This post continues the story of Joseph B. F. Osgood (1823-1913), whose Notes of Travel or Recollections of Majunga, Zanzibar, Muscat, Aden, Mocha, and other Eastern Ports (Salem: George Creamer, 1854) describes the Arabian coastline, like a 19th century Ibn Baṭūṭṭa. For Part #1, click here; for Part #2, click here.

Here is Osgood’s description of providing water to Aden, and the local weather…
[p. 131] While under the dominion of the Turks, the strength of the place was greatly increased by fortifications, erected under the direction of Turkish engineers not easily to be excelled in sound judgment and extraordinary skill. A rampart with bastions, now known as the Turkish Wall, was carried from sea to sea across the isthmus to protect the city against an attack from the land side. An aqueduct was built of stone, five feet wide, and two feet above the ground, from the town to a spring, eight miles into the country; and the reservoir at its end, located in a deep ravine in the mountains, was defended by a redoubt mounted with artillery. This monstrous structure was intended to obviate the laborious, and in times of war, dangerous practice of bringing all water into the city in skin vessels on camels. In the year 1530, on the authority of Resendius, it required daily the employment of from sixteen to twenty hundred camels, to supply Aden with water.

[p. 132] As a farther provision for an ample supply of water, three hundred wells were bored by the Turks, mostly through rock, and numerous tanks were built and lined with chunam or stucco. The island of Serah was also fortified by watch towers and ramparts, and furnished with massive ordnance. The constant revolt of the Saracen tribes and the probable resignation of all hope to accomplish their desires of conquest in India, led to a final withdrawal of the Ottoman troops in the year 1633. At the time of its evacuation by the Turks, Aden is said, notwithstanding the decay of its Indian trade, to have contained nearly thirty thousand inhabitants. After its evacuation by the Turks, the throne of Yemen was ascended by the royal family of Sana, whose great ancestor was Kassem Abu Mahomed, a prime mover in the successful revolt against, and conspicuous in effecting the expulsion of the Turks. From this time the city was continued in the hands of its former owners, rapidly declining and decaying under the rapine of an Arab population, until after various vicissitudes and runious change of masters, in 1839, it again changed hands in a manner equally remarkable and oppressive with any former seizure, and became the first European settlement on the shores of Arabia.

[p. 153] In the winter months the air is often pure and elastic, and the mercury seldom rises above the ninetieth degree by Fahrenheit from the first of October to the last of March. April, May and June are the hottest months, when the mercury frequently reaches the one hundred and twentieth degree, and even higher than that. During June, July and August a dry wind, called Shumal, blows from the west, bearing suffocating clouds of dust and sand.

more to come