At Aden, Shaven And Beturbaned, Arab Fashion, Now They Threw Off All Dress Save The Loin Cloth, And Appeared In Their Dark Morocco.

Mohammed filled his mouth with a mixture of coarse Surat tobacco and ashes,--the latter article intended, like the

Anglo-Indian soldier's chili in his arrack, to "make it bite." Guled uncovered his head, a member which in Africa is certainly made to go bare, and buttered himself with an unguent redolent of sheep's tail; and Ismail, the rais or captain of our "foyst," [6] the Sahalah, applied himself to puffing his nicotiana out of a goat's shank-bone. Our crew, consisting of seventy-one men and boys, prepared, as evening fell, a mess of Jowari grain [7] and grease, the recipe of which I spare you, and it was despatched in a style that would have done credit to Kafirs as regards gobbling, bolting, smearing lips, licking fingers, and using ankles as napkins. Then with a light easterly breeze and the ominous cliffs of Little Aden still in sight, we spread our mats on deck and prepared to sleep under the moon. [8]

My companions, however, felt, without perhaps comprehending, the joviality arising from a return to Nature. Every man was forthwith nicknamed, and pitiless was the raillery upon the venerable subjects of long and short, fat and thin. One sang a war-song, another a love-song, a third some song of the sea, whilst the fourth, an Eesa youth, with the villanous expression of face common to his tribe, gave us a rain measure, such as men chaunt during wet weather. All these effusions were _naive_ and amusing: none, however, could bear English translation without an amount of omission which would change their nature. Each effort of minstrelsy was accompanied by roars of laughter, and led to much manual pleasantry. All swore that they had never spent, intellectually speaking, a more charming _soiree_, and pitied me for being unable to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the dialogue. Truly it is not only the polished European, as was said of a certain travelling notability, that lapses with facility into pristine barbarism.

I will now introduce you to my companions. The managing man is one Mohammed Mahmud [9], generally called El Hammal or the porter: he is a Havildar or sergeant in the Aden police, and was entertained for me by Lieut. Dansey, an officer who unfortunately was not "confirmed" in a political appointment at Aden. The Hammal is a bull-necked, round-headed fellow of lymphatic temperament, with a lamp-black skin, regular features, and a pulpy figure,--two rarities amongst his countrymen, who compare him to a Banyan. An orphan in early youth, and becoming, to use his own phrase, sick of milk, he ran away from his tribe, the Habr Gerhajis, and engaged himself as a coaltrimmer with the slaves on board an Indian war- steamer. After rising in rank to the command of the crew, he became servant and interpreter to travellers, visited distant lands--Egypt and Calcutta--and finally settled as a Feringhee policeman.

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