It rains only once in every year or two, and a supply of
water is obtained by storing the torrents which then flow from the
hills. A more desolate desert than that which surrounds the city
surely does not exist. Aden itself illustrates how the whirligig
of time revolves. Before the discovery of the passage round the
Cape of Good Hope it was the chief entrepot for the trade between
Europe and Asia. It fell into insignificance when the stream of
traffic left for the new route around the Cape of Good Hope; but
now the Suez Canal, which restores the original route via the Red
Sea, to its former supremacy, once more raises Aden to her former
commanding position. The population, which in 1839 had dwindled to
fewer than a thousand, now numbers nearly thirty thousand.
Aden is just one of those natural keys of the world which England
should hold, and I doubt not will hold to the last. The town
stands upon a narrow peninsula composed of desolate volcanic
rocks, five miles long from east to west, and three from north to
south, connected with the main land by a neck of flat sandy ground
only a few feet high. The town itself is surrounded by precipitous
rocks, which really make it a natural fortress impregnable against
attack. All that I urge against conquest in general is
inapplicable here, and I say let England guard such spots.
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