On the way to Aden the Caledonia only met a few ships—­all English.  Several transports with troops on board and a few men-of-war passed her; as she travelled on the average twenty-two knots an hour, no vessel overtook her.  On the morning of the sixth day the reddish brown rocks of Aden appeared, and the Caledonia cast anchor in the roadstead.  A number of small vessels darted towards her.  Naked, black Arab boys cried for money and showed their skill in diving, fishing up pieces of silver thrown from the ship.  As the Caledonia had to coal, those passengers who were able to move went ashore in boats rowed by Arabs.

Heideck joined the Kennedy family.

When the boat reached the deeply indented harbour, which with its numerous bends between fortified heights afforded a safe shelter for a whole fleet, Heideck saw some twenty English men-of-war, and at least three times that number of French and German and a few Russian merchantmen, which had been captured by the English.  Several cruisers of the three Powers at war with England also lay in the harbour.  They had been captured in the Indian Ocean at the outbreak of war by superior English naval forces.

As the party had the whole day at their disposal, Mr. Kennedy took a conveyance, and Heideck drove with the family to the town, which, invisible from the roadstead, lay embedded between high, peaked mountains.  The road went past a large, open space, on which thousands of camels and donkeys were exposed for sale.  Here Heideck had the opportunity of admiring, close at hand, the mighty fortifications which the English had constructed on the important corner of the mountain commanding the sea since the capture of Aden by them from the Turks on the 9th of January, 1839.  They also inspected the remarkable tanks, those famous cisterns which supply Aden with water, some fifty basins said to hold 30,000,000 gallons of water, whose origin is lost in the hoary mist of antiquity.  They are said to have been constructed by the Persians.

About seven o’clock in the evening the passengers were again on board.  While the Caledonia continued her journey, they were absorbed in the perusal of the English, French, and German newspapers which they had bought at Aden.  The papers were ten days old, certainly, but contained much that was new to the travellers.

It was very hot in the Red Sea, and most of the first-class passengers slept on deck, as they had done just before they reached Aden.  Part of the deck, over which a sail had been stretched, was specially reserved for ladies.

The Caledonia, having again coaled at Port Said, where a number of English men-of-war were lying, resumed her journey, with unfavourable weather and a rather rough sea, into the Mediterranean.  Passing along the south of Crete, the steamer turned northwest in the direction of Brindisi, where she was due on the eighth day after leaving Aden.  On the morning of the seventh day a ship was seen coming from the