186	ARABIA INFELIX
made the ^cdowlah^3 or local governor pay up, besides reducing duties from 3 to 2}^ per cent.
Mokha was the last town in Yamen held by the Turks at the close of their first occupation. They must have been a lively lot there—we hear of the fumigation of Indian subjects, with sulphur, to extort money—this combination of hygienic principles with profit is a truly oriental touch.
Under Arab rule aliens fared better. Niebuhr's expedition of 1763 was well received, though ill-fated, for all but Niebuhr died of disease or accident.
Early in the nineteenth century, Pringle, the British representative at Mokha, visited the Imam's court at Sanaa, and was received with courtesy.
After the return of Turkish rule in 1849, ^^en travellers again were exposed to annoyance and disaster. .Deflers, the French botanist, was harried by the Vali at Sanaa in '89, though he received friendly treatment elsewhere in the vilayet, and was travelling under firman.
Harris, who entered in disguise from the Aden frontier in '91, was seized at Sanaa and sent down a prisoner at Hodeida ; so was Wavell, who went up from Hodeida in disguise in 1910. Burckhardt and Benzoni were murdered near Odein, the same year, by Arabs, who are said to have mistaken them for Turks.
The European staff of the Hodeida-Sanaa railway scheme were in the country to serve the interests of the Ottoman Empire. Even it complained of lukewarm co-operation on the part of the local authorities, though, I think, it failed to realize the difficulties confronting them, and the slight amount of control they really, exercised.