THE STORY OF AN OUTING 



Canal, conceived by and built under the supervision of 

 De Lesseps, the eminent French engineer. This canal, 

 eighty-seven miles in length, connects the Red Sea with 

 the Mediterranean and, thus separating two conti- 

 nents, makes the circumnavigation of Africa possible. It 

 brought the remoter parts of the world closer in touch 

 and has proved a boon alike to trade and travel. Aden, 

 with fifty-five thousand inhabitants, including the port 

 and town, occupies a volcanic peninsula between the 

 Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. This peninsula, to- 

 gether with a coast strip on the mainland (eighty thousand 

 square miles, I believe), belongs to Great Britain, and 

 from the port and harbor of Aden, as a strategic center, 

 she manages the recalcitrant Somalis of British Somali- 

 land. Her long and arduous campaign against the Mad 

 Mullah and his ilk was costly, as war ever is, and largely 

 barren of good results, as war usually is. Aden is a 

 coaling and watering place for vessels in their long sail 

 to and from Europe and Asiatic and African points. 

 The coal is of course brought there, and the water is dis- 

 tilled from the sea retail price, seventy-eight cents per 

 one hundred gallons. 



The five days' sail from Port Said to Aden is bordered 

 by desert lands on both shores. Aden possesses one 

 curiosity in the form of water-tanks hewn in the rock 

 and supplemented with masonry. They begin in a 

 notch in the hills and extend in a series down to the level, 

 each lower one supposed to catch the overflow from those 

 above. The storage capacity of these tanks is very 

 great; but who built them and why they were built are 

 questions no one can answer. 



Aden and its surroundings are absolutely barren of 



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