An Account of the British Settlement of Aden in Arabia

F.M. Hunter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781138988187
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136993817
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Geography
• Index: History

First published in 1877, the following monograph gives account of the settlement of Aden in six parts that include the records of the Adea Residency, a section on the author's personal experience, a map of the Peninsula, and a sketch map showing Kafilah routes.

AN ACCOUNT

OF THE

BRITISH SETTLEMENT OF ADEN.

PART I.—GEOGRAPHY AND GENERAL ASPECTS.

POSITION, LIMITS, AREA, AND POPULATION.—Aden is a peninsula situated on the south coast of the Province of Yemen in Arabia Felix, and is located in latitude 12° 47′ north, longitude 45° 10′ east.

The British territory includes the peninsula, and extends to a creek named Khor Maksar, about two miles to the northward of the defensive works across the Isthmus.

The adjoining peninsula of Jebel Ihsan, generally called Little Aden, is within British limits, as is also the harbour. The area of the land may be approximately stated at about thirty-five square miles. The population—exclusive of the garrison—was 19,289 in 1872.

The inhabited peninsula is about fifteen miles in circumference, of an irregular oval form, five miles in its greater and three in its lesser diameter; it is connected with the continent by a narrow neck of land 1350 yards in breadth, but which is in one place nearly covered by the sea at high spring-tides, in fact would be, were it not for a causeway constructed for the convenience of the land traffic, and the passage of the Shaikh O’thman Aqueduct.

PHYSICAL ASPECT.—Aden is a large crater formed of lofty precipitous hills, the highest peak of which has an altitude of 1775 feet; these, on the exterior sides, slope towards the sea, throwing out numerous spurs, which form a series of valleys, radiating from a common centre. A gap exists opposite the fortified island of Seerah, the position of which would induce the belief that the circle was at one time complete, but that some convulsion of nature produced the gap.

HARBOUR.—Bunder¹ Tawayyi or Aden West Bay, more generally known as Aden Back Bay, is formed by the peninsula of Jebel Ishsan on the west and Jebel Shum Shum on the east. It is about eight miles broad from east to west, by four miles deep; and is divided into two bays by a spit, which runs off half a mile to the southward of the small island of Aliyah: the entrance between Ras Salîl on the west and Ras Tarshyne on the east is three and a third miles in width. The depths of water in the Western Bay are from three to four fathoms, decreasing gradually towards the shore; across the entrance the depths are four and a half to five fathoms, and at a distance of two miles outside ten to twelve fathoms; bottom, sand and mud, both inside and outside the bay.

There are several islands in the inner bay; the eastern and principal, named Jazirah Sawayih,² is 300 feet high, and almost joined to the mainland at low-water springs; the others are named Marzuk Kabîr, Kais-al-Hamman, Kalfatain, and Faringi; on the sand-spit, at the north side of the entrance into the inner bay, are two small islets named Jamah Aliyah; opposite Ordnance Bay, about two cables distant from the shore, is the island Shaikh Ahmad or Flint Rock, with a channel of two fathoms.

GEOLOGICAL NOTES.³—The varieties of rock met with in both peninsulas are very numerous; there are perfectly compact lavas of brown, grey, and dark green tints, sometimes containing crystals of Anjite, and not unfrequently those of Sanidin, and there are rocks exhibiting every degree of vesicularity until we arrive at lavas resembling a coarse sponge, and passing into scoriæ. The vesicles are in some specimens globular, and in others flat and drawn out. In some places the lava is quite schistose, and might be easily taken for metamorphic rock. Volcanic breccias are also met with, as near the Main-pass, where fragments of dark green lava are imbedded in a reddish matrix. Tufas are also present, but apparently to a limited extent.

Pumice⁴ is found in many places, and is exported in considerable quantities to Bombay. Obsidian is to be met with occasionally in the seams. Secondary and accidental minerals are not numerous; Chalcedony is common, lining cavities in the rocks; and thin seams of Epidote occur, as also of Gypsum.

