subject this time is Arabia, which the natives call Jezirat-al-Arab,
and the Turks and Persians Arabistan. It is a peninsula, the isthmus of
which reaches across from the south-eastern corner of the Mediterranean
to the head of the Persian Gulf," the professor began, indicating on the
map the localities mentioned with the pointer. "Asia abounds in
peninsulas, and Arabia is the great south-western one. From north-west
to south-east it extends 1800 miles, and is about 600 wide. It has an
area of 1,230,000 square miles, which is a very indefinite statement to
the mind, though given in figures, and I will adopt the commander's
method of giving a better idea by comparison with some of the States of
your own country.

"It is nearly five times as large as the State of Texas, the most
extensive of the Union, and almost twenty-six times as large as the
State of New York. They do not take a census here; and estimates from
the best information that could be obtained make the population five
millions, which is less than that of the State of New York. Mr. Gaskette
has colored a strip of it along the Red Sea, about a hundred miles wide,
in green, as he has Palestine and the other parts of Turkey in Asia
shown before you. A large portion of Arabia consists of deserts, the
principal of which is the Syrian in the north.

"Ptolemy, not the king but the geographer, divided Arabia into three
sections,--Arabia Petraea, after the city of Petra; Arabia Deserta, the
interior; and Arabia Felix (Arabie Heureuse in French), which does not
mean 'the happy land,' as generally translated. Milton says, 'Sabean
odors from the spicy shores of Araby the blest.' The words meant the
land lying to the right, or south of Mecca, the Oriental principal point
of the compass being the east and not the north.

"The proper divisions at the present time are the Sinai peninsula,
Hedjaz, which is the northern part of the green strip; Yemen, the south
part (formerly Arabia Felix); Hadramaut, which borders the Arabian Gulf,
the ante-sea of the Red; and Oman, a mountainous region at the entrance
of the Persian Gulf, an independent country, under the government of the
sultan or imam of Muscat, as the territory is also called.

"We do not know much about the interior of Arabia, one-third of which is
a desert, part of a zone reaching over all of Africa and Asia. El-Hasa,
along the Persian Gulf in the east, for such a country, is level and
fertile, and is really a Turk