CHAPTER I.
ADEN.
There is not a breath of wind to stir the placid surface of the sea—not a breath to cause a draught upon the ship and cool us for a second. It is one of those terrible still tropical days, motionless, silent, oppressive. Nothing to hear but the hissing of the sea as the vessel’s bows plough up the turquoise water, and the thud, thud of her never-ceasing screw. Even the Lascars in their white clothes and bare feet, children of the sun as they are, seem downcast.
We are passing Perim. It lies on the port side, a dirty blot upon a scene of opalesque transparence, of shimmering water and palpitating sky.
A youth travelling round the world stretches himself, jots a few lines in his diary, and commences to tell the old story of the taking of Perim. But he is soon cried down, and silence reigns again.
On both sides we can see the land,—burning rock seen through a burning atmosphere. A number of flying-fish buzz over the surface of the water, and with a series of little splashes disappear once again.
* * * * *
A few hours later and Aden is in sight, with its broken and torn peaks and jagged outline. A little movement is noticeable amongst the passengers, but it is half-hearted at the best.
Then we enter the grand bay, surrounded by desolate rock and still more desolate desert, and drop anchor a mile or so off Steamer Point, as the shipping quarter of Aden is called.
The steamer is quickly surrounded. A few steam-launches, heavily awninged, screech their whistles; while a crowd of small boats manned by coal-black Somali boys, each striving to be the first upon the scene, crowd upon us. They are boatmen, divers, and sellers of curiosities—smart, bright little fellows, more than half nude, and as black as coal, many with their hair left long like the cords of a Russian poodle. Such a screaming and a yelling! Such a diving after small coins! Such a display of leopard-skins, antelope-horns, especially those of the lovely oryx, and ostrich-feathers, products of the opposite coast! A few dull austere Indians and Cingalese display embroideries and table-cloths, but the heat seems to depress them, just as it does the buyers.
[Illustration: TOMB AND MOSQUE OF SHEIKH OTHMAN, NEAR ADEN.]
It is a wonderful sight to watch the divers, balanced on the gunwales of the boats, their hands above their heads, watching eagerly for the tiny splash of a small coin, then breaking the water into a series of dancing circles as their dusky bodies disappear into the transparent blue. One can see them too under water, turning like fishes in search of the slowly sinking money. When the excitement had worn off, and those passengers who cared to brave the sun’s terrific rays by taking a short run ashore had left, I hailed a boy, who, with the aid of Abdurrahman, my ever-faithful Arab servant from Morocco, stowed my luggage into the boat. Then I said good-bye to the P. and O. steamer, and was rowed ashore.
[Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF ADEN AND ITS SURROUNDINGS
To Illustrate Mr. W. B. Harris’ “A Journey through the Yemen”
W. & A. K. Johnston. Edinburgh & London.]
At some steps leading to a galvanised-iron-roofed landing-place I stepped ashore. What a scene of desolation and dreariness Aden presents to the new-comer! and how soon one gets to like the place in spite of it all! A background of dreary blackish rock, a sandy road, half-a-dozen rickety _gharies_ under the shelter of a hideous iron-roofing, with sleepy little ponies and still more sleepy Somali drivers; a whitewashed domed saint’s tomb, with an apology for a garden on each side, in which a few weary-looking plants were trying to appear green under a thick coating of dust and a sweltering sun; a long crescent of badly built houses, with the exception of the handsome Aden Bank buildings, faced by an expanse of sand and black palings,—and that is Steamer Point, as one first sees it. But as the sun sinks low a figure or two appear, and toward sunset the place wears a gay and flourishing appearance.
