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At this time we were daily expecting a vessel from Aden, which would bring us some letters and instruments that were on their way out from England, and saw the great Ugahden caravan preparing to leave, but were undecided what to do whether to go with them without our things from England, or wait and rely upon our strength in travelling alone.
I have tripped up in that way myself, but it was owing to the restrictions of a paternal Government, and not through lack of patience. Before I started serious exploration in the Aden hinterland I spent a year on the littoral plain getting in touch with the people and mastering the dialect.
During the proper seasons, Aden is well supplied with fruit; its trade in honey and wax might become very important, the adjacent countries yielding abundance of both, and of so fine a quality, as to compete with the produce of the hives of the Mediterranean. Drugs are procurable in equal abundance, together with perfumes and spices.
I then represented in Arabic that we had come from Aden, bearing the compliments of our Daulah or governor, and that we had entered Harar to see the light of H. H.'s countenance: this information concluded with a little speech, describing the changes of Political Agents in Arabia, and alluding to the friendship formerly existing between the English and the deceased chief Abubakr.
His son, El-Ashraf, later became lord of Chelat in Armenia, and his descendant, Masud, Kamil's son, obtained possession of happy Arabia; so that the name Malik Adil was pronounced in all the Moslem chancels from the borders of Georgia to the Gulf of Aden.
The divers coming the greatest distance were the negroes and Arabs from Aden and the Persian Gulf, most of whom landed at Colombo from trading steamers, and made their way by small boat or bullock hackery to the Cadjan City.
I also procured a supply of soda water at Aden. I had suffered much from the want of this refreshing beverage during my fever, the supply taken on board having been exhausted on the voyage up. The passengers down the Red Sea have the disadvantage of sailing with exhausted stores.
In more modern history Aden has been a part of Yemen, along whose shores we sailed for more than a day on the Red Sea. The lines from Milton's 'Paradise Lost, partly quoted before, "'As when to them who sail Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow Sabæan odors from the spicy shore Of Arabie the blest, alludes to this country.
We shall thus avoid the confined outlook which teaches Europeans in Asia Minor to look on Turks as typical Moslems to the exclusion of all others, or makes Anglo-Egyptians talk of country-folk in Egypt as Arabs and their language as the standard of Arabic, or engenders the Anglo-Indian tendency of regarding a scantily-dressed paramount chief from the Aden hinterland as an obscure jungliwala because, in civilised India, an eminent Moslem dresses in accordance with our conception of the part.
The necessity of mastering the Mediterranean and opening the Red Sea, closed to Christian vessels by Mohammedan bigotry, would have compelled the occupation of stations on either side of Egypt; and France would have been led step by step, as England has been led by the possession of India, to the seizure of points like Malta, Cyprus, Aden, in short, to a great sea power.
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