And I must not omit to tell you that all their cattle, including horses, oxen, and camels, live upon small fish and nought besides, for ’tis all they get to eat.  You see in all this country there is no grass or forage of any kind; it is the driest country on the face of the earth.  The fish which are given to the cattle are very small, and during March, April, and May, are caught in such quantities as would astonish you.  They are then dried and stored, and the beasts are fed on them from year’s end to year’s end.  The cattle will also readily eat these fish all alive and just out of the water.[NOTE 4]

The people here have likewise many other kinds of fish of large size and good quality, exceedingly cheap; these they cut in pieces of about a pound each, and dry them in the sun, and then store them, and eat them all the year through, like so much biscuit.[NOTE 5]

NOTE 1.—­Shihr or Shehr, with the article, ES-SHEHR, still exists on the Arabian coast, as a town and district about 330 m. east of Aden.  In 1839 Captain Haines described the modern town as extending in a scattered manner for a mile along the shore, the population about 6000, and the trade considerable, producing duties to the amount of 5000_l._ a year.  It was then the residence of the Sultan of the Hamum tribe of Arabs.  There is only an open roadstead for anchorage.  Perhaps, however, the old city is to be looked for about ten miles to the westward, where there is another place bearing the same name, “once a thriving town, but now a desolate group of houses with an old fort, formerly the residence of the chief of the Kasaidi tribe.” (J.R.G.S. IX. 151-152.) Shehr is spoken of by Barbosa (Xaer in Lisbon ed.; Pecher in Ramusio; Xeher in Stanley; in the two last misplaced to the east of Dhofar):  “It is a very large place, and there is a great traffic in goods imported by the Moors of Cambaia, Chaul, Dabul, Batticala, and the cities of Malabar, such as cotton-stuffs ... strings of garnets, and many other stones of inferior value; also much rice and sugar, and spices of all sorts, with coco-nuts; ... their money they invest in horses for India, which are here very large and good.  Every one of them is worth in India 500 or 600 ducats.” (Ram. f. 292.) The name Shehr in some of the Oriental geographies, includes the whole coast up to Oman.

NOTE 2.—­The hills of the Shehr and Dhafar districts were the great source of produce of the Arabian frankincense.  Barbosa says of Shehr:  “They carry away much incense, which is produced at this place and in the interior; ... it is exported hence all over the world, and here it is used to pay ships with, for on the spot it is worth only 150 farthings the hundredweight.”  See note 2, ch. xxvii. supra; and next chapter, note 2.