It is but of late that feelings of ancient prejudice have ceased to haunt the imagination of European travellers. The Chevalier D'Arvieux, French consul in Syria from 1682 to 1688, visited the camp of an Arabian emir, and mentions his surprise at the polite civility of these Eastern savages, whom the people of France had been taught to consider as having nothing human about them but the shape; while the prince of the desert and his courtiers were equally astonished to find that the Franks, whose names they used to frighten their children, were not cannibals, nor quite so barbarous as had been represented.* Niebuhr and Burckhardt, who have earned such an honourable distinction in this interesting field of research, concur in their admission that the pictures drawn of Arab ferocity, and the dangers to be apprehended from it, have been greatly overcharged; and that travellers, when they meet with incivilities or injuries, have usually themselves to blame, either by affecting an ostentation of wealth and consequence, which acts as an incitement to plunder; or by expecting such luxuries and conveniences as are utterly incompatible with the simple habits and resources of the country.

But with all this laudable and successful enterprise, the labour of Arabian discovery is far from being completed. There is yet scope for exertion. The prying eye of observation, which has made important disclosures in several of its unfrequented provinces, has left various central districts nearly unexplored, and as little known as they were in the days of Alexander the Great. There is, however, small reason to doubt but that this obscurity will gradually disappear. Though there are few allurements to tempt the literary adventurer, compared with the dangers he runs, and the necessary qualifi cations of mind and body; still there is enough of

*Voyages de l'Arabie Deserte, Pub. par M. De la Roque.

scientific chivalry to carry forward, if not to complete, the discoveries that have been so auspiciously begun. Persevering research has lifted up, or rather for ever removed, the veil that so long hid the mystic writings of ancient Egypt. A new interest has dawned on the ruins of her tombs and her tem ples. Those monuments of nameless kings and gods, instead of remaining the objects of barren admiration or blind enthusiasm, have been restored to history and chronology; and those primitive fountains of learning to which Greece herself owed the rudiments of her knowledge have again become the oracles of wisdom to the Western world. quired indefatigable patience, and a multitude of fatal attempts, to trace the hidden sources of the Nile and the Niger. Similar perseverance may dispel the ignorance that covers the interior of Arabia; and though it cannot make the wilderness and the solitary place to bud and blossom as the rose, it may restore to geography much that the wreck and the negligence of a thousand years have buried in oblivion.

It re

The task can be approached now with many faci lities that have sprung from the improvement of art, or grown up with the liberal and enlightened progress of society. The history of the terrible Saracens can be discussed with more candour and freedom than in the reigns of Omar and Saladin. A recital of their cruelties will find, in our day, no Peter the Hermit to make them a theme of declamation for rousing the pious zeal of kings and emperors; or for letting loose a second time upon Asia the undisciplined fury of a superstitious multitude. Even their religion may be spoken of without reviving those apprehensions which alarmed the piety of Prideaux and the bigotry of Maracci. A fair representation of its doctrines will hardly expose us to the spiritual attacks of those daggers and fortresses of the faith with which the Christian doctors of yore

were wont to assail their antagonists. The tolerant spirit of our age has effaced the prejudices against a difference of belief which ignorance and fanaticism had created. The sword-the grand argument of the Moslem religion-has yielded to the force of reason; and our manners and habits of thinking have triumphed in their turn over the relentless soldiers of Mohammed.

The subject, embracing such a variety of events, is necessarily extensive. We shall endeavour to collect within a moderate compass every thing which, from its novelty or importance, deserves to be recorded; and if our limits do not permit us to gather all the flowers that lie scattered over the surface of this pleasant landscape, we hope at least to be able to produce some of those treasures of solid information which, like gold mixed with sand or buried in mountains, have been alloyed with Eastern fable, or concealed from the general reader by being wrapped up in dead or foreign languages. We have thought it essential to our plan to give some account of the dark and traditionary epoch that preceded the time of Mohammed, in order to preserve a connected chain of narrative with the more brilliant and authentic events that followed it. Besides, it is impossible, without such aid, to understand either the literature or the religion of the Arabs. Their tales and their poetry abound with images, the origin of which must be sought beyond the memory of written records. Even the Koran itself has perpetual allusions, not only to the facts, but to the fables and traditions which the stream of antiquity had mingled and carried down in its course. What we shall say of the government, customs, and institutions of the ancient Arabs shall be restricted to what is absolutely necessary to a right understanding of their civil and political history after they had risen to the dignity of a warlike and powerful empire.

