
Anything like continuous fertility, however, ends at the frontier