Getting my baggage into a hand-cart, I set off for the hotel, where at least was shade and tolerable coolness, say some 90° Fahrenheit. But in spite of its dreary aspect, in spite of the dull monotony of its colouring, one gets quite fond of Aden. The cheery hospitality of the garrison, the gorgeous early mornings and evenings, the delicious warm January nights, the club, the verandahs of which are laved by the sea, the white hulls of the men-of-war in the bay, and the pleasant evenings spent under their awnings, dispel all the unfavourable impressions which are at first so numerous and apparent. In a few days one has forgotten that the whole place, from the top of Sham-sham down to the sandy isthmus, is all a volcanic hideosity; one has forgotten that the whole is so impregnated with salt as to almost forbid any verdure to grow, and that, should it by chance take root, the sun is there to kill it. One sees after a time only the picturesqueness of the place,—the strange torn mountain-peaks; the gay thronging crowd of many nationalities all bent on their several businesses, except the Jews, who seem bent upon everybody else’s; and the Somalis, who are as indifferent to the general world as they are to the heat, excepting when a passing steamer lands for an hour or two a flock of extraordinarily habited travellers—and then the cabs fly backwards and forwards, the ponies kicking up the dust, their feet rattling along the hard roads and making almost as much noise as the cracking of the jehus’ whips; then the Jews, the money-changers, pass and repass, spilling their coins one by one from hand to hand, until the very jingling drives one frantic; and the black urchins, who have learnt English enough to lie with facility, and to beg, worry, and bother until they are paid to go away, appear. Then the curio-seller, be he Greek or Jew or swarthy Indian, creeps out from amongst his moth-eaten lion and leopard skins and his boxes of stale “Turkish delight,” and with outstretched hands bids the traveller enter. Then, too, there is the jingling of long tumblers on the wide verandah of the hotel, and a crowd of boats in readiness at the landing-place. Just like a flock of locusts they come and stay their hour or two, and just like a flock of locusts they go, some outward bound, some returning home; and Steamer Point is itself again.
Often as Aden has been described, it is necessary here to make some mention of its various sights and the varied scenes it presents; for, as part and parcel of the Yemen, it cannot be passed over in a book that attempts to deal with that country. If, however, the reader has been there, or has read more pretentious accounts of it, let him skip it over.
Hated, spoken of as typical of the infernal regions, ugly as it is, Aden perhaps can claim an antiquity and an importance throughout all history unparalleled, for its size and its situation, in the annals of the world. When countries, now the centres of vast civilisations, consisted of primeval forests, inhabited by almost primeval man, and filled with wild beasts, Aden was an emporium of trade. With every possible natural disadvantage, except its harbour and its situation, it was inhabited by merchants, who collected and reshipped by vessel and by caravan the wealth of many lands. Africa, India, the Persian Gulf, poured on to the arid volcanic rock their gold and their purples, their spices and their precious stones.
“Arabia, and all the princes of Kedar, they occupied with thee in lambs, and rams, and goats: in these were they thy merchants. The merchants of Sheba and Raamah, they were thy merchants: they occupied in thy fairs with chief of all spices, and with all precious stones, and gold. Haran, and Canneh, and _Eden_, the merchants of Sheba, Asshur, and Chilmad, were thy merchants.”[31] There is no doubt in the minds of competent authorities that the place here referred to as Eden is none other than Aden, while many other of the names mentioned have been identified with ruins and towns of modern Arabia; but of this more anon.
Ibn Khaldun, in his geographical notes on the Yemen, writing in the eighth century A.H., mentions the extreme antiquity of Aden, speaking of it as a place of importance in the time of the Tubbas, who were the kings descended from Himyar, son of Abd esh-Shems, great-grandson of Kahtan, said to be the Joktan of the Jewish Scriptures, the founder of the oldest authentic tribes in the Yemen; for although they migrated to that country, there are no remains to be traced of the inhabitants who were there before them.
Returning to more historical times, we find that during the reigns of one of the Cæsars, probably Claudius, Aden was destroyed by the Romans,[32] probably in order to divert the trade of India to the ports which Ælius Gallus had founded on the shores of the Red Sea, to which Aden proved, no doubt, a formidable rival. Later we find it conquered by the army of Constantine, and re-named Emporium Romanum.
Returning once more to oriental sources, we find the place split up by the wars and factions which were so constant throughout the Yemen, and Aden several times was besieged and conquered. Most important, perhaps, of these early monarchs was the line of Hamdani princes, who, descended from the Beni Zuray, held it from about 440 A.H. with many ups and downs of fortune, until in A.H. 569 it was conquered by the troops of Turan Shah of the Ayyubite dynasty of Egypt.
In 1487, some three hundred years after the accession of the Ayyubite Sultans over Aden, a period of continued strife, we find the place visited by a Portuguese by name John Pedro de Covilham. This expedition was organised to explore that quarter of the globe after an ambassador had been sent to Florence by the Christian King of Abyssinia whom we have learned to know by the name of Prester John. Covilham eventually ended his days at Shoa, at the Court of Iskander, or Alexander, the then reigning prince.
