u 
FLORA OF ADEN. 
the mountains, mysterious — looking rents, leading to a distant black 
flat, which on this side of the island extends along the base of the 
highest ridge. This highest ridge is, as well as the spurs it gives oft, 
in every point of view, remarkable, being always a serrated wall or 
knife-edge of rock, apparently inaccessible, but covered here and there 
with the ruins of Turkish castles. 
“ At the town we went to Captain Haine’s house, where he is 
endeavouring to wheedle garden plants into growth, and has succeed- 
ed with some short-lived annuals, which only want a winter ; but the 
rest of those, whose duration is longer, perish with the following dry 
season. The heat of this valley is always 10° above that of the 
‘ Point ’ and the residents are all but roasted alive. At the Residency 
(Captain Haine’s) we were met by the Assistant Political Agent, 
Lieutenant Cruttenden, I. N., and the Civil Surgeon, Dr. Vaughan, 
successor to Dr. Malcolmson, whose absence I much regretted. In 
Cruttenden I recognized a contributor to the Transactions of the 
Royal Geological Society. He is a very agreeable and intelligent 
officer, and an experienced traveller in Nubia, Abyssinia, East Africa 
and Arabia. 
a In the evening, while the Governor- General took some 
needful repose, I went to the top of the ridge or highest part of 
the island, “ Shumsun,” as it is called, 1,700 feet of elevation, I had 
two “ Soumalis ” to carry my things, a large umbrella, broad white 
hat, with a round pillow on the crown, and a bolster round the rim 
outside, which keeps the sun’s rays from striking through the hat to 
one’s head. We scrambled up one of the gullies over stony barren 
hills that led to the flat. The latter is about 800 feet up, a black 
waste of volcanic cinders, utterly destitute of vegetation or life, and 
so heated that the atmosphere for some feet above it flickered like smoke. 
Though now mid- winter it was dreadfully hot, the soil below the sur- 
face being 107° at 2 p.m., which must be far below the summer 
heat. A few valleys occur here and there, and these are sprinkled 
with vegetation, some shrubby milky Euphorbiacea and Asclepiadacece , 
several gummy Acacias, the Reseda, four or ffive Capparidea, 
shrubby and herbaceous, one or two wiry grasses, and a very common 
plant belonging probably to Pedalinece. About the plains the ridge 
of rocks runs like a wall, some four miles long, curiously jagged at the 
top, which towered 1,000 feet above my head, and appeared inacces- 
sible, except in one place, where a steep slope led to a cleft in the 
ridge, and up whose steep face a zigzag road was formed : to this I 
directed my course. At the foot of the rocks I found a few more 
