wound; considerable bloodshed was also occasioned by the desperate resistance made by the prisoners taken on Seerah in the attempt to disarm them, during which the greater part of them cut their way through their captors and got clear off.  Most of the inhabitants fled into the interior during the assault, but speedily returned on hearing of the discipline and good order preserved by the conquerors; and the old Sultan, on being informed of the capture of the place, sent an apologetic letter (Jan. 21) to Captain Haines, in which he threw all the blame on his son Hamed, and expressed an earnest wish for a reconciliation.  Little difficulty was now experienced in conducting the negotiations, and during the first days of February articles of pacification were signed both with the Abdallis and the other tribes in the neighbourhood.  To secure the good-will of the Futhali chief, the annual payment which he had received from Aden of 360 dollars, was still guaranteed to him, as were the 8700 dollars per annum to the Sultan of Lahedj, whose bond for 4191 dollars was further remitted as a token of good-will.

Such were the circumstances under which Aden became part of the colonial empire of Great Britain—­and the details of which we have taken, almost entirely, from the official accounts published by order of Government.  In whatever point of view we consider the transaction, we think it can scarcely be denied that it reflects little credit on the national character for even-handed justice and fair dealing.  Even if the tact and savoir faire, which Captain Haines must be admitted to have displayed in an eminent degree in the execution of his instructions, had succeeded in intimidating the Arabs into surrendering the place without resistance, such a proceeding would have amounted to nothing more or less than the appropriation of the territory of a tribe not strong enough to defend themselves, simply because it was situated conveniently for the purposes of our own navigation:  and the open force by which the scheme was ultimately carried into effect, imparts to this act of usurpation a character of violence still more to be regretted.  The originally-alleged provocation, the affair of the Derya-Dowlut, is not for a moment tenable as warranting such extreme measures:—­since not only was the participation of the parties on whom the whole responsibility was thrown, at all events extremely venial; but satisfaction had been given, and had been admitted to have been given, before the subject of the cession of the place was broached:—­and the Sultan constantly denied that his alleged consent to the transfer, on which the subsequent hostilities were grounded, had ever been intended to be so construed.  It is evident, moreover, that the Arabs would gladly have yielded to any amicable arrangement short of the absolute cession of the town, which they regarded as disgraceful:  —­the erection of a factory, which might have been fortified so as to give us the