XXIV BOTANY OF SOCOTRA. 



The soil resulting from such penological conditions is correspondingly 

 varied, correlated with which is a varying character in vegetation and scenery. 



In the valleys on the banks of the streams, especially in the granitic region, 

 a deep rich red soil is found, and where there is water perennially it is covered 

 by a luxuriant growth. As the limestone composes the greater part of its 

 superficies, the plateau appears barren. Where, however, the limestone has 

 rotted, a series of nooks and crevices occur, in which, where a soil has collected, 

 an Aloe, Kalanchoe, or other succulent finds a congenial habitat. But upon the 

 limestone plateau, especially at the eastern and western ends of the island, 

 occur depressions varying in width from some hundred yards up to a mile or 

 more, girt on every side by a cavernous limestone-cliff, with perhaps a narrow 

 outlet through it at one or more points ; these, which have all the appearance 

 of lagoons, or at least of enclosed water-basins, are floored now by a rich red 

 soil on which a crop of coarse grass, small herbs, and low trees vegetates. On 

 the shore-plains the soil is light and sandy. 



History, Government, and People.* 



Socotra was known to Europeans at an early period under the name of 

 Dioscoris or Dioscorida. This name was apparently applied at first, not to the 

 one island we now know as Socotra, but to the whole archipelago of which it is 

 a member. But possibly there is an old reference to the island under another 

 name. On the Deir-el-Bahari monument at Thebes, erected by Queen Hatasou 

 in the eighteenth dynasty, there are representations showing the commissioner of 

 the queen going over the sea to the country of ' Poun ' and of ' To Nuter/ and 

 bringing back therefrom amongst other things plants bearing 'Ana,' which is 

 shown as a gum-resin in the form of tears on the stems of small trees. Mariette 

 has identified the land of Poun — Pliny's country of the Troglodytes — with 

 Somali-land, the name being preserved in the modern Bennah, and the To 

 Nuter of the inscription is, in his opinion, the Sacred Islands of Pliny, and the 

 modern archipelago including Socotra. 



The author of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea refers to Socotra as a 

 desolate island inhabited by a mixed population of Arabs, Indians, and 

 Greeks, all speaking Greek, who had come thither in search of grain, and 

 carried on a trade with the west coast of India and with Mokha. The island 

 is frequently mentioned by the early Arab geographers, who account for the 

 Greek population by the story, which Colonel Yule considers a myth, that 

 Alexander the Great, acting on the advice of Aristotle, settled an Ionian 

 colony there, in order to cultivate the aloe. They further state that the 



* See, besides general accounts mentioned in note on page xxi : — 



Georg Sckweinfurtk : Das Volk von Socotra, in Unsere Zeit., 1883, pp. 657-669. 

 F. M. Hunter : Notes on Socotra, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vii. (1877), 

 pp. 364-372. 



