AND THE MALAY STATES 9 



Tair, and later Mocha, Mt. Sinai having been passed in the night. With 

 a glorious setting of the sun over Somaliland, we passed through the 

 straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, by the barren island Perim, and the next 

 morning cast anchor in the harbor at Aden. 



It must have been two o'clock in the morning when I awoke and 

 found that we were at anchor. The sound that brought me to a sense of 

 my surroundings, and the insufferable heat of the cabin, was the chanting 

 of a gang of coolies who were warping a huge freight scow up to our 

 steamer. Their song was the iteration of two phrases that sounded like 

 "Esco darn ye ! Perri go darn ye !" and with each "darn" they all gave 

 a pull. Besides this, there was a constant chatter from a half hundred 

 boatmen, that drove me on deck, where wrapped in a rug, and lying in 

 the scuppers, I got a few more winks. Aden is as uninteresting as it 

 is unhealthy. It is well called "the white man's grave," as hundreds lie 

 buried on its rocky slopes. 



It is built on a flat, sandy, treeless plain, hemmed in by hills, arid 

 and barren to the last degree. It rains here regularly once in three 

 years, and the water is stored in huge tanks five miles away up in the 

 hills. Anyone who wishes to enjoy a long cool -drink, and then another, 

 should seek this thirstiest of all thirsty spots. It was here that the 

 passengers whose destination was India were transferred to another 

 steamer. And sorry we were to have them go, for many friendships had 

 been formed which were of the sort that should continue. 



Here left, tco, a young man who had not only been my partner at 

 deck quoits, but who had given me much information about America. 

 Shall I ever forget the evening, just after our excellent course dinner, 

 when he said to me, with the kindest of intonations : 



"Don't you miss the sweets (candy) between the courses?" 



"What sweets?" was my bewildered query. 



"Why, you know, in America, at a course dinner, they serve sweets 

 after the soup, and the fish, and the entree, and right through the dinner." 



I had no vivid remembrance of that custom myself, but his faith 

 in the exactness of his information was so great that it would have been 

 a sin to upset it, so I agreed that I was pining for chocolate creams after 

 the consomme, and molasses candy as a chaser for the fish, and it made 

 him my friend for life, for which I am exceedingly glad, as in spite of 

 that one absurd idea, he was one of the finest chaps I ever met. 



Speaking of the people one meets in distant lands, it is sad to say 

 that one's own countrymen are often the biggest freaks. I met one of 

 the freak sort later. He had not been in the smoking room ten minutes 



