[Illustration: Khaibar Pass, the gateway to India]

Now, no one is quite certain about the Saracens as a people because the
name has been very loosely used. It was applied by Roman soldiers to
several wandering tribes of Arabs who were much accustomed to mistaking
other people's flocks of sheep and herds of cattle for their own. Most
likely there never was a Saracenic Empire. But there certainly was a
time when Arabians controlled not only the Arabian peninsula, but also
Syria and the fertile plains of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers as well;
and that great region became known as the "Land of the Saracens." From
Damascus to Bagdad, and from the Bab-el-Mandeb to the Gulf of Oman, the
Moslem was all-powerful.

Let us glance at the country itself. In the first place, Arabia is not a
nation but a country made up of petty states--some independent, some
controlled by the sultan of Turkey; two or three are included in the
British Empire. But the country itself is very far removed from the rest
of the world so far as accessibility is concerned; and although its
coast is scarcely a gunshot from the greatest trade route of the East,
Arabia is to-day one of the least-known countries in the world.

In general, the country is a moderately high table-land bordered by low
coast plains. Much of it is an out-and-out desert; all of it is arid.
Long ago it was divided into Arabia Petraea, Arabia Deserta, and Arabia
Felix--that is, the rocky, the desert, and the happy. It is needless to
say that Arabia the happy was the part receiving enough rainfall to
produce foodstuffs.

The coast-line of this great peninsula is nearly as great as that of the
Atlantic and Gulf coast of the United States; but in its entire extent,
not far from four thousand miles, there is scarcely a harbor in which a
good-sized fishing schooner could find safe anchorage. Even at Aden a
steamship cannot approach within a quarter of a mile of the shore. So
one will not be far out of the way in designating Arabia as an
impassable country with an impossible coast.

It is estimated that about seven millions of people live in the entire
peninsula. To say that these belong to the Semitic race is merely to say
that they are dark-skinned and black-haired. The Arab, whether a
merchant dwelling in a city along the coast, or a Bedouin wandering with
flocks and herds, is a product of the desert and of the teachings of
Islam. His black eyes twinkle with shrewdness and he is a pas