dish brown rocks of
Aden appeared, and the Caledonia cast anchor in the roadstead. A number
of small vessels darted towards her. Naked, black Arab boys cried for
money and showed their skill in diving, fishing up pieces of silver
thrown from the ship. As the Caledonia had to coal, those passengers who
were able to move went ashore in boats rowed by Arabs.

Heideck joined the Kennedy family.

When the boat reached the deeply indented harbour, which with its
numerous bends between fortified heights afforded a safe shelter for a
whole fleet, Heideck saw some twenty English men-of-war, and at
least three times that number of French and German and a few Russian
merchantmen, which had been captured by the English. Several cruisers of
the three Powers at war with England also lay in the harbour. They had
been captured in the Indian Ocean at the outbreak of war by superior
English naval forces.

As the party had the whole day at their disposal, Mr. Kennedy took
a conveyance, and Heideck drove with the family to the town, which,
invisible from the roadstead, lay embedded between high, peaked
mountains. The road went past a large, open space, on which thousands
of camels and donkeys were exposed for sale. Here Heideck had the
opportunity of admiring, close at hand, the mighty fortifications which
the English had constructed on the important corner of the mountain
commanding the sea since the capture of Aden by them from the Turks
on the 9th of January, 1839. They also inspected the remarkable tanks,
those famous cisterns which supply Aden with water, some fifty basins
said to hold 30,000,000 gallons of water, whose origin is lost in the
hoary mist of antiquity. They are said to have been constructed by the
Persians.

About seven o'clock in the evening the passengers were again on board.
While the Caledonia continued her journey, they were absorbed in the
perusal of the English, French, and German newspapers which they had
bought at Aden. The papers were ten days old, certainly, but contained
much that was new to the travellers.

It was very hot in the Red Sea, and most of the first-class passengers
slept on deck, as they had done just before they reached Aden. Part of
the deck, over which a sail had been stretched, was specially reserved
for ladies.

The Caledonia, having again coaled at Port Said, where a number of
English men-of-war were lying, resumed her journey, with unfavourable
weather and a rather rough sea, into