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.