THE STORY OF AN OUTING 



vegetable product. It has and can have no population 

 except as an incident to the traffic that calls as it passes 

 by. Seemingly this storage of water must have been 

 planned to serve passing commerce. How were these 

 tanks to be tilled? It never rains that is, hardly ever. 

 It rained the day I was there, but only enough to make 

 surface mud. Since the discovery of these tanks, by 

 excavation, they have been kept as a curiosity, and there 

 has not, in this great number of years, been sufficient 

 rainfall to fill or perceptibly affect any of them. Their 

 construction cost long years of labor and much capital. 

 By whom were they built, and when, and why? The 

 population of Aden is Somali and Arabic, and possesses 

 all the unwholesome attributes of the East. The beg- 

 gars had one plaint, whether child or octogenarian, "No 

 f adder, no mudder, no sister, no brudder, nothing eat," 

 and then (with one index ringer stuck into the mouth, 

 and rubbing their bare belly with the flat of the other 

 hand^ "back sheesh." 



South of British Somaliland for many hundreds of 

 miles along the coast extends Italian Somaliland. This 

 includes Cape Guardafui Guard the Faith), the eastern- 

 most point of Africa, where vessels sharply round the 

 cape and pass between it and outlying islands, a channel 

 about sixteen miles wide. There is not a lighthouse on 

 the cape, nor on anv of the islands, nor anywhere along 

 the Italian coast. The reason is the tendency of the 

 Somalis to murder all lighthouse keepers, and the in- 

 ability or indisposition of Italy to afford military pro- 

 tection. Italy's experience with Menelik when she in- 

 vaded Somaliland was disastrous, and the memory of it 

 is said to have induced a lack of aggression on the part of 



I a 



