a Felix,
was confined to the trade which was carried on over the Red Sea from
Egypt, and which became the channel through which not only the
spices of Arabia, but the rich products of India, and even the slaves
[32] and ivory of Eastern Africa, were supplied to the markets of
Italy. At the present day, almost the whole of the south coast of
Arabia fronting the Indian Ocean, nearly from the head of the Persian
Gulf to the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, as well as the eastern coast of
Africa, from Cape Guardafui to the entrance of the Mozambique Channel
a seaboard approaching 4000 miles in length--is more or less subject
to the Sultan of Muscat, [33] a prince whose power is almost wholly
maritime, and whose dominions nowhere extend more than thirty or forty
miles inland: while our own recent acquisition of Aden, a detached point
with which our communication can be maintained only by restraining
the command of the sea, has for the first time given an European
power (excepting the Turks, whose possessions in Arabia always
depended on Egypt) a _locus standi_ on the shores of Yemen.

[Footnote 32: This part of Africa is noticed by Arrian as famous for
the excellent quality of the slaves brought from [Greek: ta doulicha
chreissota],and it still retains its pre-eminence. The tribes in
this quarter are far superior both in personal appearance and
intellect to the negroes of Guinea.]

[Footnote 33: We have seen it somewhere stated that the Sultan has
also attempted, by means of his navy, to exercise authority on the
shores of Beloochistan; which would bring him into contact with our
own outposts at Soumeeani, &c., near the mouth of the Indus.]

The process by which we obtained this footing in Arabia was strictly
in accordance with the maxims of policy adopted by the then rulers
of British India, and which they were at the same time engaged in
carrying out, on a far more extended scale, in Affghanistan. In both
cases--perhaps from a benevolent anxiety to accommodate our
diplomacy to the primitive ideas of those with whom we had to deal--

"the good old rule
Sufficeth them, the simple plan
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can"--

was assumed as the basis of our proceedings: and though the brilliant
success which for a time attended our philanthropic exertions in the
cause of good order and civilization beyond the Indus, so completely
threw into the shade the minor glories of Aden, that th