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."]

At the time of its evacuation by the Turks, Aden is said,
notwithstanding the decay of its Indian trade, to have contained from
20,000 to 30,000 inhabitants; and the lofty minarets which, a few
years since, still towered above the ruins of the mosques to which
they had formerly been attached, as well as the extensive
burying-grounds, in which the turbaned headstones peculiar to the
Turks are even ye