been funny had it not been so tense. They must have been a curious party, the three excessively English ladies: Gertrude off digging whenever she could, Elinor sifting through her rocks, while Freya wandered or sat writing, all against a gentle but incessant bickering, while fevers raged and the heat rose into the hundreds. The problem, for Freya, lay only with Gertrude, who minded very much who was in charge, and while she would not tolerate Freya interfering with her flints, spent much time meddling with what Freya called ‘human relations’. ‘I think’, noted Freya, ‘I shall emerge from this winter an anti-feminist , because really women might be a little nicer to each other: they practise none of the graces of life …’ The words are revealing. By the end of the thirties, Freya had very strong views as a traveller, she did find most women irritating and unquestionably preferred men, and, even so, only the deference which her upbringing had instilled in her to regard men with respect ever made them tolerable as travelling companions. Gertrude and Elinor were doomed.
At the beginning of March the party split up. Gertrude and Elinor set off thankfully back towardsCairo, while Freya decided on a last solitary exploration of South Arabia, a month’s ride along an unvisited incense route to the coast through the tribal borderlands of the west, to try to establish the whereabouts of the Himyaritic harbour of Cana, emporium of the incense trade. She left, perched high on a camel, under her sunshade. It was a gruelling 120-mile ride. Yet again she was not well, afflicted with what turned out to be dengue fever. At Azzan, still some twenty miles from her destination, she was warned against journeying alone through dangerous countryside, hostile to infidels. She made it to the coast by joining a well-armed caravan of twenty-seven camels, carrying tobacco, with a bodyguard of twelve soldiers and four relations of the Sultan of Azzan. She brought with her a lizard, named Himyar after his mountain home, clasped to her under a quilt.
Freya on her desert travels in the 1930s
At Balhaf, on the coast, a dismal, volcanic spot, the caravan unloaded the tobacco onto a boat. Freya was still some eight hours’ ride from her real objective, the town of Husn-el-Ghurab. She travelled on, having been promised a boat to carry her back to Balhaf. At Husn-el -Ghurab she found buildings, fortifications and cisterns, all consistent with its claims to be Cana, and noted ‘crocodile black snouts of lava, half submerged, push through … everywhere.Beyond, in a sea misty with sunlight, are the islands as the Peripeus describes them …’ While she was wandering in the town, the inhabitants gathered and began to threaten; there was talk of shooting; the boat had not turned up. Freya climbed back onto her camel and rode to Balhaf through the night. Before she left, while waiting to discuss her future with a deputation of village leaders, came a characteristic bit of bravado: ‘I was beyond anything else thirsty. “Are they sending the boat and the water?” I asked.
‘“They are sending the water, but no boat.” Their methods of warfare, I could not help feeling, compared favourably with those of Europe.
‘It was time to attend to the bewildered envoys. Diplomatically speaking, we had the situation in hand. “Welcome and ease.” I said. “When are you coming to shoot us?”’
Later, Freya described her expedition in
The Times
, and in a lecture to the Royal Geographical Society. Though others before her had suggested Husn-el-Ghurab for Cana, no one had produced such detailed and careful descriptions of the surrounding countryside. ‘The average Englishman’, wrote Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, the distinguished Arabist and diplomat, in a foreword to
A Winter in Arabia
, Freya’s book on the Hadhramaut, ‘is notblessed with an exaggerated sense of imagination in his dealings with other races, but it is to be hoped that all who read
At the beginning of March the party split up. Gertrude and Elinor set off thankfully back towardsCairo, while Freya decided on a last solitary exploration of South Arabia, a month’s ride along an unvisited incense route to the coast through the tribal borderlands of the west, to try to establish the whereabouts of the Himyaritic harbour of Cana, emporium of the incense trade. She left, perched high on a camel, under her sunshade. It was a gruelling 120-mile ride. Yet again she was not well, afflicted with what turned out to be dengue fever. At Azzan, still some twenty miles from her destination, she was warned against journeying alone through dangerous countryside, hostile to infidels. She made it to the coast by joining a well-armed caravan of twenty-seven camels, carrying tobacco, with a bodyguard of twelve soldiers and four relations of the Sultan of Azzan. She brought with her a lizard, named Himyar after his mountain home, clasped to her under a quilt.
Freya on her desert travels in the 1930s
At Balhaf, on the coast, a dismal, volcanic spot, the caravan unloaded the tobacco onto a boat. Freya was still some eight hours’ ride from her real objective, the town of Husn-el-Ghurab. She travelled on, having been promised a boat to carry her back to Balhaf. At Husn-el -Ghurab she found buildings, fortifications and cisterns, all consistent with its claims to be Cana, and noted ‘crocodile black snouts of lava, half submerged, push through … everywhere.Beyond, in a sea misty with sunlight, are the islands as the Peripeus describes them …’ While she was wandering in the town, the inhabitants gathered and began to threaten; there was talk of shooting; the boat had not turned up. Freya climbed back onto her camel and rode to Balhaf through the night. Before she left, while waiting to discuss her future with a deputation of village leaders, came a characteristic bit of bravado: ‘I was beyond anything else thirsty. “Are they sending the boat and the water?” I asked.
‘“They are sending the water, but no boat.” Their methods of warfare, I could not help feeling, compared favourably with those of Europe.
‘It was time to attend to the bewildered envoys. Diplomatically speaking, we had the situation in hand. “Welcome and ease.” I said. “When are you coming to shoot us?”’
Later, Freya described her expedition in
The Times
, and in a lecture to the Royal Geographical Society. Though others before her had suggested Husn-el-Ghurab for Cana, no one had produced such detailed and careful descriptions of the surrounding countryside. ‘The average Englishman’, wrote Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, the distinguished Arabist and diplomat, in a foreword to
A Winter in Arabia
, Freya’s book on the Hadhramaut, ‘is notblessed with an exaggerated sense of imagination in his dealings with other races, but it is to be hoped that all who read
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