From the next European, however, who visited Aden we have a more succinct account, though unfortunately his work upon the subject of his travels[33] is so taken up with personal narrative, and his names are so unreliable, that it is with some difficulty that historical events are recognised. I refer to Ludovico de Barthema, known also as Vertomanus, who travelled in Arabia about the year 1504.
Albuquerque’s attack upon Aden forms one of the most interesting items in its history, and short notice must be taken of it here. The sovereign of Abyssinia at this epoch was a Christian, Queen Helena by name, who, wishing to obtain assistance by which to keep off the Arab invasions into her own country, sent an Armenian envoy to the Court of Lisbon. After wandering about in a somewhat vague way for several years—he went _viâ_ India, where he was detained twenty-three months—he at length, in 1513, arrived at Lisbon. He found on his arrival that an expedition was already organised to carry out the proposals he was bringing from his queen, and in command of which Alphonso de Albuquerque left India in February of the same year with two thousand five hundred men, two-thirds of them Portuguese, the rest Indians. On Easter eve they arrived at Aden, and at once attacked the place. After a siege of four days further efforts were found to be useless; and bombarding the town, and destroying the native shipping, the Portuguese flotilla sailed for the Red Sea. A second attempt on the part of Albuquerque to take Aden the following spring again failed, owing to the fact that it had meanwhile been refortified.
A few years later, in 1516 A.D., Aden was again besieged, this time by an expedition sent from Egypt under Raïs Suleiman; but the city was again found to be impregnable, and the attacking force suffered very considerable loss. However, so weakened had the fortifications been by these repeated attacks, that when Soarez arrived shortly afterwards, the governor surrendered the place into his hands; but on the Portuguese attempting to follow and capture Suleiman’s fleet, the governor made haste to repair the fortifications, and on Soarez’s return he found himself baffled, and Aden more firmly in the hands of the Amir Morjaun than ever.
Meanwhile Suleiman had organised an enormous fleet, with part of which he visited Aden. The city was taken by treachery; for the governor, having been enticed on board the ships, was hung, and soldiers landed on beds under the pretence that they were sick men. In 1551 the inhabitants, oppressed by the cruel representatives left by Suleiman, rebelled, and ceded Aden to the Portuguese.
It is not for nearly fifty years later than this date that we find the English in these seas. On the 8th April 1609 a ship belonging to the East India Company, by name the Ascension, visited Aden. Received with every possible courtesy, the captain was, when once safely in the hands of the governor, entrapped and imprisoned, and only allowed to leave Aden after paying heavy fines in goods and money. A year later the Darling and the Peppercorn arrived, under the command of Admiral Sir Henry Middleton. On the Darling proceeding to Mokha, the crew of the Peppercorn were treacherously seized and detained in prison.
The Dutch were the next to appear upon the scene, Van den Broeck arriving with a fleet in 1614, in order to found trading relations between the natives and the Dutch East India Company. Their overtures were exceedingly well received by the officials, but the jealousy of the more influential native merchants prevented their being able to come to any satisfactory arrangement. From this period until the beginning of the present century Aden shared the ups and downs of fate that are so frequent in all oriental places; but as any account of these would prove tedious, they can very well be omitted. In 1802 we find Aden visited by Sir Home Popham, who, having failed in concluding a treaty with the Imam of Sanaa, was able to enter upon and carry through a commercial and amicable treaty with the then Sultan of Aden. As late as 1833 we find another example of the treachery of the natives of Aden. Turkchee Bilmas, as Mahammed Agha was nicknamed, after his series of extraordinary victories, having demanded and received the surrender of the governor of Aden, sent thither a mission of forty persons. They were well received, but during the night more than half their number were foully murdered, the rest escaping in miserable plight.
