10 MALLET : ADEN AND VICINITY. 



standing this henvy draw on their contents^ they were reduced but a 

 very few inches in a space of seven weeks/'' 



As the supply of water is now deficient^ it would appear at 

 first sight that it must have diminished since 1839, but it would seem 

 that the increased demand for water since then is fully adequate to 

 explain the apparent falling- off. Captain R. L. Play fair in his 

 History of Arabia Felix* gives the following statement of the 

 population of the town at different times : — 



Population at conquest by British, 16tli January, 1839 ... 500 



Ditto ... ... September 1839 ... 2,885 



Ditto ... ■ ... March 1840 ... 4,600 



Ditto ... ... 1st January 1856 ... 20,7.38 



Ditto ... ... „ 1859 ... 25,000 



As Captain Foster's paper was published in May 1839, it must have 

 been written immediately after the taking of Aden when the population 

 wss only 500. The subsequent English garrison must be added to this 

 number, but in September of that year it was still only 2,885 : and as it 

 is now, as I was informed by Sir Edward Russell, probably not less than 

 30,000, the population has increased since the date of Captain Foster^s 

 paper fully fifteen fold, and the demand for water of course in a somewhat 

 similar ratio. 



The area in the crater in which wells yielding drinkable water can be 

 sunk with success is very limited. The rocky plateau previously 

 described {h-d, p. 4) occupies two-thirds of the crater, and here, besides 

 the difficulty of carriage down to the cantonments, water could not be 

 expected except at a greater depth than in the low ground at the foot of 

 it. In the low ground again in which the cantonments are built, 

 the wells as they approach the sea become brackish and undrinkable. 



* Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government, No, XLIX, New Series. 



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