e 1: As in this and the following chapter I shall display much
Arabic learning, I must profess my total ignorance of the Oriental
tongues, and my gratitude to the learned interpreters, who have
transfused their science into the Latin, French, and English languages.
Their collections, versions, and histories, I shall occasionally
notice.]

In the vacant space between Persia, Syria, Egypt, and Aethiopia, the
Arabian peninsula [2] may be conceived as a triangle of spacious but
irregular dimensions. From the northern point of Beles [3] on the
Euphrates, a line of fifteen hundred miles is terminated by the Straits
of Bebelmandel and the land of frankincense. About half this length may
be allowed for the middle breadth, from east to west, from Bassora
to Suez, from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. [4] The sides of the
triangle are gradually enlarged, and the southern basis presents a
front of a thousand miles to the Indian Ocean. The entire surface of the
peninsula exceeds in a fourfold proportion that of Germany or France;
but the far greater part has been justly stigmatized with the epithets
of the stony and the sandy. Even the wilds of Tartary are decked, by the
hand of nature, with lofty trees and luxuriant herbage; and the lonesome
traveller derives a sort of comfort and society from the presence of
vegetable life. But in the dreary waste of Arabia, a boundless level of
sand is intersected by sharp and naked mountains; and the face of the
desert, without shade or shelter, is scorched by the direct and intense
rays of a tropical sun. Instead of refreshing breezes, the winds,
particularly from the south-west, diffuse a noxious and even deadly
vapor; the hillocks of sand which they alternately raise and scatter,
are compared to the billows of the ocean, and whole caravans, whole
armies, have been lost and buried in the whirlwind. The common benefits
of water are an object of desire and contest; and such is the scarcity
of wood, that some art is requisite to preserve and propagate the
element of fire. Arabia is destitute of navigable rivers, which
fertilize the soil, and convey its produce to the adjacent regions: the
torrents that fall from the hills are imbibed by the thirsty earth: the
rare and hardy plants, the tamarind or the acacia, that strike their
roots into the clefts of the rocks, are nourished by the dews of the
night: a scanty supply of rain is collected in cisterns and aqueducts:
the wells and springs are the s