of Mecca must be drawn from the Arabians,
(D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 368-371. Pocock, Specimen, p.
125-128. Abulfeda, p. 11-40.) As no unbeliever is permitted to enter
the city, our travellers are silent; and the short hints of Thevenot
(Voyages du Levant, part i. p. 490) are taken from the suspicious mouth
of an African renegado. Some Persians counted 6000 houses, (Chardin.
tom. iv. p. 167.) * Note: Even in the time of Gibbon, Mecca had not been
so inaccessible to Europeans. It had been visited by Ludovico Barthema,
and by one Joseph Pitts, of Exeter, who was taken prisoner by the Moors,
and forcibly converted to Mahometanism. His volume is a curious, though
plain, account of his sufferings and travels. Since that time Mecca has
been entered, and the ceremonies witnessed, by Dr. Seetzen, whose papers
were unfortunately lost; by the Spaniard, who called himself Ali Bey;
and, lastly, by Burckhardt, whose description leaves nothing wanting to
satisfy the curiosity.--M.]

[Footnote 19: Strabo, l. xvi. p. 1110. See one of these salt houses near
Bassora, in D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 6.]

[Footnote 20: Mirum dictu ex innumeris populis pars aequa in commerciis
aut in latrociniis degit, (Plin. Hist. Nat. vi. 32.) See Sale's Koran,
Sura. cvi. p. 503. Pocock, Specimen, p. 2. D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient.
p. 361. Prideaux's Life of Mahomet, p. 5. Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom.
i. p. 72, 120, 126, &c.]

The perpetual independence of the Arabs has been the theme of praise
among strangers and natives; and the arts of controversy transform this
singular event into a prophecy and a miracle, in favor of the posterity
of Ismael. [21] Some exceptions, that can neither be dismissed
nor eluded, render this mode of reasoning as indiscreet as it is
superfluous; the kingdom of Yemen has been successively subdued by the
Abyssinians, the Persians, the sultans of Egypt, [22] and the Turks;
[23] the holy cities of Mecca and Medina have repeatedly bowed under
a Scythian tyrant; and the Roman province of Arabia [24] embraced the
peculiar wilderness in which Ismael and his sons must have pitched their
tents in the face of their brethren. Yet these exceptions are temporary
or local; the body of the nation has escaped the yoke of the most
powerful monarchies: the arms of Sesostris and Cyrus, of Pompey
and Trajan, could never achieve the conquest of Arabia; the present
sovereign of the Turks [25] may exercise a shadow of jurisdiction,