438 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap. 
in the neighbourhood of the equator, which for fur-clad men 
was said to be altogether unendurable. 
We remained at Aden only a couple of days, received in 
a friendly manner by the then acting Swedish-Norwegian 
consul, who took us round to the most remarkable points of 
the desolate environs of this important haven, among others 
to the immense, but then and generally empty water reservoirs 
which the English have made in the neighbourhood of the 
town. No place in the high north, not the granite cliffs of 
the Seven Islands, or the pebble rocks of Low Island on 
Spitzbergen, not the mountain sides on the east coast of 
Novaya Zemlya, or the figure-marked ground at Cape 
Chelyuskin is so bare of vegetation as the environs of Aden 
and the parts of the east coast of the Ked Sea which we saw. 
Nor can there be any comparison in respect of the abundance 
of animal life between the equatorial countries and the Polar 
regions we have named. On the whole animal life in the 
coast lands of the highest north, where the mountains are 
high and surrounded by deep water, appears to be richer in 
individuals than in the south, and this depends not only on 
the populousness of the fowl-colonies and the number of large 
animals of the chase that we find there, but also on the 
abundance of evertebrates in the sea. At least the 
dredgings made from the Vega during the voyage between 
Japan and Ceylon gave an exceedingly scanty yield in 
comparison with our dredgings north of Cape Chelyuskin. 
Aden is now an important port of call for the vessels which 
pass through the Suez Canal from European waters to the 
Indian Ocean, and also one of the chief places for the export of 
the productions of Yemen or Arabia Felix. In the latter 
respect the harbour was of importance as far back as about 
four hundred years ago, when the Italian, Ludovico de 
Varthema, was for a considerable time kept a prisoner by the 
Arab tribes at the place. 