In 1835 steamers of the Indian Government having harboured in Aden, made use of it as a coaling-station; but it was, on account of the difficulty of obtaining labour, changed for Makulla, a port to the east on the Hadramaut coast. After, in 1837, being sacked by the Foudtheli tribe, the attention of the Indian Government was called to Aden by the fact that a ship flying British colours, the Deria Dowlat, being wrecked near that port, the vessel was looted, and the passengers, some of whom were native ladies of rank, insultingly treated. Captain Haines, in command of the war-sloop Coote, arrived in December, and laid a claim before the Sultan for twelve thousand dollars compensation. A plot being in the air to obtain possession of the person and papers of Captain Haines, he sailed for India, returning in October 1838 to enforce the carrying out of the cession of Aden in return for an annual payment to the Sultan of nearly nine thousand dollars a-year. Having been insultingly treated, Captain Haines commenced to blockade the port, until, in January 1839, H.M.S. Volage and H.M.S. Cruizer arrived upon the scene. A message to surrender being left unanswered, the town was bombarded and taken, the Sultan and his family escaping to Lahej, a city some thirty miles in the interior. The capture of Aden is curious as being the first addition to the Empire made during the reign of Queen Victoria.
It is wonderful to notice how soon it became apparent to the natives that they had nothing to fear from the British occupation; but, in spite of this feeling of satisfaction in the eyes of the lower-class natives and the merchants, the chiefs of the Abdali tribe, in spite of solemn bonds to the contrary, attempted to retake the place. In this they failed, and, exasperated at their want of success, commenced a series of depredations upon the caravans and local property of Arabs residing in Aden. After a severe struggle in 1841, in which two Arab forts on the mainland were destroyed by the British troops, affairs remained in a more peaceful condition until, in 1846, Seyed Ismail, a fanatical Shereef, preached a holy war and the retaking of Aden from the infidels. Augmented by many local tribes, three separate attempts were made upon Aden, each of which was successfully repulsed. Like all such failures in the East, the Seyed was stamped as an impostor, and, his army having dissolved, he was killed by a Bedouin in 1848. In 1850 the crew of a man-of-war’s boat landing on the north side of the bay was attacked, and some of the number were wounded, one man being killed. A still more melancholy affair happened in February 1851, when a shooting-party was attacked at the village of Wáhat, of whom Captain Milne was killed and several others badly wounded. A series of like depredations and outrages continued to take place, until in 1858 an attack was made upon the Arabs and the battle of Sheikh Othman fought, which ended in the blowing up of the fort and the village, and the opening of negotiations for a friendly understanding between the British Government and the Abdali Sultan.
From this time on affairs became more quiet; but on the Turks conquering the interior of the Yemen in 1872—they had held a firm footing on the Red Sea coast before this period—it was found necessary to demand the withdrawal of the Osmanli forces from the tribe lands surrounding Aden. At this epoch, too, Little Aden, a sister peninsula which forms the western shore of the Aden bay, was purchased, and in 1883 British territory was extended across the isthmus, by which arrangement the entire shores of the harbour fell under the jurisdiction of the British Government. Included in this deed of purchase is the village of Sheikh Othman, now a flourishing little township, with a police station and a clock tower dominating its principal square. Bungalows have been built there and gardens laid out, and Sheikh Othman to-day presents quite a prosperous appearance, though the less said about its inhabitants, for the most part Arab dancing-girls, the better.
Thus, then, the extent of territory in the possession of the British Government in the vicinity of Aden may be described as follows: Aden on the east, Little Aden on the west, and an intermediate strip along the north shore of the bay; the total area forming some seventy square miles. Of these, Aden alone is fortified.
The peninsula is situated one hundred and twenty miles from the Straits of Bab el-Mandeb, in latitude 12° 47′ N., and longitude 45° E. It is five miles in length and three in breadth, and consists of hills of bare grey-black rock, the highest of which, Jibel Sham-sham, reaches an altitude of nearly eighteen hundred feet above the sea-level. The volcanic origin of the place is clearly demonstrated by the fact that there exists a large crater, which, owing to the broken spurs of rock by which it is surrounded, renders a greater portion of the peninsula uninhabitable. However, in such parts as are suitable for building the most has been made, and an extraordinary number of people find room to exist upon the barren rock, which of itself produces none of the necessities of life. Including the population of Sheikh Othman, the census return in 1891 was over thirty-eight thousand, whereas at the time of the British conquest in 1839 the population numbered only some six thousand.
