nour of being carbonaded on the rocks of Aden.

The promontory has all the marks of volcanic eruption, and is actually
recorded, by an Arab historian of the tenth century, to have been thrown
up about that period. "Its sound, like the rumbling of thunder, might then
be heard many miles, and from its entrails vomited forth redhot stones,
with a flood of liquid fire." The crater of the extinguished volcano is
still visible, though shattered and powdered down by the tread under which
Alps and Appennines themselves crumble away--that of Time. The only point
on which we are sceptical is the late origin of the promontory. Nothing
beyond a sandhill or a heap of ashes has been produced on the face of
nature since the memory of man. That a rock, or rather a mountain chain,
with a peak 1800 feet high, should have been produced at any time time
within the last four thousand years, altogether tasks our credulity. The
powers of nature are now otherwise employed than in rough-hewing the
surface of the globe. She has been long since, like the sculptor, employed
in polishing and finishing--the features were hewn out long ago. Her
master-hand has ever since been employed in smoothing them.

Aden's reputation for barrenness is an old one--"Aden," says Ben Batuta of
Tangiers, "is situate upon the sea-shore; a large city without either seed,
water, or tree." This was written five hundred years ago; yet the ruins of
fortifications and watch-towers along the rocks, show that even this human
oven was the object of cupidity in earlier times; and the British guns,
bristling among the precipices, show that the desire is undecayed even in
our philosophic age.

Yet the Arab imagination has created its wonders even in this repulsive
scene; and the generation of monkeys which tenant the higher portion of
the rocks, are declared by Arab tradition to be the remnant of the once
powerful tribe of Ad, changed into apes by the displeasure of Heaven, when
"the King of the World," Sheddad, renowned in eastern story,
presumptuously dared to form a garden which should rival Paradise. The
prophet Hud remonstrated; but his remonstrances went for nothing, and the
indignant monarch and his courtiers suddenly found their visages simious,
their tongues chattering, and their lower portions furnished with tails--a
species of transformation, which, so far as regards visage and tongue, is
supposed to be not unfrequent among courtiers to this day. But this showy
tradit