ADEN only a well or so in the place, and these, I am told, the English bought of their owners for something like one million dollars. Almost all of the water used is condensed from the sea, and fresh water always brings a big price. There are no streams anywhere for miles around. The town is situated in the crater of an extinct volcano, and there is one great depression near by in which some famous stone tanks were made a thousand or so years ago. These tanks are so big that if they were cleaned out they might hold thirty million gallons of water. The water is caught when it rains, and is sometimes auctioned off to the highest bidder. The receipts go to the British Government, to which a good rain may bring in fifteen or twenty thousand dollars or more.

This is my second visit to Aden. My first was sixteen years ago when I stopped here on my way around the world. I do not see that the town has changed and I doubt whether it has any more people than it had then. The population is made up of all the nations and tribes common to the Indian Ocean. It contains Arabs, Afri¬ cans, Jews, Portuguese, and East Indians. There are about four thousand Europeans, including merchants, officials, and soldiers. The majority of the people are Arabs and the prevailing colour is black. There are tall, lean, skinny black Bedouins from interior Arabia, who be¬ lieve in the Prophet, and go through their prayers five times a day. There are black Mohammedans from So¬ maliland and black Christians from Abyssinia. In addi¬ tion there are Parsees, Hindus, and East Indian Moham¬ medans of various shades of yellow and brown. A few of the Africans are woolly-headed, but more of them have wavy hair. The hair of the women hangs down in cork-231