[p.68] Here begins the territory of Tayf, and of the Arab tribe of
Thekyf, who, in former times, were often at war with their neighbours
the Hodheyl. The Wady is denominated Mohram, from the circumstance, that
here the pilgrims and visitors going from the eastward to Mekka, invest
themselves with the ihram before noticed. There is a small ruined stone
tank close by the road. The caravan of the Yemen pilgrims, called Hadj
el Kebsy, whose route lies along these mountains, used always to observe
the ceremony here, and the tank was then filled with water for ablution.
The husbandmen of Mohram draw the water from their wells in leathern
buckets suspended from one end of an iron chain, passed round a pulley,
and to the other end they yoke a cow, which, for want of a wheel, walks
to a sufficient distance from the well to draw up the bucket, when she
is led back to resume the same course. The cows I saw here, like all
those of the Hedjaz, are small, but of a stout, bony make: they have
generally only short stumps of horns, and a hump on the back, just over
the shoulder, about five inches in height and six in length, much
resembling in this respect the cows which I saw on the borders of the
Nile in Nubia. According to the natives, the whole chain of mountains
from hence southward, as far as the country where the coffee-plantations
begin, is intersected by similar cultivated valleys at some distance
from each other, the intermediate space consisting chiefly of barren
rocky soil.