CHAPTER V.

SOBEH TO YERIM.

With this descent to the level of the valley commenced the most dangerous and difficult part of the whole journey. The surrounding country was thickly inhabited, and dotted with villages, capture by any one of which meant the destruction of our caravan, if not of ourselves. A long march yet lay before us until a place of tolerable safety could be reached, and there remained only a few hours more of night. It would mean a fast and difficult walk at any time, but now especially so in the midst of so many dangers. The road had not been traversed even by Arab traders or members of strange tribes for more than three months. For this period the district had remained closed, and I could not help feeling, as once more our head-man enjoined the strictest silence, that I was rather foolhardy in attempting to be the first to open it again.

Leaving the track, we struck into the thick brushwood in order to avoid as much as possible approaching the villages. One, however, we were obliged, by nature of the country, to pass much nearer than was pleasant. This was Sobeh, the principal stronghold of the Owd tribe. How silently we crept on! But sure-footed as were our little mules, they could not help now and again making a false step, and rattling the stones with which our path was strewn. When this happened we would all stand still for a second, holding our breath to listen. Once a dog barked, others took it up, and presently it seemed as though a hundred yelping curs, intent on our discovery, were doing their utmost to give warning of our proximity. Happily they did not leave the village, but, after the custom of Arab dogs, barked from the shelter of their masters’ homes. Nevertheless, the noise was loud enough to wake a man, who shouted to another, and a conversation took place. Seizing me by the wrist, my men dragged me into a thick cluster of bamboos, whence we could see a light, evidently a lantern, flickering in the village only a few hundred yards away. It was an anxious moment; but at length the dogs ceased their barking, and the light disappeared. Waiting to make sure that all was quiet, we stole on again, thankful at our narrow escape.

Then the moon rose, but the cold was too intense, and I was too tired to admire the lovely mist-swathed valley and the broken mountain-peaks. Once or twice more we awoke the dogs, and once again, too, a man shouted to know who was passing; but we did not hide this time, as dawn was approaching, and my men whispered to me that even as it was it would be a mere chance if the sun did not rise to find us still in the enemy’s country.

At length it came, cold steely-grey dawn; then the sky flushed crimson and pink, and we put on our final spurt, driving the mules before us with sharp cuts from bits of rope, and hurrying as fast as our feet would carry us. The sun was nearly up when one of the men pointed out to me, a long way ahead, a solitary tower standing on the edge of a precipice overlooking the river. “Once there,” he whispered, “we are safe; they are friends of ours.” At length we almost ran. The sun would be up in a quarter of an hour, and the cold grey mist which at present helped to conceal us would rise.

A little before the great gold orb appeared over the mountains to the east, we forded the icy-cold river and scrambled up to our looked-for goal, Beit en-Nedish.

This village, standing on the very edge of high precipices, presents a most picturesque appearance. In the centre rises a high tower, the largest of these solidly built Arab _burj_ we had as yet come across, it being six storeys in height, as far as one could judge from the windows. The summit seemed to be unfinished, and only half roofed in. Around it stood a few low stone houses with flat roofs, while a little farther from the precipice was a mosque, and a larger part of the village. A graveyard surrounded the whole on the mountain-side. Near the tower were a few shady trees, adding not a little to the picturesqueness of this strange spot.

[Illustration: _Beit en-Nedish._]

A yelping and barking of dogs welcomed us, but we paid no heed to them, but straightway lit a fire by which to thaw our chilled limbs; and setting some coffee in a rough earthen pot to brew, I rolled myself up in my carpet, and was soon fast asleep. When I awoke a warm sun was streaming down upon us. A crowd of laughing, chattering Arabs had gathered round us, and were seated in a semicircle anxiously waiting for me to awake. When I did so I was stiff and sore, and without more ado, pulling out some clean clothes from my sack of baggage, ran down to the river and bathed in the cool fresh stream, after which I joined the circle, whose centre of interest was myself—a thing the like of which they had never seen before. Meanwhile breakfast was ready, and inviting a few of the throng to join us, we said “Bismillah”—“In the name of God”—and dipped our fingers into the rough earthen pan.

