Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/508





EAST AFRICAN ISLANDS.

Sokotra — Madagascar — Comoros — Seychelles — Amirantes.

F all insular regions in the Pacific Ocean, Sokotra, or Socotra may with the greatest confidence be regarded as a simple geographical dependence of the African mainland. Although separated from Cape Guardafui by a channel 150 miles broad, with intervening spaces fully 3,000 feet deep, the disposition of the island, with its main axis disposed in a line with the extreme point of Somaliland, together with a continuous row of reefs and islets stretching right across the channel, clearly shows that Sukotra is nothing more than a detached fragment of Africa.

But in its commercial and political relations this island has always formed part of Asia, and depends at present on the town of Aden, one of the British strongholds on the Asistic mainland. From 1835 to 1839 it was even occupied by an English garrison, but afterwards abandoned for Aden, a position of far greater strategic importance. In 1845 Sokotra wus declared a Crown colony, although its possession has always been more nominal than effective. The same remark applies to the suzerain authority claimed for the last five centuries by the sultans of Keshin, whose territory lies north-west of the island at the nearest point of the Arabian coast.

The very name of Sokotra attests the great antiquity of the memories and legends associated with the island. In the geography of the Hindus it was regarded as one of the petals of the great lotus-flower floating on the waters. It was the Dvipa Sukhatara, the Din-Skadra — that is, one of those "Fortunate Islands" which at all times people yearning for a happier fate have supposed must exist beyond the gilded clouds of the setting sun. The Greeks identified it as the Dioscoridi Insula, or "Land of the Dioscuri," while the old Hindu name has been more correctly preserved by the Arabs in its present form.