The greater portion of the population consists of Arabs and Somalis. The Arabs are for the most part labourers, ship-coalers, and some shopkeepers and traders. The Somalis prefer the lighter trade of cab-driving, the rowing of small boats, and such work. They seem perfectly incapable of stationary labour, and unable to conquer their nomad traits. Almost every nationality is found in Aden: besides the Europeans there are Hindus, Parsees, Turks, Egyptian Arabs, Persians, Chinese, Seedy boys, Abyssinians, Jews, and many natives of India of different types and classes. Principal amongst the British Indian subjects are the Parsees, who act as agents and shopkeepers, in which professions they equal the meanness—or shall I call it business talent—of the Jews. One sees them everywhere with their long white flimsy garments and curious head-gear resembling a coal-scuttle. They have brought to Aden a spark of the ever-living fire of Bombay, and have established themselves there with their temples and womenfolk, and are annexing a very considerable proportion of the trade.
The peninsula of Aden boasts two towns and an important village. The former are Aden proper, situated on the level bottom of the crater, and Tawahi, at Steamer Point, which contains some seven hundred houses, inhabited for the most part by those who gain a livelihood dependent upon the shipping. The large town of Aden proper contains some eighteen thousand inhabitants. The principal village is Maala, where the native craft, strange dhows and _bugalas_, anchor; and here nearly all the native trade is shipped or landed, as the case may be.
Before entering upon any description of Aden as it appears to the traveller of to-day, it may be as well to finish such statistics as are necessary here. First, as to the anchorage that Aden affords to shipping. The bay, which attains its greatest length almost due east and west, consists of two distinct portions, the inner and the outer harbour. The former, almost landlocked, extends to a length of some five miles, while the latter is the large portion lying between Little Aden and Aden. The depth varies from three to five fathoms in the western bay and at the entrance, while a couple of miles outside ten and twelve fathoms can be found. A small island in the inner harbour, opposite Tawahi, serves the purpose of a quarantine station. Very considerable improvements have lately been carried out, and the depth of certain anchorage in the inner bay successfully increased by aid of a large dredger—a veritable eyesore amongst the strange and picturesque native craft with which at certain times the bay is crowded. The larger steamers, such as the P. and O. and the Messageries Maritimes, lie at some distance from the shore, toward the mouth of the harbour; but the British India, Austrian Lloyd’s, and several other important lines, bring their ships in close under Steamer Point. This, however, is due to the fact that they usually remain a longer time there, and that it affords them greater and cheaper facilities for coaling.
It is, of course, as a coaling-station that Aden is most renowned. In 1891 some 165,000 tons were imported, which, together with the other trade of the colony, brings the value of imports and exports up to a sum of over five millions sterling per annum. What result the opening of the coaling-station on the island of Perim may have on the coal trade of Aden remains yet to be seen, but it seems improbable that, as was said at the time, it will ever become a more important place than the other.
Apart from the commerce in coal, there is by no means an unimportant trade carried on with the neighbouring coasts of Arabia, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the African coast. This is principally in the hands of native merchants, and a very considerable quantity of the cargo is transported in native sailing craft. The chief articles are hides, coffee, feathers, gums, dyes, spices and perfumes, silk, and mother-of-pearl shells and ivory.
The coffee trade which now finds its outlet at Aden was formerly almost entirely in the hands of the Mokha and Hodaidah merchants; but the former town is now deserted, and the heavy dues of the Turkish authorities at the latter have diverted a large part of the coffee to Aden, a free port, although a considerable amount is still shipped from Hodaidah to Aden by sea. The coffee which reaches Aden direct is brought down by caravan from the highlands of the interior and sold to the Aden merchants. A very considerable quantity is also brought across from the African coast, shipped almost entirely from Zeilah, one of the Somali ports, to which spot it is brought on camels from the highlands of Harrar and the Galla country, all of which is practically suitable to the growth of the coffee tree, which necessitates a high altitude above the level of the sea. The ostrich-feathers are the produce of Somali and the Donakil country. Mother-of-pearl shells are brought from the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea fisheries, and ivory from Somali-land and Abyssinia. The food for the garrison is imported from the African coast and from Arabia. Sheep and goats are weekly shipped in large quantities from Berbera, Bulhar, and Zeilah; while oxen, vegetables, fodder, and fuel are brought in by camel-caravan from Lahej and the surrounding country.
What, however, astonishes one about Aden is the fact that it has no local industries. All skilled labour has to be imported from China or India; while even such simple trades as mat-making, boat-building, and suchlike are almost neglected.
