Duke of Cornwall & York

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In March 1901 the Duke of Cornwall and York, the future King George V, left Portsmouth on a journey that was to last nearly eight months, cover almost 47,000 miles whilst visiting 17 possessions in the Empire. 

 

Only once did he set foot on foreign soil, and that was at Port Said. The royal party travelled in the liner Ophir which was escorted by warships of the Royal Navy, on the outward leg by the cruisers Juno and St George. Travelling on the latter was William Maxwell, special correspondent of The Standard. Within three months of his return to England his book “With the Ophir Round the Empire” was published. This is some of what Maxwell wrote about Aden and the Royal Visit.

 

We start with Maxwell waiting for the arrival of the Ophir; his description of what he saw conjures up a particularly colourful period in Aden’s history:

“In a narrow lane, between white-washed houses at the foot of a mountain of brown lava, you came upon a microcosm of Arabia. Here was a group of Arab merchants and shopkeepers with silk or cotton turbans rolled jauntily round the head, loose jackets of dyed cotton reaching to the hips, white kilts wound about the loins and held by parti-coloured waistbands, and scarves of Surat silk thrown artistically over the left shoulder. They were sipping coffee flavoured with ginger, and playing ‘tab’, a game resembling backgammon. In the shadow of the door, through which floated the scent of frankincense, squatted three or four women in shirts or robes of silk girdled with green leather belts, their bright red shawls half drawn over their tattooed faces. A few yards beyond several sturdy Somalis in white robes, with shaven heads, looked on smiling at a game of Sari, or prisoners’ base, played by boys whose heads were plastered thickly with white earth to make the hair crisp and frizzy. Four Hindus in bright attire bent over an Indian draught-board.

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Jews, drinking a vile spirit distilled from dates, Dankalis in sheepskin wigs dyed crimson, Persians, Abyssinians, Seedees, and all those Asiatic and African races that make the population of the settlement, were crowded in this picturesque lane. Even these have their ‘dudes’ or ‘mashers’ - gay young ‘bucks’ tricked out in as many colours as a pantaloon, swaggering up and down the street and displaying their necklaces of double rows of speckled beads clasped with great lumps of beautifully polished amber.

 

The town of Aden cannot be seen from the shore. It lies at the back of the lava hills in an arid sun-burnt crater, swept by a hot, sandy wind known as the Shamal, or the north wind. Through this town the Prince and Princess passed to inspect the famous cisterns or tanks, those marvels of antiquity and of engineering skill. My driver was a belated hadji, whose green turban proclaimed his pilgrimage to Mecca, and we were quickly beyond the noisy supplications of the crowds of beggar children who make a visit to Aden one long and sore trial to the patience. For some distance the road runs almost parallel with the bay until you come to village of Maalla, whose white-washed houses and mat huts are occupied chiefly by Somalis.

 

A winding road leads up to the main pass, a deep cutting through red lava, which in the sunlight looked like a wall of fire. We halted for a caravan toiling slowly and silently out of the crater - camels bringing coffeeberries, pulse, fruit, vegetables, and Kat from the districts of Mokha and Hajariya; camels and oxen laden with wax and ghee, and grain, and saffron, from the interior of Yemen, whose armed guardians have braved the dangers of a journey through land of the predatory Subaihi tribes. Once through the defile a rapid descent carries us past the barracks of the native Indian regiment, a company of which, in shirts and turbans, are exercising on the brown plain.

The white town spreads out over a broad table land shut in by precipitous and jagged cliffs of brown and grey and green lava, for the most part solid and compact, yet in places resembling a coarse sponge, and in others passing into scoriae. ....... The ruins of forts that crown every summit attest the importance which bygone generations attached to this arid spot, while the tanks are startling evidence to their former magnificence. ........ When and by whom these great reservoirs were made is uncertain. Some authorities put the date at 1700 B.C. when the great dam at Mareb was built; others ascribe them to the second Persian invasion of Yemen, in the year 600 A.D.

 

For generations the cisterns were hidden under stones and soil washed down from the hills, and it was not till 1856 that the work of restoration was begun. There are, in and about Aden, fifty tanks, with a capacity of over thirty million gallons, and about a score of these have been repaired. Thirteen of them can store about eight million gallons, and have a depth of one hundred fathoms. 

