Cairo to Kisumu

Leaving the Red Sea at the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, we came to Aden, Arabia, and thence went on down along the coast of the Indian Ocean to Mombasa. The very best of our Mocha coffee is shipped from Aden to the United States. It comes here on camels from the province of Yemen, where it is raised by the natives, each family having a few bushes about its hut and producing only enough for home use and a little for trading.

There are no big plantations and no coffee factories. When ripe the berries are gathered and dried in the sun. After this they are put up in bales, and carried on camelback over the hills to this place. They are then hulled between millstones turned by hand, and winnowed and sorted for shipment. The latter work is done by the women, who look over each grain carefully, taking out the bad ones. Labour is cheap, but the coffee has to go through many hands. It has to pay toll to the chiefs of the tribes who own the country through which it is carried, so it must be sold at high prices. For this reason we have imitations of Mocha coffee from all parts of the world.

For many years this port of Aden has belonged to John Bull, who took possession of it in 1839, and later got hold of the island of Perim in the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb also. That island is about a hundred miles from Aden and the two places practically control the entrance to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. As for Aden, it is the Gibraltar of this part of the world, as well as one of the greatest of the British coaling stations. The harbour is excellent, and the outer entrance is more than three miles wide. The inner waters have been dredged so that steamers of twenty-six feet draft can go everywhere, and there is room enough for all the vessels that pass through the canal to anchor here at one time.

Aden is strongly fortified. The town, which stands on a volcanic isthmus, is guarded by a broad ditch cut out of the solid rock. It has a garrison of several thousand soldiers, guns of the latest pattern, and no one knows how many submarine mines and other defences against attack.

But no matter what its military importance, Aden is the sorriest city I have ever seen. There is nothing like it except Iquique on the nitrate coast of South America, and Iquique is a paradise compared with Aden. Imagine a great harbour of sea-green water, the shores of which rise almost abruptly into ragged mountains of brown rock and white sand. There is not a blade of grass to be seen, there are no trees, and even the cactus and sage brush of our American desert are absent. The town is without vegetation. It is as bare as the bones of the dead camels in the sandy waste behind it, and its tropical sun beats down out of a cloudless African sky. Everything is gray or a dazzling white. The houses on the sides of the hills are white, the rocks throw back the rays of the sun, and the huts upon their sides are of the same gray colour as themselves.

The city looks thirsty and dry. It is dry. There is 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, Africans, 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 believe in the Prophet, and go through their prayers five times a day. There are black Mohammedans from Somaliland and black Christians from Abyssinia. In addition there are Parsees, Hindus, and East Indian Mohammedans 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 corkscrew curls on both sides of their faces. Of these people neither sex wears much clothing. The men have rags around the waist, while the women’s sole garments are skirts which reach to the feet.

The East Indians, who are everywhere, do most of the retail business and trading. They are found peddling on every street corner. They dress according to their caste and religion. The Parsees, who are fire-worshippers, wear black preacher-like coats and tall hats of the style of an inverted coal scuttle. The East Indian Mohammedans wear turbans and the Hindus wrap themselves up in great sheets of white cotton. There are besides many Greeks and Italians, and not a few Persians. The English dress in white and wear big helmets to keep off the sun.

This is the land of the camel. Caravans are coming in and going out of the city every day bringing in bags of Mocha coffee and gums and taking out European goods and other supplies to the various oases. There is a considerable trade with Yemen as well as with the tribes of southeastern Arabia. There are always camels lying in the market places, and one sees them blubbering and crying as they are loaded and unloaded. They are the most discontented beasts upon earth, and are as mean as they look. One bit at me this afternoon as I passed it, and I am told that they never become reconciled to their masters. Nevertheless, they are the freight animals of this part of the world, and the desert could not get along without them. They furnish the greater part of the milk for the various Arab settlements, and the people make their tents of camel’s hair. They are, in fact, the cows of the desert. They are of many different breeds, varying as much in character as horses. There are some breeds that correspond to the Percheron, and the best among them can carry half a ton at a load. There are others fitted solely for riding and passenger travel. The ordinary freight camel makes only about three miles an hour and eighteen miles is a good day’s work. The best racing camels will travel twenty hours at a stretch, and will cover one hundred miles in a day. Seventy-five miles in ten hours is not an uncommon journey for an Arabian racer, and much better speed has been made. As to prices, an ordinary freight camel brings about thirty dollars, but a good riding camel costs one hundred dollars and upward.

Have you ever heard how the camel was created? Here is the story of its origin as told by the Arabs. They say that God first formed the horse by taking up a handful of the swift south wind and blowing upon it. The horse, however, was not satisfied with his making. He complained to God that his neck was too short for easy grazing and that his hoofs were so hard that they sank in the sand. Moreover, he said there was no hump on his back to steady the saddle. Thereupon, to satisfy the horse, God created the camel, making him according to the equine’s suggestions. And when the horse saw his ideal in flesh and blood he was frightened at its ugliness and galloped away. Since then there is no horse that is not scared when it first sees a camel.

This story makes me think of the Arab tradition as to how God first made the water buffalo, which, as you know, is about the ugliest beast that ever wore horns, hair, and skin. God’s first creation was the beautiful cow. When He had finished it the devil happened that way, and as he saw it he laughed at the job, and sneered out that he could make a better beast with his eyes shut. Thereupon the Lord gave him some material such as He had put into the cow and told him to go to work. The devil wrought all day and all night, and the result was the water buffalo.

I have made inquiries here and elsewhere as to the Arabian horse. He is a comparatively scarce animal and he does not run wild in the desert, as some people suppose. Indeed, comparatively few of the Arabian tribes have horses, and the best are kept on the plateau of Najd, in the centre of the peninsula. They belong to the Anazah tribe, which is one of the oldest of all, and which claims to date back to the Flood. It is a wealthy tribe, and it has been breeding horses for many generations. The best stock has pedigrees going back to the time of Mohammed, and the very choicest come from five mares which were owned by the Prophet and blessed by him. These horses seldom go out of Arabia. They are owned by the chiefs, and are not sold, except in times of the direst necessity. Now and then a few get into Egypt and other parts of North Africa, and the Sultan of Turkey has usually had some for his stables.

It is only occasionally that a pure-bred Arabian goes to Europe or the United States. Two of the best stallions we ever imported were those which General Grant brought from Constantinople. This was, I think, during his tour around the world. While in Turkey he and the Sultan visited the royal stables together. As they looked over the horses the Sultan told Grant to pick out the one he liked best, and he designated a dapple gray called the Leopard. “It is yours,” said the Sultan, “and this also,” pointing to a four-year-old colt called Linden Tree. In due time these two horses arrived in the United States and were put on General Ed Beale’s farm near Washington. They were used for breeding, and they produced about fifty fine colts.