What a glorious morning it was, and how fresh and lovely everything looked! The dew still sparkled on the green trees and grass, the mist still hovered in the valley beneath, and the hot sun was tempered with a gentle breeze. It was like a spring day in England. How cheery we were, too, after our night’s dangers and fatigues, all laughing and joking in the exhilaration of high spirits! But our hopes for a day’s rest were soon dashed to the ground, for my men received timely warning that it would be safer for us to proceed, and a few hours later saw us on the way again.

We had entered Arabia Felix! On all sides of us were tiny streams, splashing and tumbling through fern-covered banks over pebbles and stones. One does not realise what music there is in the sound of running water until one has travelled, as the writer has once or twice in his life, over deserts where the muddy pools are two and three days apart. But the deserts and rocky valleys were all forgotten now—they seemed merely the imaginings of the past. Everywhere were green fields in which the young barley showed promise of rich crops, everywhere great shady trees and jungle covered the slopes. The sun was hot, but at that great altitude the freshness of the air compensated for it. My men went merrily on, singing and laughing, and now and again running races and brandishing their spears—and yet we had rested only two or three hours after our march of nearly twelve hours, during which we had covered some thirty miles of road, and what a road!

[Illustration: MAN AND WOMAN OF THE HIGHLANDS OF THE YEMEN.]

Here we came in contact for the first time with the mountaineers, a much finer people than those of the plains. They are, as a rule, taller and better built, their limbs being freer in action and their legs more gracefully formed, no doubt owing much to the fact that they are great walkers. Like the people of the plains, the men wear their hair long, shaving their upper lip but allowing a small beard to grow on the points of their chins. As well as the dark-blue loin-cloth, stuck full of daggers, they wear a thick sheepskin coat, the wool on the inside, the rough skin being coarsely embroidered in black thread. This forms a very necessary precaution against the cold, to which these high altitudes expose them. The women, like their sisters of the plains, wear dark-blue skirts, embroidered round the neck and sleeves and on the breasts in coloured silks, and now and again in gold or silver thread. Their heads they cover with dark-blue hoods, often richly but coarsely embroidered. While the men are often almost divinely handsome, the women are just the contrary, being generally thickly built. No doubt the hideous tight blue trousers and the oil and paint on their faces tends not a little to disfigure them. In the cold early mornings the oil on their hair hangs in little solid drops on the points of their fringes; but as the heat of the day increases it trickles down their faces, washing away the red-lead-coloured powder, with which they so thickly smear their faces, in long streaks.

From Beit en-Nedish we proceeded on a three hours’ ride, and crossing the river at a ford that might have been in the upper waters of the Tay, we ascended the opposite bank to Beit Saïd, a large and prosperous-looking village, situated on the west bank of the river amidst groves of shady trees.

Before reaching this spot two large villages have to be passed, one on each side of the river. They are respectively on the left bank Nadir, above which the Turks had built a fort, and on the right bank Ghadan—both large and flourishing villages, well and handsomely built of stone. The fort was now in possession of the Arabs, as, in spite of its commanding position, the Turks had found it untenable, and deserted it on the breaking out of the rebellion. With the exception of Ismail Pasha’s camp and the custom-house at Kátaba, this was the first sign we had as yet seen of the occupation of the Yemen by the Turks.

The land, carefully terraced to allow of more cultivation, presented from a distance an appearance of a great flight of steps, so evenly was this immense work carried out. Although at this spot the terracing was comparatively simple compared with many other places, owing to the slope being gentler, it showed signs of an enormously laborious task. But, compared to places that we afterwards saw in the Yemen it was _nil_. At one spot I counted one hundred and thirty-seven of these terraces on the side of a mountain, one above another, and each and every one, as far as one could judge, higher than it was wide; that is to say, the stone wall supporting the small strip of cultivated land was perhaps nine feet in height, while the supported strip was only six! This is particularly noticeable in the coffee-growing districts. However, as it was in this valley of the Wadi el-Banna that we first came across this process of cultivating the soil, although it was well known to me in the Atlas Mountains, Madeira, and many parts of Europe, it struck one as showing not only a propensity for hard work not usually found amongst Arab peoples, but also no little amount of skill and engineering.

