ed _dhows_ or _buggalows_. You
will hear something more about these boats in the chapter on the slave
trade.

The carpenters of Arabia, like the boat builders, work in a very
old-fashioned way. But they are much less skillful in their work. You
often see well-built boats but never a well-made door or a window that
shuts properly. Perhaps the fault is with their tools and perhaps they are
not as skillful as they once were in using them.

The Arab carpenter uses no bench or vise; he squats upon the ground in the
shade of some old building or tree and carries all his tools in a small
basket with him. He has four hands instead of the two hands of an American
carpenter, for his feet are bare and he can work as well with his toes as
you can with your fingers. It is wonderful to see how an Arab carpenter
can hold a board with his toes while his hands are busy sawing or planing
it!

I never see one of these carpenters using his toes so cleverly without
thinking that we who wear shoes and stockings and only use our feet for
walking have lost one of the powers that the Arabs still possess. A
carpenter's handsome handiwork in Arabia should be called his _toe_some
_toey_-work; don't you think so? In the picture at the end of this chapter
you see an Arab carpenter's tools. His saw is exactly opposite to an
ordinary saw as the teeth all point the wrong way! But you know he _pulls_
the tool so it is all right. The plane has four handles instead of one.
The gimlet is like ours but instead of a brace and bit to make holes, the
Arab uses a fiddle-string stretched on a bow which he twists once or
twice around his borer, or auger-bit. Then he fiddles away until he has
made a hole.

[Illustration: SAWING A BEAM.]

It is very strange to see two Arab carpenters sawing a beam as you find
them in the picture.

Time is not valuable in the East because the days are long and life is
easy and the people are never in a hurry. Never do anything to-day that
can be done to-morrow is their motto. So they spend a half hour in fixing
the beam on a tripod; then they pull and push and push and pull the great
clumsy saw blade up and down and in an hour or so the beam is cut in two.
What would such carpenters say if they were to visit an American sawmill
and see the gang-saw cut six boards out of a log at once just as easy as
your mother cuts a cheese? Arabia and its carpenters are very far behind
us in civilisation. The whole country is in need of sch