al life, Augustus maintained the character of a private Roman; and
his most artful flatterers respected the secret of his absolute and
perpetual monarchy.

Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.--Part I.

Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.--Birth,
Character, And Doctrine Of Mahomet.--He Preaches At Mecca.--
Flies To Medina.--Propagates His Religion By The Sword.--
Voluntary Or Reluctant Submission Of The Arabs.--His Death
And Successors.--The Claims And Fortunes Of All And His
Descendants.

After pursuing above six hundred years the fleeting Caesars of
Constantinople and Germany, I now descend, in the reign of Heraclius, on
the eastern borders of the Greek monarchy. While the state was exhausted
by the Persian war, and the church was distracted by the Nestorian and
Monophysite sects, Mahomet, with the sword in one hand and the Koran in
the other, erected his throne on the ruins of Christianity and of Rome.
The genius of the Arabian prophet, the manners of his nation, and the
spirit of his religion, involve the causes of the decline and fall of
the Eastern empire; and our eyes are curiously intent on one of the most
memorable revolutions, which have impressed a new and lasting character
on the nations of the globe.

In the vacant space between Persia, Syria, Egypt, and AEthiopia, the
Arabian peninsula may be conceived as a triangle of spacious but
irregular dimensions. From the northern point of Beles 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. 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