The climate of Aden is by no means so bad as it is generally described to be, and I believe that statistical returns give a very fair average of health there. The temperature for the whole year averages about 85° Fahr. in the shade, the extremes being 72° and 102°. During my visit the thermometer only once rose above 90°, and then only for a short period, and once fell as low as 74°. The sky during the winter months is unclouded, and the climate may be said to be delightful, though great care must be taken not to get chilled at sundown. Early in June the south-west monsoon breaks. Damp and unpleasant as this ocean wind may seem, it is the sole cause that renders Aden inhabitable for Europeans during the summer. The changes of the monsoon, May and September, are the worst periods in the year, the thermometer often varying only between 100° in the day and 90° at night! The rainfall of Aden is very changeable, in some years rising to eight inches, in others being only one-fourth of an inch; but it is sufficient to keep alive a few plants, that do their little best to break the monotony of the dull rocks. After a shower the valleys sometimes wear quite a green appearance, but as a rule this does not last long, for the sun and dust soon dry them up again. However, it is said that there are no less than one hundred and thirty species, of over forty different orders, the most common being _Euphorbiaceæ_, the _Acacia eburnea_, _Caparidiciæ_, and the lovely _Adenum obesum_. A few wild dogs, jackals, and foxes can be found in the rocky valleys; and birds are common—kites, hawks, flycatchers, and wagtails being permanent residents, while many species pay the place an occasional visit.[34]
Having thus briefly run through the statistics of Aden to such an extent as I deem necessary for a work of this kind, I will continue with the personal narrative of my journey, and, having exhausted my books of reference, describe Aden as it appeared to me.
I have said elsewhere that the terrible feeling of oppression soon wears off, and that, after only a few days’ residence in the place, one has forgotten how truly desolate and dreary are the great brown peaks that rear their heads so far above one on all sides. I never was in a place that so shocks one at first, and yet which one so quickly comes to like. It took only a day or two to shake off the feeling of the hideous barrenness of the place; and having made a few friends, I soon began to perceive how charming life can be made with all the disadvantages of such surroundings and climate as Aden possesses.
The club, the very verandahs of which are laved by the sea-waves, is one of the best of its kind in the East; and many a pleasant evening I spent there, listening now and again to a military band which once a-week discourses sweet music in its precincts. Pleasantest amongst many pleasant recollections of Aden is the kindness I was shown by all with whom I came in contact—kindness that extended not only to entertaining, but in rendering me great service in arranging my journey into the interior of the Yemen. I cannot here attempt to thank all those who took pity on a stranger, but I must not pass on without saying how grateful I am to General Jopp, H.M. Political Resident, and to Colonel Stace, C.B., Assistant-Resident, for their many kindnesses.
As soon as I had settled in at my hotel and rested a day to study my whereabouts, I set to work to see the sights of the place. Fortunately they are not very many, though some of them, such as the street scenes in the bazaars, one can never tire of looking at. Our hotel, too, was a “sight.” It was full of curiosities, from the exceedingly stout and none too clean Greek who kept the place, to the dirtiest of dirty kitchens I ever saw. The centre courtyard, surrounded by a rickety balcony, had once been used as a _café-chantant_, and the stage and framework still remained, festooned with cobwebs. Below, the Greek kept a curiosity-shop, which seemed principally to contain moth-eaten skins of what once may have been wild beasts, and rusty Somali spears. His “Turkish delight” was good. I found he sold it to my servant at exactly half the price he charged me, so I made Abdurrahman buy it in future, and between us and Saïd, my Yemen man, we did a large business with him. However, on the whole, the place was inhabitable, and in a climate like Aden one lives mostly out of doors on the verandahs.
My first stroll to see the sights was confined to the little town of Tawahi, in which the hotel was situated, and which is generally known under the more general designation of Steamer Point. There is little to see in this quarter, though a crowd of natives lying out on their long wood-and-string beds in front of the tiny _cafés_, smoking the murmuring hubble-bubble, is always a picturesque sight. But it is only in the back streets that one finds this, the front of the town being faced with what is called Prince of Wales Crescent—in other words, a semicircle of ill-built stucco houses, with the exception of the handsome offices of Messrs Luke, Thomas, & Co., to whose representative, Mr Vidal, I am under many obligations for kindness. Facing these hideosities of houses is an open sandy space, in which a few young palm-trees, caged and coddled, were trying to grow. A row of black palings divides this sandy space from the beach. A hideous cab-stand of galvanised iron roofing does not add to the picturesqueness of the scene; nor, for the matter of that, does the thin filmy coal-dust that so often floats upon the breeze, to dirty one’s white clothes and render life gritty and unbearable. Yet in spite of this depressing view—in spite of the bare rocks that rise above the town—all my recollections of Tawahi are pleasant.
