The houses of the Hodheyl, to whom these plantations belong, are
scattered over the fields in clusters of four or five together. They are
small, built of stones and mud, but with more care than might be
expected from the rude hands of the occupants. Every dwelling comprises
three or four rooms, each of which being separated from the others by a
narrow open space, forms, as it were,

[p.67] a small detached cottage. These apartments receive no light but
from the entrance; they are very neat and clean, and contain Bedouin
furniture, some good carpets, woollen and leathern sacks, a few wooden
bowls, earthen coffee-pots, and a matchlock, of which great care is
taken, it being generally kept in a leathern case. At night I reposed
upon a large well-tanned cow-skin: the covering was formed of a number
of small sheep-skins neatly sewed together, similar to those used in
Nubia. The Hodheyl told me, that before the Wahabys came, and obliged
them to pay tribute for their fields, they knew no land-tax, but, on the
contrary, received yearly presents from the sherifs, and from all the
Mekkawys who passed this way to Tayf. Ras el Kora extends from east to
west about two and a half or three miles, and is about a mile in
breadth. According to the statements of the Arabs, many spots towards
the south, where Bedouin tribes, like the Hodheyl, cultivate the soil in
detached parts of the mountain, are equally fertile and beautiful as
that which we saw in the chain above mentioned.

We left the Ras, which will be remembered by me as long as I am sensible
to the charms of romantic scenery, and rode for about one hour over
uneven barren ground, with slight ascents and descents, till we came to
a steep declivity, to walk down which occupied us half an hour, and
double that time would be necessary for ascending it. The rock is
entirely composed of sand-stone. From the summit of the declivity just