52 
FLORA OF ADEN. 
procure specimens of it. The bright-green colour, which forms so 
pleasing a feature of the vegetation of the temperate and moist tropical 
regions of the globe, is quite unknown at Aden/' 1 
Hooker's observations on the flora of Aden are of particular interest. 
They bear testimony to his vast knowledge of systematic botany as well 
as to the practised eye of the expert botanist who, whilst not neglecting 
the details, is at once able to grasp the general and more characteristic 
aspects of a flora. He writes : — ■ 
tc Aden is one of the most remarkable places I ever saw, and I only 
wonder that so little has been heard of it. It is a great, black, barren 
volcano, long extinct and of great age, starting abruptly from the ocean 
opposite the flat shore of Arabia, with which it is connected by a long, 
low, flat spit of sand. To the west of it is a smaller, but somewhat 
similar, peninsula of rugged rocks. They are like to the volcanic islands 
of the southern part of the Ued Sea and some parts of the coast of 
Africa, but altogether different from the S.-W. end of Arabia. The 
long low beach is richly wooded with Acacias, Dates, and Mangroves, I 
am informed, but it is impossible to land there without being taken priso- 
ner by the Arabs, whom we deprived of Aden. Ships do not lie off the 
shore, but at the N.-W. end of the peninsula, and sheltered from the 
3ST.-E. monsoon now blowing strong ; and there are the coal depots, 
a solitary hotel, and one or two houses of officials. The peninsula is one 
mass of volcanic rock, 1,700 feet high, a very ancient volcano, in short, 
whose crater is broken down to the eastward, where the town is placed. 
In this respect it resembles St. Helena, but is as sterile to look at as 
Ascension, or more so ; for the top of Green Mountain (in Ascension) is 
green ; while here, except in a few flat places near the coast, no green 
thing is to be discerned from the sea, quite three-fourths of the rock 
are inaccessible, the upper part consisting of a wall extraordinarily 
jagged and serrated, seyeral miles long, many parts of which are no 
broader than a horse's back. This wall sends off spurs, so that take the 
peninsula where you will, you have a full front ; and cut it down where 
you may, there is always a pointed perpendicular section. The wall 
forms the rim of the crater and is all but inaccessible ; the slopes and 
land at the base are all volcanic cinders, strata of lava, dykes of basalt, 
and such like. 
li The steepness and ruggednesa of the black crags, utterly devoid of 
vegetation, the curious ridges of Trap, and beds of scoria, Lava, and 
Pumice, which extend from their bases to the sea, and the wild discon- 
nected rocks that rise here and there from the ocean close to the shore, 
1 Anderson, Florida, page YI — VIII. 