In other parts of the Mahammedan world the Arabs are exceedingly fond of making and planting gardens, and even trying experiments in cultivation; but whether failure or success awaits their efforts, they allow the whole concern to fall into disrepair, and the fields and gardens to become thick with weeds. It is not usually so much a want of experimenting as a want of continuing that is the ruin of so many Arab peoples. I have known Moors plant gardens which gave promise not only of beautiful surroundings but of considerable profit; I have known them plant them with all manner of fruit-trees, and build aqueducts to bring the water from some distant spring, a work of by no means little expenditure, and a few months later I have seen the place deserted, goats feeding on the young orange and almond trees, and the place run to wreck and ruin. But not so in these valleys of the Yemen. Here the supporting wall of every terrace was in excellent repair, here every little artificial channel and aqueduct brimmed over with water, and the whole surroundings wore not only the appearance of great laborious skill, but of the idea being present that the people were aware of the necessity of maintaining the results of their labours in a state of repair.

It was a trait of character I had never before met with in the Arab people, and I was immensely struck with it. In the Atlas Mountains, five hundred miles in the interior of Morocco, I have seen on a small scale the same industrious attention; but in that case the people are Berbers, untainted with Arab blood. In the country of the Gallas surrounding the city of Harrar one finds much the same; but again, however nearly the Somalis may be related to the people of the Yemen, the Gallas are no doubt a perfectly distinct race. It may be argued that the necessities of life and the nature of the country would render existence impossible were the people not obliged to terrace and cultivate their lands in this manner; but I have passed in many parts of the world where the same argument would apply, and found an entirely different state of things existing. I rather believe this attention to cultivation, and especially the growing of coffee, &c., to be due to the existence of true Yemeni blood in the veins of the people, apart from their mixed Arab pedigrees. There is little doubt that this system of fixed abodes and attention to agriculture could not have been introduced in the Arab invasions of the Yemen, but was existent there long before the time of the introduction of Islam. All the historical records point to this effect, and it was probably owing as much to this as to the natural wealth and beauty of the country that the province obtained the name of Arabia Felix.

[Illustration: MOSQUE AT BEIT SAÏD.]

We found the village of Beit Saïd to be by far the most flourishing we had as yet entered. A large open space divided a pretty little white mosque, half covered by trees, from the rest of the village. The houses were well built of stone, one especially fine, being of two storeys in height, with arched doorways and heavy wooden doors. This we found to be the caravanserai and house of a cousin of the Sheikh Besaisi of Kátaba, to whom my men were well known, and who quickly made us welcome in an upper chamber of the house, to which an outside stone stairway led. The room was small but cool, and we quickly unpacked our baggage and stored it away, settling in for a much-needed rest.

A crowd watched our operations,—a gathering of men, women, children, and dogs, who, open-mouthed and open-eyed, watched the strange little caravan arrive, whispering their criticisms to one another. However, they were quite polite, the presence of El-Besaisi no doubt keeping them at a distance; for, like his cousin at Kátaba, he was no small personage here.

We found the people of Beit Saïd extremely pleasant; in fact, the callers almost crowded us out of our room, they were so many, a constant crowd watching with the greatest interest the strange visitor. The rest was a welcome one, and we hoped not only to spend the day here, but to obtain, for the first time for many days, a night’s repose; but fate was against us. Having turned in about eight P.M. in a portion of the big store, where, except for the rats, I felt I should be quieter than in the guest-room, I was soon asleep, weary with all the anxiety and travel which we had accomplished.

I had been asleep only an hour or two when I felt myself quietly shaken. I asked who was there. A voice whispered in my ear, “Hush! do not speak.” I struck a light, and as a wild long-haired creature leant over me to blow it out, I had just time to see that the man was a stranger. “Get up,” said the voice again; “you are in danger. Not a word, mind. Give me your bedding and carpet.” In the dark I hurried into my clothes, while the unknown seized my carpet and such baggage as I possessed, and left. I waited for a few moments, when he returned. “Your mules are already being laden,” he continued; then seizing me by the hand, added, “Follow me.” I followed him out into the quiet moonlit streets, and keeping under the shadows of the houses, left the village. Here I was surprised to find my mules already laden. No one was stirring, and in the bright moonlight we passed silently away from the place without disturbing a soul. Our road was a difficult and a steep one: at many places the track, under two feet wide, was cut into the side of a precipice, far down which we could see the white mists hovering over the damp valley.

