of water (of which the peninsula had been wholly destitute) was secured, not only by constructing numerous tanks within the walls, and by boring numerous wells through the solid rock to a depth of upwards of 200 feet, [38] but by carrying an aqueduct into the town from a spring eight miles in the country, the reservoir at the end of which was defended by a redoubt mounted with artillery. The outposts were not less carefully strengthened than the body of the place--a rampart with bastions (called, in the reports of the garrison, _the Turkish Wall_) was carried along some high ground on the isthmus from sea to sea, to guard against an attack on the land side--the lofty rocky islet of Seerah, immediately off the town, was covered with watchtowers and batteries--and several of those enormous guns, with the effect of which the English became practically acquainted at the passage of the Dardanelles in 1807, were mounted on the summit of the precipices, to command the seaward approach; and, when Lieutenant Wellsted was at Aden, those huge pieces of ordnance was lying neglected on the beach; and he asked Sultan Mahassan why he did not cut them up for the sake of the metal, which is said to contain a considerable intermixture of silver; "but he replied, with more feeling than could have been anticipated, that he was unwilling to deprive Aden of the only remaining sign of its former greatness and strength." Several of them have been sent to England since the capture of the place, measuring from fifteen to eighteen and a half feet in length; they are covered with ornaments and inscriptions, stating them to have been cast in the reign of "Soliman the son of Selim-Khan," (Soliman the Magnificent.) [Footnote 37: Captain Haines, in the "Report upon Aden," appended to the Parliamentary papers published on the subject, erroneously places this even in 1730, the year in or about which, according to Niebuhr, the Sheikh of Aden made himself independent of Sana.] [Footnote 38: "No part of the coast of Arabia is celebrated for the goodness of its water, with the single exception of Aden. The wells there are 300 in number, cut mostly though the rock, ... and the tanks were found in good order, coated inside and out with excellant chunam, (stucco,) and merely requiring cleaning out to be again serviceable."]