Moored to the other side of the ship we found two huge lighters, from which bales of goods were being hoisted aboard.  Two camels and a dozen diminutive mules stood in the waist of one of these craft.  The camels were as sniffy and supercilious and scornful as camels always are; and everybody promptly hated them with the hatred of the abysmally inferior spirit for something that scorns it, as is the usual attitude of the human mind towards camels.  We waited for upwards of an hour, in the hope of seeing those camels hoisted aboard; but in vain.  While we were so waiting one of the deck passengers below us, a Somali in white clothes and a gorgeous cerise turban, decided to turn in.  He spread a square of thin matting atop one of the hatches, and began to unwind yards and yards of the fine silk turban.  He came to the end of it—­whisk! he sank to the deck; the turban, spread open by the resistance of the air, fluttered down to cover him from head to foot.  Apparently he fell asleep at once, for he did not again move nor alter his position.  He, as well as an astonishingly large proportion of the other Somalis and Abyssinians we saw, carried a queer, well-defined, triangular wound in his head.  It had long since healed, was an inch or so across, and looked as though a piece of the skull had been removed.  If a conscientious enemy had leisure and an icepick he would do just about that sort of a job.  How its recipient had escaped instant death is a mystery.

At length, about three o’clock, despairing of the camels, we turned in.

After three hours’ sleep we were again on deck.  Aden by daylight seemed to be several sections of a town tucked into pockets in bold, raw, lava mountains that came down fairly to the water’s edge.  Between these pockets ran a narrow shore road; and along the road paced haughty camels hitched to diminutive carts.  On contracted round bluffs towards the sea were various low bungalow buildings which, we were informed, comprised the military and civil officers’ quarters.  The real Aden has been built inland a short distance at the bottom of a cup in the mountains.  Elaborate stone reservoirs have been constructed to catch rain water, as there is no other natural water supply whatever.  The only difficulty is that it practically never rains; so the reservoirs stand empty, the water is distilled from the sea, and the haughty camels and the little carts do the distributing.

The lava mountains occupy one side of the spacious bay or gulf.  The foot of the bay and the other side are flat, with one or two very distant white villages, and many heaps of glittering salt as big as houses.