And the impression of strange wild primeval desolation is increased as we land. Moist as is the air in the gulf, the atmosphere of Aden itself is as dry as can be conceived, and tempts one, protected by a green veil and an umbrella, to ride or walk, or even run, in spite of the fierce sun which blazes out of the unclouded sky. Scarcely a morsel of vegetation, not a blade of grass is to be seen, only at rare intervals in the sand a leafless shrub. For at Aden not a drop of rain falls often for years in succession, though the mountain-peak not four miles from the harbour is capped with cloud. Water is supplied chiefly by distillation from the sea, and also from huge tanks. We drive to see them, passing strings of camels, and tall, dirty, melancholy, scowling Arabs, and a wretched Arab village of huts of mud and straw like a warren of ill-instructed rabbits, and turn up a hill through fortifications and covered ways hewn in the rock, where white-coated sepoy sentinels stand on guard, and down on the other side to the cantonments and to the Arab town of Aden itself, for where we landed is not Aden proper but the Bunder or port. They are a strange memorial of the past, those tanks. They are hewn out of the solid rock one above another in a steep gulley of the cloud-capt mountain, from whence at long intervals torrents of water pour down and fill them. Tradition assigns them an origin anterior to the time of Abraham, but there is no fragment of sculpture to help to give them a date; they are only huge irregular basins in the rock, capable of holding from a quarter to two or three millions of gallons each, and for centuries were almost choked with rubbish, till within the last few years our Government has cleared them out and made them available again. Early the same afternoon we are steaming away again for Suez, and at midnight pass through the Straits of Babel-mandeb. The little island of Perim divides the straits into two. We pass through the eastern and narrower passage, which is not much more than a mile wide, and by the bright moonlight both the island and the Arabian coast are clearly visible. A few years ago, when the importance of the position of the island first became apparent, and while consuls and envoys were busy discussing to whom it belonged—for it was then uninhabited—the English quietly took possession of it, and are now admitted to have thereby acquired a good title to it. An officer or two and about half a company of troops from Aden are located on it as garrison, and considering that it is perfectly bare, without an inhabitant or a tree, or a blade of grass, or a hill, or water, or, I believe, any animal except rats, and in a climate like a furnace, it must be about as unpleasant a prison to be confined in as well could be found anywhere.