Page 92 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

92 EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST

grim traffic passing from India to the Red Sea. The deca­
dent Mohammedan administration was accentuated by
natural disadvantages of an exceptional character.
' Nature seems to have taken revenge for conferring upon
Si I Aden a dominating position by endowing her with perhaps
the driest climate and the least productive soil of any
habitable spot on the globe. The place is little better than
•:
a vast volcanic cinder heap, picturesque in a sombre fashion,
>1
but bearing on its gaunt, grim face an aspect of desolation
which prohibits the idea of an extensive local commerce.
i The Arabian littoral of the Red Sea is a fitting complement
of this “ Gibraltar of the East.” The region is “ mostly
light land,” to use a phrase applied by the late Lord Salis­
bury, when in a sardonic mood, to a disputed region border­
! ing on the Sahara. Its chief importance is derived from
association with the Holy Places of Mohammedanism and
to the stream of pilgrims which is continually entering and
leaving its ports. In the period with which we are dealing,
a certain amount of trade was carried on between Abyssinia
and the Arabian ports, and there was in addition a flow of
\ :
■li ! traffic up and down the Red Sea from Egypt. But the
commerce of the region was of too insignificant a character
to repay the enterprise of a Western mercantile organiza­
.
I tion in the most favoured circumstances. The bigotry
i
und fanaticism of the population added, and still add, weight
' to the limitations which Nature has imposed upon the
country. At the present time, three centuries after the visit
III of the first English ship to the Red Sea, the difficulty of
establishing direct trading relations by Europeans at the
Arabian ports is still considerable.
It was to this unpromising comer of the East that in the
spring of 1608 the Company dispatched the ships of its

I
it

'
<
1 am i ft i *