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The hills that form the wall of the crater are almost circular. Those on the west are steep and hard, without any absorbent power of soil or vegetation, so that rain falling upon them would be carried rapidly toward the sea. To arrest this precious flood, which comes in decades, and not in years, the reservoirs were constructed. Their shape is fantastic, for advantage has been taken of every feature in the ground. Here a dyke has been built across the gorge of a valley; there a curve of masonry shuts in an angle. One is a great pit, eighty yards across, with a double staircase cut out of the rock. Another is a tiny lake dotted with white islands, while out of the depths of a vast quarry rises a pillar of stone shaped after the fashion of a minaret. Channels have been cut in the gently sloping surface so that the overflow of one cistern shall be caught and stored in another. Each reservoir is faced with stucco, so hard and white and polished that it looks like marble. Alas! they were empty, and have been for several years. 

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Having seen the cisterns we rode back to the town and walked through its streets and bazaars. They are full of the bright colour and still life of the East. The mixture of races is not so apparent as at Steamer Point, where a demand for labour has been created by shipping and coaling companies. Arabs, Jews, and Persians are the majority, and do the bulk of the trade. The Jews have a speciality in ostrich feathers, of which considerable quantities are exported. The process of drying and cleaning is guarded as a secret, and the short and spoiled feathers are made into boas. Apart from this there is no special industry in Aden, though the market-place, with its flocks of fat-tailed, black-faced sheep from Berbera, its bales of cotton and silk, and its camels laden with hides and grain, are indications of prosperity.

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For five days we had seethed and boiled in this tropical kettle, awaiting the coming of the Ophir. At seven o'clock in the morning of April the 7th her grey hull glided over the horizon, and moved silently towards the little volcanic island at the entrance to the harbour.

 

During the night she had been signalled from Perim, the bare rock, seamed with dry watercourses and covered with coarse grass, in the Straits of Bab el Mandeb, where a detachment of Indian troops keep guard over this important coaling station.

 

Aden is under the government of India and the Political Resident went on board without delay. Before noon the Sultan of Abdali paid his respects, and presented the Princess with a necklace of gold sequins, a beautiful piece of Arabian work.

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Aden is not a place where you would look for lavish display. Nothing that is green or beautiful grows on this cinder heap, and no man lives there for pleasure or for the good of his health. Yet Aden succeeded in making an admirable show. Camels had for days come into the town laden with millet leaves and stalks from the interior of the Yemen. These feathery leaves and palm-like branches adorned triumphal arch and pavilion. The deluge of paint had dried up and left even the native quarter a vivid white and green. Plant pots had not escaped the flood, and so fresh and green were the shrubs near the landing stage that one could not avoid the thought that they, too, had submitted to the ubiquitous brush of the painter. 

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Fairy lights, fed with evil-smelling coconut oil, hung in festoons along the beach. The Prince and Princess were welcomed in a pavilion, and received an address from Mr Cowasjee Dinshaw, a wealthy Parsee merchant, whose father had a like honour in 1875, when the King visited Aden. A group of Indian and Arab ladies in robes of silk, officers in white uniform, and the Sultans of the two tributary States gave colour to the scene. The Sultan of Abdali is a handsome man with a strong, dark face, and looked imposing in the rich, dark dress of an Arab sheikh. His retinue, short, sturdy youths of true Bedouin type, carried their curved daggers in heavy girdles ornamented with silver, and had a wild, barbaric aspect and attire that sent the imagination in full flight across the inhospitable deserts of Arabia.

 

Outside in the sun-scorched square, stood the guard of honour of the West Kent regiment, and the Aden troop of Bombay cavalry - tall, lithe men in khaki and turbans. Beyond them towered the bare, rugged mountains of brown lava, with scintillating points of white, and blue, and red. These bright dots, that looked like figures carved on the rock, were Somalis, Arabs, Hindoos, and Seedes, who had come to greet ‘the great lord of the seas’. They made a strange picture, the like of which I have seen only on the dusty slopes of Syria and Palestine, when the German Emperor made his pilgrimage.”