CLIMATE.—The climate during the north-east monsoon, or from October to April, is cool, and in the months of November, December, and January, pleasant and agreeable. During the remainder of the year hot sandy winds, known as ‘Shamal’ or north, indicating the direction from which they come, prevail within the crater; but on the western, or Steamer Point side, the breezes coming directly off the sea are fairly cool, and that locality is accordingly much preferred by European residents.

The months of May and September are especially disagreeable, those being the periods of the change of monsoons, when the wind almost entirely ceases, and the air is close and oppressive, more particularly during the earlier part of the night; towards morning a cool and refreshing land breeze generally springs up. Aden is not usually considered by medical men to be an unhealthy station, but it is a well-ascertained fact that long residence impairs the faculties and undermines the constitution of Europeans, and even natives of India suffer from the effects of too prolonged an abode in the Settlement. The prevalent diseases are malarious fever, generally contracted elsewhere, scurvy, dysentery, ulcers (supposed by some to be of a specific character), phthisis, and rheumatism. Experience has shown that in the case of Europeans, recovery from any disease, wound, or fracture, is very tedious, and it is advisable that patients should be removed to a more genial climate as soon as any signs of sinking or depression appear. It is only within the last three years that any attempt has been made to obtain an accurate register of the births and deaths that take place in the Settlement, and the result for the year 1875–76 is given in the accompanying Table:—

REGISTER OF DEATHS SHOWING RACES.

Note.—The deaths that take place in Aden are very greatly increased from the following abnormal causes:—Persons suffering from disease are brought in from the interior to be cured; others are landed during the pilgrim season with smallpox; if a European dies at sea in the vicinity he is brought into Aden to be buried; Somali mothers take no trouble with their children, and many die in infancy. It must be noticed, however, that the mortality in the case of Europeans, although much increased by the deaths amongst the passengers and crews of vessels, amounts to 23·2 per 1000 only. The total number of Europeans in the settlement, inclusive of military and followers, is upwards of 1300.

Too much reliance should not be placed on the thermometrical readings given in the subjoined statements, as there is no meteorological station,¹ and no one is intrusted with the particular duty of superintending the registration of meteorological phenomena. The average temperature during the year at the three military positions, based on the recorded observations of three years, is as follows:—

CAMP

ISTHMUS.

STEAMER POINT.

BOTANICAL NOTES.¹—The vegetation of Aden closely resembles that of Arabia Petræa; it is eminently of a desert character, the species being few in number (only 94), and being quite disproportioned to the number of general and natural orders. Most of the species are limited in the number of individuals, a few only of the more arid forms predominating. Dipterygium glaucum, six or seven species of Caparidaceæ, Reseda Amblyocarpa, Cassia pubescens and obovata, Acacia ebumea, and a few Euphorbiaceæ, are the only common plants, and some of these are so plentiful that in many places they abound to the exclusion of all others. All the species are more or less peculiar in their habits, and some are so strange as to constitute the anomalies of the natural orders to which they belong. As examples may be enumerated—Sphærocoma Hookeri, among Caryophyllaceæ, Adenium obesum, with its almost globular fleshy trunk, naked branchlets, bearing a tuft of leaves and umbel of beautiful flowers; Moringa aptera, in which the leaves are reduced to long sub-rigid raches; the prickly Jatropha spinosa, and, strangest of all, the Æluropus Arabicus, a grass with short spiny leaves. The bright green colour which forms so pleasing a feature of the vegetation of the temperate and tropical regions of the globe is quite unknown in Aden. Here foliage is reduced to a minimum, and the superfluous moisture given off b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• PREFACE
• Table of Contents
• PART I.—GEOGRAPHY AND GENERAL ASPECTS.
• PART II.—THE PEOPLE.
• PART III.—CHAPTER I.—SUPPLIES.
• PART III.—CHAPTER II.—TRADE AND COMMERCE.
• PART IV.—ADMINISTRATION.
• PART V.—POLITICAL RELATIONS AND HISTORY.
• PART VI.—MISCELLANEOUS.
• APPENDIX.
• INDEX