The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-20
The Sirgi1,q Sar1ovar's "Reminiscences Of Alden

Tradition likewise has it that Alden is the corruption, or variant of Eden. and that here Adam and his bride spent their honeymoon, but that as the result of their sin, the angel brought his flaming sword to this very spot and Satan was accorded special permission to smite it with the red fury of his wrath.
 AS I saw 1t one afternoon I fancied that there fingered in the sapphire of the distant Arabian sea and the soft hue of the mauve mountains in the northern offing a slight semblance to the gories of paradise, but when I cast my eyes ! about me and drank in the breath of the furnace with parched and swollen tongue felt that Satan had discharged his mission we'll and irrevocably, for all floral beauty had been swept away by the desolation of the lava's current, life had been transformed into sullen silent devastation and happiness gave place to ruin, distress and suffering. Though I was camping upon the floor of a relentles sand engulfing crater I could not forget that Alden has a history dating back to the days of Ezekiel, that I stantine in the establishing of Christian missions and that it has been the goal of contention between Turk Arab, Egyptian, Persian. Abysinnian and Portuguese respectively in the ages that are gone. the battle scars of which may still be traced upon its zigzag walls, until the aggrandizing but en- nobling arm of great Britain extended it's length over the spot and brought blessed peace to it's distracted popula- tion.
 Alden has citizenship of 10000 souls and lying as 1t does near the Red Sea, is thoroughly cosmopolitan-at least that part of 1t which the traveller usu- ally sees.
 Steamer Point is its mart and as every day is market day there its char acteristic scenes are bizarre, odd and interesting. The harbor resembles an Alpine glacier where the Italian salt merchants pile up many feet in the air their snowy crystals of saline stock; icng trains of patient, cud-chewing camels bring in the forage.
 Arab boat builders cover the shore with
 
 of every shade and nationality offer their wares for sale to the initiated native and the verdant traveller the price of which varies according to the respective class of the prospective pa- tron.
 Of course all of these wares have been imported for barring the salt there Is not native product to be found in the city except considerable quantities of ostrich feathers. The Adentes look to the west for their flour to Egypt for their fruits and to the north for their live stock for they can not even raise fowls. Nor is this to be raarveled at when 1t Is recalled that several years elapse between the rain falls and that the daily tempera ture in the afternoons is about 130 deerees Fahrenheit. But these people do not concern themselves greatly as to the source of their food when their life's problem has been and still is the SUD- ply of their water.
 I was not satisfied with merely visit ing the. cosmopolitan section of Alden, but I wanted to see the native uuar- ters and see them I did at consider able expenditure of time, toll and pers- piration.
 But I was amply repaid for all that I expended. I pinned my havelock closer to my tropical helmet and forcing my way through the steaming camel mar ket kept my gaze directly before me until the old. faded yellow and blue houses of the natives city have in sight and seemed as veritable furnaces radi- ating an almost impossible heat, the waves of which were palpably visible Still these were not that of which | was in search. nor did they enlist an