ABSTRACT
BOOKS by casual travellers through the Red Sea usually describe Aden in one of three ways: (a) by sheer fiction, (b) the description ofa bawdy adven ture in Harlots' R.ow at Sheikh Othman, or (c) the old-fashioned "Coal Hole of the East" business, dismissing the place as too frightful for contemplation and too uninteresting for description. There is much to be said for the last. A stranger with an hour or two to spare, who comes offa comfortable ship in the heat of a summer's day into the dust of Aden, and clinlbs in a fit of conscientious sight-seeing to the top of the Tanks, is not likely to go away with tnuch sense of having experienced a taste of the Romantic Colourful East. Even a visitor who stays a day or two at one of Aden's hotels is not in much better case~ unless he has someone to look after him. For a soulless, military officialdom did its best to see that nothing picturesque or beautiful was ever allowed to raise its head alnongst the depressing, severely practical, and utterly uncomfortable barrack-like structures it erected itsel£ It says much for the British soldier that he has been able to maintain even in Aden his reputation for rising above his surroundings, for those once stationed there will say they enjoyed themselves.