CHAPTER II.

DESCRIPTION OF ARABIA.

Name-Boundaries-General Features-Ancient Geographical Divisions-Arabia Petræa-Deserta-Felix-Modern Divisions-Hejaz-Tehama-Yemen-Hadramaut-Oman -Lasha or El-Hassa-Hejed-Peninsula of Sinai-Ancient Bed of the Jordan-Mounts Sinai and Horeb-View from their Top-Various Opinions as to their Identity-Climate of Arabia-Heat-Rains-Rivers-Winds-The Simoom-Arabian Seas-Persian Gulf-Red Sea-Coral Banks-Passage of the Israelites-Dangerous Navigation-Steam Communication with India.

ARABIA is generally allowed to have derived its name from a Hebrew word, denoting a wilderness or land of deserts and plains. Various other derivations have been assigned; and learned etymologists are divided in opinion, whether the term be expressive of a mixed, a mercantile, or a western people. The Arabs themselves trace it to one of their ancestors, whom they call Yarab, a son of Joktan, who is said to have been one of the earliest settlers in that country; but as Yarab does not occur among the thirteen sons of that patriarch mentioned in Scripture (Gen. x. 26-29), this inference may be considered as purely traditional. The name of Arabah is repeatedly applied to the western wilderness by Moses, who describes it with a minuteness not to be mistaken, as situated "over-against the Red Sea, between Paran and Tophel: and by the way of Elath and Ezion-gaber."* A small tract in the

* The word translated plain (Deut. i. 1, and ii. 8) is in the original Arabah, by the Red Sea, &c. "Arabia non ab Arabo,

ancient Idumæa still retains the original appellation; and as these territories belonged to the wandering Ishmaelites, the name would gradually be extended as they spread their conquests over the rest of the country. By this name it is recorded in the writings of the Jewish historians and the later prophets, who speak of the kings of Arabah, of its traffic, and the different tribes by which it was inhabited. (Josh. xv. 52, 61; 1 Kings x. 15; Jer. xxv. 24.)

At this remote period were these western regions distinguished from the more fertile and populous plains towards Chaldea, which went by the name of Kedem or the East,-a distinction as old as the days of Abraham and Job. This simple practice of deriving names from territorial residence is entirely in accordance with the notions that regulated the primitive divisions of the earth, when mankind had no other geography than such as respected their own local situation, or the relative position of the heavens. The ancient Greeks called Italy Hesperia, or the Land of the West; the Italians bestowed the same epithet on Spain; and the name was at length transferred to those fabulous gardens, which gradually retired before the dawn of knowledge into the Elysian solitudes of the Atlantic Ocean. Similar ideas prevail in the East at the present day. Syria is uniformly called Sham,-the country to the left, or the north; while the south is termed Yemen, or the country to the right. The Turks and Persians call the whole peninsula Arabistan; the natives themselves call it Jezirat el Arab (the peninsula of the Arabs); and it is remarkable as one of the few countries among the kingdoms of antiquity which, amid the changes and revolutions of 3000 years, still

Apollinis et Babyloniæ filio, et Latinorum plerique asserunt, sed ab Araba, plaga non longe a Medina sita, nomen sortita est."Gab. Sionita, de Mor. et Nat. Orient. p. 7. Univ. Hist. vol. xviii, chap. 21. Gagnier, ad Abulfed. Geog. Diatrib. de Arab, nom,

sect. 1.