Having explored this little township, which can be done comfortably in half an hour, I entered upon a longer undertaking,—I chartered a rickety conveyance and drove to Aden proper. The town lies in the centre of the crater of an extinct volcano, and one cannot help thinking how unpleasant it would be for the inhabitants did the eruption that must once have taken place recommence.
[Illustration: _Main Pass, Aden._]
Driving from Steamer Point to Aden, a distance of some four or five miles, is by no means an exciting process, although one’s nerves are kept in constant tension by the extraordinary evolutions of the cab, and the thought that at any moment it may fall to pieces—ditto the pony, which a Somali jehu on the box causes by aid of his whip to keep up to a gallop. Through the pass of Hedfaf, along the flat that leads to the village of Maala—its harbour crowded with native craft, while Arab sailors sit mending the sails on the beach—away up the winding road to the Main Pass, a zigzag cutting between high walls of rock, then down again, until, issuing from the tunnel-like pass, one sees the town of Aden before one’s eyes—a great white block, broken up by the streets that run at right angles to one another, and disfigured by hideous barracks and Government offices. The plain in which the town lies, being in reality the floor of the crater, is almost a circle, from which torn and ragged spurs of rock rise on all sides, except where through a gap one can catch a glimpse of the sea and Seerah island, until they join in the peaks of Sham-sham and its neighbours. There is but little to attract the eye about the desolate prospect, except the relief afforded by the clean white town. Away on one of the hill-tops stands a tower. Like the Towers of Silence at Bombay, it serves as the scene of the strange funeral rites of the Parsees; and here the birds of prey congregate to devour the corpse, too impure to defile fire or earth or water.
But the sight of all Aden is the tanks. I remember long before I visited Aden listening one evening during a long sea-voyage to an old ship’s-carpenter discoursing on the Bible. “The Garden of Eden!” he said; “why, of course it’s true! It’s Aden to-day, and there’s the tanks to prove it. I seed ’em with my own eyes.” However, in spite of the dear old man’s religious beliefs being strengthened by having seen the famous Aden tanks, I fear they can claim no such antiquity as that with which he connected them. In all probability these great reservoirs were built at the time of the second Persian invasion, in the seventh century A.D. In this case the tanks at Aden are much later in date than many of those existing in Southern Arabia, of which the most important was, without doubt, the great dam of Mareb, or Sheba as we know it. Although I was not fortunate enough in my travels in the Yemen to be able to reach the ruins of this extraordinary work, I think that a few words upon the subject may not be out of place here.
The dam of Mareb was built probably some 1700 years B.C. by Lokman the Adite, though some authorities attribute its construction to Abd esh-shems, father of Himyar, founder of the Himyaric dynasty, and great-grandson of Kahtan—Joktan of the Hebrew Scriptures. Monsieur d’Arnaud, who visited Saba in 1843, describes the ruins of the dam. He says that it consisted of an enormous wall, two miles long and one hundred and seventy-five paces wide, connecting two hills. Dikes allowed the water to escape for the irrigation of the plain below. These openings are at different levels, so as to render practicable a supply of water at whatever height the contents of the reservoir might stand. The destruction of this great work took place probably about a hundred years after the birth of Christ; but although the catastrophe is referred to in the Koran, no certain date can be affixed to its occurrence. The fact that it stood the enormous pressure of water which must have constantly been present for some seventeen hundred years, testifies to the immensity and solidity of its construction.
The tanks at Aden cannot, of course, compare with the dam of Mareb, yet they are in their way colossal undertakings, and the labour and time expended in their construction must have been enormous. They number about fifty altogether, and if in working order, would be capable of holding upwards of thirty million gallons. We know that at the time of the invasion of Raïs Suleiman in 1538, the inhabitants of Aden were entirely dependent upon these great cisterns for their water-supply. On Captain Haines visiting Aden in 1835, he found several of the tanks in use, but many were filled up with the _debris_ that the torrents had washed from the mountains above.
