Through A Broad Gap Called Duss Malablay [10] Appear In Fine Weather The Granite Walls Of Wagar And Gulays, Whose

Altitude by aneroid was found to be 5700 feet above the level of the sea. [11] On the eastward the

Berberah plain is bounded by the hills of Siyaro, and westwards the heights of Dabasenis limit the prospect. [12]

It was with astonishment that I reflected upon the impolicy of having preferred Aden to this place.

The Emporium of Eastern Africa has a salubrious climate [13], abundance of sweet water--a luxury to be "fully appreciated only after a residence at Aden" [14]--a mild monsoon, a fine open country, an excellent harbour, and a soil highly productive. It is the meeting-place of commerce, has few rivals, and with half the sums lavished in Arabia upon engineer follies of stone and lime, the environs might at this time have been covered with houses, gardens, and trees.

The Eye of Yemen, to quote Carlyle, is a "mountain of misery towering sheer up like a bleak Pisgah, with outlooks only into desolation, sand, salt water, and despair." The camp is in a "Devil's Punchbowl," stiflingly hot during nine months of the year, and subject to alternations of sandstorm and Simum, "without either seed, water, or trees," as Ibn Batutah described it 500 years ago, unproductive for want of rain,--not a sparrow can exist there, nor will a crow thrive, [15]--and essentially unhealthy. [156] Our loss in operatives is only equalled by our waste of rupees; and the general wish of Western India is, that the extinct sea of fire would, Vesuvius-like, once more convert this dismal cape into a living crater.

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