The reason of our flight I was at a loss to understand, yet never for a moment did I doubt that there was a reason. I somehow, without knowing why, trusted the man who had warned me. He was a stranger, and as far as I could remember, as I watched him leading our little caravan over the awful road, I had never seen him before. Once in my life already I had been saved by a stranger, who had risked his own to save mine—an Arab too, but in a land far away from the Yemen. I need not tell the story here: sufficient that I arrived at his house weary, by night, my bare feet bleeding with the stones and thorns, pursued by men who had vowed to take my life; and that he, good noble fellow, found me and took me in, bathed my blood-stained ankles, and tore up his own clothes to bind them in, and, after keeping me in hiding for two days, escorted me in safety out of the country. He died a few months later, foully murdered in a blood-feud. Perhaps it was the recollection of this that imbued me with so much confidence and trust in my new-found friend. That I was not wrong the sequel will show.

Sometimes a stone loosened by our animals’ hoofs would fall, and, bounding from rock to rock, disappear into the darkness. At each of these occurrences our guide would utter a guttural sound of disapproval. Once or twice I ventured to ask him the reason of our sudden flight, but was always met with a sharp “Silence!” in reply. On and on, until some three hours after leaving Beit Saïd our path commenced to descend, and, slipping and sliding down slopes of sand and stones, we entered the large village of Seddah, now wrapt in sleep; then on through the village of Mundah, and out into the open country again. The dogs barked a little, and one or two men, armed with spears, accosted us, but, after a few words whispered with our men, we passed on again. It is at Seddah that the valley turns to the west, and here the Wadi Thuba flows into the Wadi Banna. This latter river has a direction almost north and south, and although the Banna is the main stream, the other continues the general direction of the valley.

An hour later, leaving the valley and mounting a steep ascent, we crossed an elevated plateau, finally arriving at the village of Sôk el-Thuluth. I had been given no idea of whither we were going or where our new guide considered it safe for us to rest; and when, on nearing the village, he told me that I might stay there as long as I liked, it was a most pleasant surprise. The streets of the little place were deserted except by the dogs; but after knocking long and loudly at a door, we succeeded in awakening a woman, who turned out to be the proprietress of the small _café_ and caravanserai of the place. She was a good kindly soul, and did not grumble at being turned up at one A.M. on a cold morning. Admitting us into a cave-like room with a stone arched ceiling, reeking with the pungent odours of strong tobacco and coffee—not to mention the odours of its Arab occupants, who lay sleeping about the door rolled up in their dirty sheepskin coats—she lit a fire, put water on to boil, and then commenced by violently kicking the Arabs in order to awake them, calling to them to turn out and make room for a more honoured guest. I persuaded her to leave them in peace,—more out of regard, it must be said, for my own slumbers than for theirs; and calling to Saïd and Abdurrahman to make up my bed on the roof, was soon asleep.

When I awoke it was dawn. What a sight met my eyes! Never had I before, and I think never since, seen such a view as lay before me. Sôk el-Thuluth, or “Tuesday market,” as its name implies, is situated above the junctions of the Wadi Banna and Wadi Thuba, on a spur of the mountains of the main valley. Below me lay the great valley up the straight course of which we had been travelling for the last two nights. Over its green fields floated a transparent hazy mist, through which I would watch the river sparkling and flashing like a silver serpent, as it passed on its way to the desert and the sea. Along its banks the dark-foliaged trees stood out clear and defined. On either side of this silver streak lay terraced fields, rising step by step from the water’s edge to where the mountain-slopes became too steep for cultivation. Here they were covered with thick jungle undergrowth, while above rose precipice upon precipice, crowned, thousands of feet in the pink morning sky, by broken crags and pinnacles of rock, touched with snow. At my very feet, for I was on the house-top, the villagers, rejoicing in the glorious morning, were passing out to their labours, and the flocks and herds bleated as they sought their pasturage. Women carrying beakers wended their way to the spring; while the men, spears in hand, their long glossy locks tumbling in unrestrained glory over the shoulders, added a fierce element to a scene of the most perfect peace and beauty. It was worth all the desert travel and all the dangers of our night marches to see what I saw then. This was Arabia Felix! As I gazed the mists rose, every detail in the valley became distinct: little villages far below, crowning the rocky mounds on which the Arabs of the Yemen so love to build, stood out from the green fields all grey and severe, each a fortress in itself, with its battlements and towers. Around the pink-and-gold crags hovered little fleecy clouds, attracted by the small patches of snow—now hiding, now disclosing the grandeur of the mountain pinnacles.