In 1856 the restoration of the tanks was commenced, and now thirteen are in working order, capable of holding nearly eight million gallons of water. Their site is well chosen. They lie above the town, immediately under the high rocks that form the foot of Jibel Sham-sham, and in such a position that all the drainage of the rain-water is accumulated into channels, and poured into the succession of cisterns that lie one above another.
The tanks are formed in various ways: some are cut into the solid bed of the rock, which is covered with a hard polished cement; others are dams built across the ravine; while a third variety of shape is formed by angles in the precipices being made use of, two of the walls of the cistern perhaps being the natural stone, and the others formed of masonry. The upper tanks are the first filled, the lower for the most part being supplied from the overflow of those above. In spite of the enormous space to contain the water and the slight rainfall of Aden, a series of heavy showers will not only fill the tanks, but cause an overflow stream of such bulk that very considerable damage has at times been caused by it, as it poured along its channel through the town to the sea.
It was upon these tanks and a few poor wells that Aden at one time depended entirely for water, until in fact, in the fifteenth century, when Abdul Wahab constructed the aqueduct that brought water from Bir Ahmed into the town.
Beyond these tanks there is but little to see of the long-past glories of old Aden; nor have the Arabs displayed in their modern buildings, with the exception of one decorative mosque, any attempt at architectural beauty. Mons. de Merveille, who visited Aden in 1708, has left a description of the ruins of wonderful marble baths that he saw at that time; but no remains of these are known to exist to-day, nor is there any trace of the mosque built by Yasir or the pulpit of the Day Imran. In fact, beyond the tanks, its historical traditions, and the strange peoples who flock its streets, Aden can claim but little to interest the traveller.
What a sight the bazaars of Aden present of an evening! Often and often I would drive out just to spend the last hour or two of daylight in idly sauntering through its streets. What strange peoples are to be seen there! Indians gorgeous in scarlet and gold and tinsel; Somalis in their plain white _tobes_, their hair left long and hanging like the cords of a Russian poodle on either side of their heads, and often their raven locks are dyed a strange brick-dust red colour by a clay they smear over them; Arabs, too, with long black silky curls bursting from under their small turbans, nude fellows, except for their loin-cloth of native-dyed indigo cotton, the colour of which clings to their copper skins with strange effect; creeping, crawling Jews; niggers from Zanzibar; Persians and Arabs from Bagdad; Parsees and Greeks.
Then is the time, when the heat of the day is over, to seek some _café_ at the corner of a street, and watch the people pass. Here at a table four Somali warriors, glorious in their very blackness, are playing dominoes with the manners of _bourgeois_ on the boulevards; there a group of Arabs are chatting over a hubble-bubble pipe, the mouthpiece of which they pass one to another, over cups of the husks of the coffee-berry, their favourite beverage.
Great strings of camels pass and repass in the street. Rickety cabs rattle along, the drivers calling to the crowd to make way; and throughout the whole permeates Tommy Atkins, sublime in his self-consciousness, and a very good fellow withal. Ay, the bazaars of an evening are a sight to be seen,—a collection of strange peoples, only to be equalled perhaps on the bridge between Stamboul and Galata at Constantinople.
There remains but one more sight to see in Aden, the tunnel that connects the town with the isthmus, and which passes under the Munsoorie hills. This excavation is three hundred and fifty yards in length, and is lit throughout with artificial lights. It is sufficiently high and wide to allow of carriage and caravan traffic. A second tunnel connects two separate portions of the isthmus lines.
Immense improvements have lately been carried out in the fortifications of Aden, and during the time of the writer’s visit several new forts were being erected. There is no doubt that the strategic position of the peninsula justifies a large expenditure upon its defences. The immense value it would prove in time of war as a coaling-station cannot be overrated. At the present period its garrison consists of the Aden troop of cavalry, three batteries of the Royal Artillery, one regiment of British infantry, one regiment of native infantry, and one company of sappers; while in the bay lies a gunboat and a transport steamer of the Indian marine. The troops are spread over the peninsula, the cavalry having lines on the isthmus itself. Altogether, when the new fortifications are completed, Aden may be said to be, both as regards its defensive powers and in its commercial character, one of the most successful spots in the world.