It appears that the determination of the Abdallis to hold out had been materially strengthened by the intelligence which they received from India, (where many Arabs from this part of Yemen and the neighbouring country of Hadramout are serving as mercenaries to the native princes,) of the manifold distractions which beset the Anglo-Indian government, and the armaments in course of equipment for Affghanistan, Scinde, the Persian Gulf, &c., and which confirmed them in the belief that no more troops could be spared from Bombay for an attack on Aden. The stoppage of provisions by sea, however, and the threatened hostilities of the Futhalis, caused severe distress among the inhabitants of the town; and dissensions arose among the chiefs themselves, as to the proportions in which (in the event of an amicable settlement) the annual payment of 8700 dollars should be divided among them—it being determined that Sultan Mahassan should not have it all. An attempt was now made by the synds to effect a reconciliation; but though abundance of notes were once more interchanged, [48] and the old Sultan came down from Lahedj to offer his mediation, all demands for the main object, the cession of the place, were rejected or evaded. The negotiation consequently came to nothing, and hostilities were resumed with more energy than before, the artillery of Aden being directed (as was reported) by an European Turk; till, on the 16th of January, the flotilla from Bombay, under the command of Captain Smith, R.N., anchored in Western Bay.
[Footnote 48: In this correspondence, the phrase of—"If you will land and enter the town, I will be upon your head," is more than once addressed by Sultan Hamed to Captain Haines and seems to have been understood as a menace; but we have been informed that it rather implies, "I will be answerable for your safety—your head shall be in my charge.">[
A peremptory requisition was now sent on shore for the immediate surrender of the town; but the answer of the Sultan was still evasive, and, as the troops had only a few days' water on board, an immediate landing was decided upon. On the morning of the 19th, accordingly, the Coote, Cruiser, Volage, and the Company's armed schooner Mahi, weighed and stood in shore, opening a heavy fire on the island of Seerah and the batteries on the mainland, to cover the disembarkation. The Arabs at first stood to their guns with great determination, but their artillery was, of course, speedily silenced or dismounted by the superior weight and rapidity of the English fire; and though the troops were galled while in the boats by matchlocks from the shore, both the town and the island of Seerah were carried by storm without much difficulty. The loss of the assailants was no more than fifteen killed and wounded—that of the Arabs more than ten times that number, including a nephew of the Sultan and a chief of the Houshibee tribe, who fought gallantly, and received a mortal 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 virtual command of the place and the harbour, would probably have met with no opposition:—and even if Aden had fallen, as it seemed on the point of doing, into the hands of the Pasha of Egypt, there can be little doubt that the Viceroy would have shown himself equally ready to facilitate our intercourse with India, in his Arabian as in his Egyptian harbours. At all events, it is evident that the desired object of obtaining a station and coal depot for the Indian steamers, might easily have been secured in various ways, without running even the risk of bringing on the British name the imputation of unnecessary violence and oppression.
Aden, however, was now, whether for right or wrong, under the British flag; but the hostile dispositions of the Arabs, notwithstanding the treaties entered into, were still far from subdued; and the cupidity of these semi-barbarous tribes was still further excited by the lavish expenditure of the new garrison, and by the exaggerated reports of vast treasures said to be brought from India for the repairs of the works. Among the advantages anticipated by Captain Haines in his official report from the possession of the town, especial stress is laid on its vicinity to the coffee and gum districts, and the certainty, that when it was under the settled rule of British law, the traffic in these rich products, as well as in the gold-dust, ivory, and frankincense of the African coast, would once more centre in its long-neglected harbour. But it was speedily found that the insecurity of communication with the interior opposed a serious obstacle to the realization of these prospects—the European residents and the troops were confined within the Turkish wall—and though the extreme heat of the climate (which during summer averaged 90° of Fahrenheit in the shade within a stone house) did not prove so injurious as had been expected to European constitutions, it was found, singularly enough, to exercise a most pernicious influence on the sepoys, who sickened and died in alarming numbers. Aden at this period is compared, in a letter quoted in the Asiatic Journal, to "the crater of Etna enlarged, and covered with gravestones and the remains of stone huts;" provisions were scarce, and vegetables scarcely procurable. By degrees, however, some symptoms of reviving trade appeared and by the end of 1839 the population had increased to 1500 souls.
The smouldering rancour with which the Arabs had all along regarded the Frank intruders upon their soil, had by this time broken out into open hostility; and, after some minor acts of violence, an attack was made on the night of November 9th on the Turkish wall across the isthmus, (which had been additionally strengthened by redoubts and some guns,) by a body of 4000 men, collected from the Abdallis, the Futhalis, and the other tribes in the neighbourhood. The assailants were of course repulsed, but not without a severe conflict, in which the Arabs engaged the defenders hand to hand with the most determined valour—so highly had their hopes of plunder been stimulated by the rumours of English wealth. This daring attempt (which the Pasha of Egypt was by some suspected to have had some share in instigating) at once placed the occupants of Aden in a state of open warfare with all their Arab neighbours; and the subsidies hitherto paid to the Futhali chief and the old Sultan of Lahedj were consequently stopped—while L.100,000 were voted by the Bombay government for repairing the fortifications, and engineers were sent from India to put the place in an efficient state of defence. These regular ramparts, however, even when completed, can never be relied on as a security against the guerilla attacks of these daring marauders, who can wade through the sea at low water round the flanks of the Turkish wall, and scramble over precipices to get in the rear of the outposts—and accordingly, during 1840, the garrison had to withstand two more desperate attempts (May 20, and July 4,) to surprise the place, both of which were beaten off after some hard fighting, though in one instance the attacking party succeeded in carrying off a considerable amount of plunder from the encampment near the Turkish wall. Since that period, it has been found necessary gradually to raise the strength of the garrison from 800 to 4000 men, one-fourth of whom are always European soldiers—and though no attack in force has lately been made by the Arabs, the necessity of being constantly on the alert against their covert approaches, renders the duties of the garrison harassing to the last degree. Though a considerable trade now exists with the African coast, scarcely any commercial intercourse has yet been established with the interior of Arabia, (notwithstanding the friendly dispositions evinced by the Iman of Sana,) the road being barred by the hostile tribes—and a further impediment to improvement is found in the dissensions of the civil and military authorities of the place itself, who, pent up in a narrow space under a broiling sun, seem to employ their energies in endless squabbles with each other. Whatever may be the ultimate fate of this colony, it must be allowed, to quote the candid admission of a writer in the United Service Journal, that "at present we are not occupying a very proud position in Arabia"—though considering the means by which we obtained our footing in that peninsula, our position is perhaps as good as we deserve.
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SONNET
BY THE AUTHOR OP THE LIFE OF BURKE, OF GOLDSMITH, &C.,