IOR/L/PS/5/464, ff 253-266

This part of the volume consists of copies of enclosures to a despatch from the Government of Bombay Secret Department to the Secret Committee, Number 37 of 1850, dated 25 July 1850. The enclosures are numbered 3-8, and are dated 16 June to 15 July 1850.

The enclosures consist of a minute from the Government of Bombay, and correspondence. They relate to letters from the Political Agent at Aden, Captain Stafford Bettesworth Haines, to the Government of Bombay, reporting matters including:

• Daily communication and traffic from the ‘Arab tribes’ adjacent to Aden continuing to be ‘unmolested’, supplies at Aden being abundant, and the inhabitants continuing to be healthy
• The ‘Arab’ who murdered the European seaman in the boat belonging to the Auckland on 29 May not having yet been secured, and having escaped to the Subeihi [Subaīhī] territory, but the efforts of Sultan Ali M’Houssain [‘Alī I bin Muḥsin al-‘Abdalī, Sulṭān of Lahej] to capture him being ‘strenuous’
• An enclosed report from Lieutenant Adams of affairs at Mussowa [Massawa] and Abyssinia [the Ethiopian Empire], Hodeida [Al Hudaydah] and Mocha, including the state of trade and duties levied on British Indian merchants, and the Pasha promising to give protection and assistance to all British subjects and those under British protection.

The correspondence is between: the Government of Bombay; Haines; the Secretary to the Government of India with the Governor General, Sir Henry Miers Elliot; Lieutenant G N Adams, commanding the Honourable Company’s schooner of war Constance; and HM Consul in Abyssinia [Ethiopia], Walter Plowden.