Page 24 - A Hand book of Arabia Vol 1 (iii) Ch 6 -10

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190 ADEN AND THE INTERIOR

Cotton (piece-goods and yarns), £30,000; grains (jowan, bajri, rme,
and wheat flour), £30,000 ;• tobacco (unmanufactured), £25,000 ;
spices, £16,000; seeds, £6,000; provisions (including dates), j
£5,000 ; sugar, £4,000 ; oils (chiefly petroleum and jinjili), £1,900 ;
metals (wrought iron and copper), £1,000; turmeric and indigo,
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soap, and matches.
From the figures of the total trade of Aden, given at the outset,
it will be noted that there was a considerable decline in 1914-15
as compared with 1913-14, mostly due to prohibitions and
restrictions consequent on the war. Trade has in fact been
temporarily thrown back five years, the total value of trade in
1909-10 having been £6,900,000.
Aden was made a free port in 1850. Previous to that year the
average total yearly trade of the town was about £120,000 ; in
1903-4 it had risen to just under £6,000,000; in 1913-14 (the most
recent normal year) it had attained more than £8,500,000. On the
opening of the port in 1850 much of the valuable trade between
Arabia and the eastern coast of Africa, formerly monopolized by
Hodeidah and Mocha, was attracted to it; but this marvellously '
rapid development has, undoubtedly, been mainly due to the
opening of the Suez Canal. During the seventy odd years of
British rule, the population of the town has multiplied sevenfold,
and Aden now forms, normally, not only the chief centre of the
Arabian trade with Africa, but an entrepot and distributing centre
for an ever increasing European and Asiatic commerce.
In the year ending March 31, 1915, 2,481 vessels, of an aggregate
tonnage of about 3,100,000, entered the port, including 1,300 local
craft of 38,000 aggregate tonnage—as compared with 3,000 vessels
of just under 4,000,000 aggregate tonnage in 1913-14. Of the 1,181
merchant vessels cleared in 1914^-15 about 660, with an aggregate
tonnage of 1 £ millions (or about half the total tonnage) were British ;
the rest were of foreign nationality and native craft.

The coffee trade, which now finds its principal outlet at Aden, was
formerly almost entirely in the hands of the Hodeidah merchants :
but the heavy dues of the Turkish authorities at the latter place,
coupled with the insecurity of the routes under Turkish control*
have diverted a large part of the coffee to Aden. Much is shipped
from Hodeidah to Aden direct by sea; the coffee which reaches
Aden direct is brought down by caravans from the highlands of the
interior. A very considerable quantity is also brought across from
the African coast, being shipped from Zeila, one of the Somali ports •
it is carried thither on camels from the highlands of Harrar and
the Galla country, which, like the Yemen highlands,
are suitable