aroundworldortra00peebiala-1

CHAPTER XVIII.
FEOM INDIA TO AEABIA. — ADEN AND THE ABABS.
The usual sailing distance from Bombay across the Indian
Ocean to Aden, a seacoast city of Arabia, is some seventeen
hundred miles ; but our Austrian captain commanding thq
steamer " Aretusa," considering the fierceness of the monsoons
at this season, decided upon the southern course,
making the route full twenty-five hundred miles, and subjecting
us to an eighteen-days' drag upon the deep
This Aden in " Araby the Blest " is
called the " Gibraltar
of the East," because so thoroughly fortified, and consequently
prepared to manage any military movements on the
Red Sea. Though once held by the Portuguese, afterwards
by the Turks, and now by the English, it has ever, been a
city of sand, nestling at the feet of volcanic peaks, and
destitute of vegetation, even to a blade of grass.
Dreary and desert-looking, Aden claims a population of
twenty thousand; the cantonment portion of which, being
five miles from the landing, is cozily located in the crescentshaped
crater of an old, extinct volcano. It is a great mart
for ostrich-feathers. Rumor declares that it rains here but
once in three years.
Owing to the protracted droughts, those holding this
barren place
in the sixth century excavated immense reservoirs
in the rocks at the foot of the mountains, for the tardy
yet heavy rains to fill. Still in preservation, and called the
" ten tanks," they are largely utilized to supply the present
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