All our dangers were over; from here our road was safe. We were soon to enter the great plateau of the central Yemen, now safely once more in the hands of the Turks, though woe betide the Osmanli soldier who found himself alone and without protection. As I looked upon that glorious valley, more glorious than ever now that the sun had risen, I could not realise how exciting a time we had experienced in passing through it, so lovely, so quiet, so peaceful it seemed.

Calling to Saïd, I told him to send me the man who had led us to Sôk el-Thuluth the night before.

He had gone!

Never a word of thanks, never a reward! He had left me sleeping, and gone back to his own affairs and to his own life. Like the character in some play that appears but once, so had this Arab come and gone. My men had tried to stop him, had tried to keep him until I awoke, promising him a reward, but he had laughed and shaken his raven curls, and, spear in hand, girded up his loins and vanished. Strange good fellow! he saved my life, and never even gave me the opportunity of thanking him!

We had left one of our men the night before behind us at Beit Saïd. He had gone off in the evening to supper in the house of a friend, where he had slept, unaware of our flight. In the early morning he had found us gone, and followed us, not by the roundabout mountain-track we had come by, but by the main road.

He solved the mystery of our flight, for but a few miles from Beit Saïd he found the road held by some forty men, armed to the teeth, whose object was my plunder. How little the poor fellows would have got! A few dollars and a little shabby clothing, an old carpet and a mattress, and that was about all. But they had imagined that I was a trader taking up great sums of money, and had resolved my death—for life is cheap out there—and the plundering of my goods. I asked our man what they had said to him. He replied that they had asked after me, and that finding I had been warned and escaped them, they went off laughing and swearing, apparently rather amused at the whole episode.

Our rest had done us all good, and we set out with light hearts, knowing that no probable dangers lay ahead.

The path leads one along the east side of the valley, at a great height above the river, often, like that we had traversed the night before, only a footway cut in the edge of the precipices. Here for the first time we came across the coffee-plant, growing amidst tumbling waterfalls on terraces built up against the steep mountain-side. Everywhere was water, here in artificial channels, there in tiny streamlets. Wild flowers abounded, and in places the walls of rock were green and white with jasmine. A thousand feet below us were the villages, on to the roofs of the houses of which we looked from above. It seemed but a step from us to them. At one spot my men pointed out where a short time before a camel and its load had fallen from an overhanging rock. It never touched the precipice, they said, until it fell upon a ledge they pointed out to me hundreds of feet below, and thence it bounded into the valley.

Rich in the extreme is this part of the country, owing to its everlasting supply of water, and many are the tales the Arabs of the plains tell of it. Beled el-Hawad they call it, of which Howra is the chief village,—a place like a feudal castle built on a pile of rocks.

After a time the road turns to the right, and, following the course of a small stream, ascends a valley. To the left of this valley, on the very summit of a high mountain, is the village of Ofar, to reach which necessitates a climb of a thousand feet or more from the road. At several places one passes drinking-fountains, erected, like the great tanks we were afterwards to meet with in the plateau, for the refreshment of man and beast. They are simple affairs, but excellently built. In form they are usually square, and domed, some six feet each way perhaps. A trough on the outside supplies the water for the animals, while a hole in the wall, large enough for one to insert one’s head through, is for human beings. Within the water rises to the level of this hole, being carried off by an overflow pipe into the trough below, so that the clear liquid just reaches the level of one’s lips, while the roof above keeps it fresh and cool. These fountains, common all over the Yemen, have been usually erected by private philanthropists for the benefit of their fellow-men. Unlike the custom in England, no flowery inscription tells the world the name or the generosity of the builder—they are the memorials of anonymous benefactors. Here, too, we came into contact for the first time with the mountain camel—a very different beast from that of the Teháma and desert, being a rough-haired, heavily-boned creature, usually black in colour and the picture of ugliness. Those of Lahej and the surrounding country, renowned throughout Arabia, are light in colour and remarkably finely built, and often exceedingly pretty. To those who think that the camel is essentially a creature of the desert, and incapable of traversing with ease stony or rocky country, the fact that we were passing caravans of camels nearly eight thousand feet above the sea-level, and on the worst possible roads, must seem strange. It is well known, of course, that the camel of Central Asia traverses mountainous country, but I doubt if many are aware that it forms also the beast of burden in the extreme highlands of the Yemen, travelling over roads which one would have thought impassable almost for a mule. Yet so it is.

