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.