a town and sea-port of Arabia, in the province of Yemen, situate to the east of the Straits of Bah-El-Mande. According to the Arabians, it derives its name from Aden, the son of Saba, and grandson of Abraham. It was formerly an opulent and flourishing city, covering as much space as Mocha, Jedda, or Suez, but subsequently dwindled into insignificance. It is built on a small flat, probably the bottom of a crater, surrounded by precipitous rocks, on the east side of a peninsula formed by two fine bays, in the one of which, opposite the town, is the fortified island of Sirah, which commands the approach. The peninsula consists chiefly of a mass of volcanic rocks, extending five miles east and west, and three broad, and having as its most southern point, Ras Samallah or Cape Aden, in Lat. 12° 45' 10" N., Long. 45° 3' E. The highest part of the peninsula is Jebel Shamsham, a rocky promontory of limestone, rising 776 feet above the level of the sea. The peninsula is connected with the mainland by a neck of flat sandy ground only a few feet high. But both the peninsula and the mainland present the most desolate aspect; not a tree or a shrub is to be seen; and the heat is intolerable. The place, however, is healthy. In a military point of view, Aden presents one of the strongest positions in Arabia. Its possession affords the means of blockading the Red Sea, and of controlling the trade of the coast of Mahab. Its commercial advantages are superior to those of the neighbouring port of Mocha. Since its occupation by the British, Aden has been constituted a free port, and no duties of customs are now levied there; its trade has steadily increased, and there seems little doubt that it must again become the principal emporium for the products of Arabia and the shores of the Red Sea. As a coal depot no place on the coast is so advantageous; it divides the distance between Bombay and Suez, and steamers may load and unload at all seasons with perfect security.

Aden has not unfrequently changed its rulers. At the commencement of the sixteenth century, a Portuguese naval force proceeding to the Red Sea, touched at Aden. The Arabian chief offered to surrender the town, but the Portuguese proposed to defer its occupation till the return of the expedition. In the meantime, however, reinforcements were received, and the chief refused to fulfil his engagement. Subsequently, however, the Portuguese became its possessors, but after a brief tenure were expelled by the Turks in 1538. In the following century the Turks relinquished their conquests in Yemen, and withdrew their troops from the province, when the sultan of Senna established a supremacy over Aden, which was maintained until towards the middle of the last century. The sheik of Lahidje then threw off his allegiance, and established in his own family the line of independent sultans of Aden. The circumstances under which the British became masters of the place may be briefly stated. In 1837 a ship under British colours was wrecked near Aden, her cargo plundered, and the crew and passengers grievously maltreated by the sultan's people. An explanation of the outrage being demanded by the Bombay government, the sultan promised compensation for the plunder of the vessel, and moreover agreed to make a formal cession of the town and port of Aden to the British for a pecuniary consideration. Captain Haines of the Indian navy had been deputed to Aden to complete these arrangements, but the sultan's son, who now exercised the powers of government, met the requisition of the British agent by language and conduct the most violent and insulting. A combined naval and military force was thereupon despatched to Aden, and the place was captured on the 16th January 1839, with trifling loss on the part of the British. A stipendary allowance was made to the sultan in consideration of his loss, he, however, retaining the whole of his other territories.