At length the end of the little valley was reached at an altitude of only a little under nine thousand feet above the sea-level. A slippery rocky path winds up the last few hundred yards of the ascent, which is extremely difficult to surmount, both for man and beast, for the constant traffic of centuries has polished the surface until it shines like glass.

Here the beauty ends, for one has reached the plateau of central Yemen—a vast plain lying at an average altitude of about eight thousand feet above the sea, broken only by hideous ledges of black volcanic rock, which crop up here and there from its level surface. It was too early yet in the year for the young grain to show; and the scene that met our eyes, as we rested ourselves and our mules after the steep climb, was a dreary one—miles of yellow level plain, and black jagged rocks. A short but steep descent brings one to the level of the plateau, over which, with but little exception, the road passes from this spot as far as Sanaa, the capital.

[Illustration: _Inscribed stone at Munkat, near Yerim._]

The natives have made use of the ledges of rock, which appear in every direction, as sites for their villages, many of which are perched on the extreme summits, while others lie on the slopes. At one of these—by name Munkat—we stopped for a little while, to see the place and some curious Himyaric remains still existing therein.

This is, I think, the first mention I have made of the strange people, descendants of Himyar, who formerly inhabited the Yemen; but rather than enter into any account of them and of other historical matters at this point, I have reserved these questions for separate chapters, as I have also done in the case of the geography, trade, and general description of the Yemen. It has been my wish, as far as possible, to separate the account of my journey from other and more important matter, so that each may be taken separately. In all matters historical and geographical, I have consulted, as far as has been in my power, the best authorities upon the subject; but in the account of my own travels I have thought it expedient, instead of breaking the narrative with incursions into more serious subjects, to omit, except in cases in which it may illustrate and explain more fully than would otherwise be the case, nearly all reference to historical or political affairs.

Munkat is a walled village containing a considerable number of houses, one of which, a kind of fort, is curiously perched on an enormous boulder, and a pretty white mosque, surrounded by tanks of good water. Built into the wall of the mosque are stones inscribed in Himyaric characters, and some also in Kufic. Copies of the former were, I believe, taken some years ago by Dr Glaser. In another part of the village is a white marble column, some eight or ten feet in height, of Himyaric origin, which is said by the villagers to have appeared suddenly at this spot. The ignorance of the natives in this part of the country is astonishing; for out of many stones they showed me, some were in Arabic and some in the Himyaric character, but the inhabitants were uncertain as to which was which. They seemed, however, to reverence these remains to some extent, as they had carefully built them into the walls. At one spot, over a doorway and in a prominent position, they had carefully placed a marble stone containing the first chapter of the Koran—“Bismillah Alrahman Alrahim,” &c.—upside down. When I told them of their mistake, it was quite sad to hear their excuses. “We are only poor people,” they said, “and we are terribly taxed. We have to till the soil to feed ourselves and the Osmanli Pashas, and there is no time to learn to read or write.” In many parts of the country to such an extent do they have “to feed the Osmanli Pashas,” that they scarcely get ought to eat themselves. It is the old tale of cruelty and oppression, of extortion and corruption.

The regard shown by the poor villagers of Munkat for these inscribed stones is not by any means uncommon, a great reverence for writing being innate in all Arab peoples. I once had an Arab servant, himself perfectly illiterate, who treasured a torn manuscript copy of the ‘Arabian Nights.’ Its contents he did not know, nor had he ever taken the trouble to find out: that it was a _book_ was sufficient for him, and he carried it about as a sort of talisman. In spite of its good luck, it did not keep him out of prison, when one day he helped himself to things that weren’t his.

One of the most beautiful sights to be seen upon the plateau of the Yemen are the lizards—little creatures of gorgeous metallic blue, now pale turquoise, now transparent sapphire, as the sunlight dances on their backs. In no other part of the world have I come across such gorgeously coloured reptiles, although I have seen the same lizard, but less brilliant in hue, in the mountains of the Zarahoun, to the north of the road between Fez and Mequinez, in Morocco.

An hour or two more of winding path and we were in sight of Yerim, one of the principal towns of the Yemen, which but a short time before had been taken by the Arabs in the rebellion, and retaken by the very Ismail Pasha whose camp we had seen at Kátaba.