539 



FISHING IN INDIAN WATERS. 



Part III. 



Aden and the Adjacent Waters. 



By F. 0. Gadsden, R. I, M. 



{Read before the Bombay Natural History Society on 28th June 1899). 



I find that in the course of the preceding articles, I have had so repeatedly 

 to refer to different places, when speaking of certain fish, that I regret now 

 that instead of dealing with individual species of fish I did not devote the 

 chapters to the different places instead of to the different fish. Uence, I 

 propose now instead of caliing your attention to a fish to describe to you in 

 detail the sport to be had in and about Aden, and thus I cannot escape 

 linking with the places the sorts of fish that are to be caught about them. 

 In speaking of Aden and its adjacent waters, I shall include Little Aden 

 Perim, B«rbera, and Zeila, the two latter on the African Coast, and a better 

 stretch of water — one with greater possibilities of sport — no man need ever 

 wish to have the run of. 



Aden bears a very bad name j but, take my word for it, Aden is a very 

 much maligned place. To passengers who on a Mail steamer are only 

 going to stop for two or three hours, perhaps only to coal, to them, I have 

 no doubt, it appears a ghastly hole ; and as it is always more or less hot 

 there, and as these aforesaid passengers are cramped up on the steamer 

 perhaps even not in the best of tempers, and from the fact that the 

 ship is at anchor miss the cool sea breeze that they have probably got 

 accustomed to, they naturally curse the place, and go away with a very 

 wrong impression. 



To the sojourner in the land, Aden is very different. Aden, with its 

 social gaieties ; Aden, with its tennis courts ; Aden with its cricket and golf 

 Hnks ; Aden, with its polo ground ; Aden, with its easy chances for the 

 energetic and vigorous to cross over to the African Coast, where they can 

 shoot lion, several sorts of deer, and game of all sorts ; Aden, with its thirst- 

 producing capabilities and its delightful and convivial club, where you may 

 do your level best to quench the same, and where you can get a really good 

 rubber of whist every evening : and, above all, Aden, with its magnificent 

 fishing, free to all right under your nose ; Aden, I say, in spite of the heat, 

 which its rocks throw oft' and which has a peculiar grip about it, this Aden 

 is not half such a bad place after all. One thing more while I am about it. 

 The rocks of Aden, and more especially Jebel Shum Shum, in the early morn- 

 ing sunlight as you approach it from the eastward, with the full glow of 

 a glorious eastern sunrise shining on it, is a sight difficult to equal, and not 

 easily forgotten. There is a legend that there used to be one tree growing 

 in the Gold Mohar Valley, but I believe that it has now gone, and on the 

 rocks themselves there is apparently no vegetation ; but in the early morning 



