the faiths which cannot be got rid of, and which must be regarded as the final products of human thinking, feeling, suffering, and doing, will be found to repose on pillars as strong as human nature itself. Given not by inspiration from above, but by transpiration from below and behind; not dropped into the minds of a chosen few, but passed through the minds of all, though by a few only clearly perceived and interpreted; not implanted but inwrought, and manifest in the very texture of well-organized humanity, - they are safe from fatal denial or disabling doubt. What these ultimate beliefs will finally be allowed to be, by thinkers like Mill and Bain and Spencer, can of course only be conjectured. We venture the prediction, however, that they will be all that humanity requires for its strength and its consolation.

بھی

ART. II.-PALGRAVE'S ARABIA.

Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia (1862-1863). By WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE. With Portrait and Map. 2 vols. 8vo.

London.

THE author of these volumes enables us, for the first time, to know Arabia as it is; the Arabia of the genuine Arab, in marked contrast with the Arab of the outskirts of the land. One of our most recent Encyclopædias tells us, that Arabia has for its seventh district" Nejed the central desert region; and of the whole region through which our traveller passed, the same authority knows only "a vast tract of shifting sands, interspersed about the centre with various ranges of hills, generally barren and uninteresting." Mr. Palgrave has corrected all this, and reconstructed the map of Arabia. Of sands, indeed, there can be no doubt; but within them are locked islands of singular fruitfulness and interest. An empire is planted in Nejed, with 316 towns, and a population of some 1,200,000. Across a vast river of sand to the north

west of Nejed is an outlying kingdom, with a population of 274,000, in 86 towns or villages. The empire is that of the Wahhabee monarch Feysul; the kingdom is that of Telal-ebuRasheed. No Bedouins are included in this enumeration. The Wahhabee Sultan holds in subjection 76,500 of these degraded Arabs of the desert, a much diminished element of central Arabia. King Telal holds in his firm sway 166,000. These are the careful estimates of Mr. Palgrave.

The account given by our author of the Bedouins, their garb, character, worship, &c., is full of interest. We have gleaned a number of passages which we place before the reader in full as of much greater value than any sketch we could frame. It is thus he describes the appearance of the Bedouin:

"A long and very dirty shirt, reaching nearly to the ankles, a black cotton handkerchief over the head, fastened on by a twist of camel's hair, a tattered cloak, striped white and brown, a leather girdle, much the worse for wear, from which dangled a rusty knife, a long-barrelled and cumbrous matchlock, a yet longer sharp-pointed spear, a powder-belt, broken and coarsely patched up with thread, such was the accoutrement of these worthies, and such, indeed, is the ordinary Bedouin guise on a journey." pp. 4, 5.

Next, the Bedouin's beast:

"The camel-in a word, he is from first to last an undomesticated and savage animal, rendered serviceable by stupidity alone, without much skill on his master's part or any co-operation on his own, save that of extreme passiveness. Neither attachment nor even habit impress him; never tame, though not wide awake enough to be exactly wild. One passion alone he possesses, namely, revenge, of which he furnishes many a hideous example; while, in carrying it out, he shows an unexpected degree of far-thoughted malice, united meanwhile with all the cold stupidity of his usual character. . . . Indeed, so marked is this unamiable propensity, that some philosophers, doubtless of Prof. Gorres's school, have ascribed the revengeful character of the Arabs to the great share which the flesh and milk of the camel have in their sustenance, and which are supposed to communicate to those who partake of them over-largely the moral or immoral qualities of the animal to which they belonged. . . . Thus much I

can say, that the camel and his Bedouin master do afford so many and such obvious points of resemblance, that I did not think an Arab of Shomer far in the wrong when I once of a time heard him say, "God created the Bedouin for the camel, and the camel for the

Bedouin."" pp. 40, 41.

We copy the following picture of the Bedouin worship and faith:

"The sun rose; and then, for the first time, I witnessed what afterwards became a daily spectacle, the main act of Bedouin worship in their own land. Hardly had the first clear rays struck level across the horizon, than our nomade companions, facing the rising disk, began to recite alternately, but without any previous ablution or even dismounting from their beasts, certain formulas of adoration and invocation, nor desisted till the entire orb rode clear above the desert edge. Sun-worshippers as they were before the days of Mahomet, they still remain such; and all that the Hejaz prophet could say, or the doctors of his law repeat, touching the Devil's horns between which the great day-star rises, as true Mahometans know or ought to know, and the consequently diabolical character of worship at such a time, and in a posture, too, which directs prayers and adorations then made exactly towards the Satanic head-gear, has been entirely thrown away on these obstinate adherents to ancient customs. The fact is, that, among the great mass of the nomade population, Mahometanism, during the course of twelve whole centuries, has made little or no impression either for good or ill: that it was equally ineffectual in this quarter at the period of its very first establishment, we learn from the Coran itself, and from early tradition of an authentic character. Not that the Bedouins on their part had any particular aversion from their inspired countryman or the Divine Unity, but simply because they were themselves, as they still are, incapable of receiving or retaining any of those serious influences and definite forms of thought and practice which then gave a permanent mould to the townsmen of Hejaz and many other provinces; just as the impress of a seal is lost in water, while retained in wax. Unstable as water,

thou shalt not excel,' is an imprecation which, if meant originally for Reuben, has descended in all its plenitude on the Bedouins of Arabia. At the same time, surrounded by, and often more or less dependent on, sincere and even bigoted followers of Islam, they have occasionally deemed it prudent to assume a kindred name and bearing, and

thus to style themselves Mahometans for the time being, and even go through some prayer or religious formula, when indeed they can manage to learn any." pp. 8, 9.

Setting out from Southern Palestine, and crossing the gravelly desert in a south-easterly direction, Mr. Palgrave first reached the Djowf, an outlying dependency of the kingdom of Telal. We cannot better indicate the general course and progress of the remarkable journey thus entered upon than by quoting the following; premising that Wadi Serhan is occupied by Bedouins:

"If my readers will draw a diagonal line across the map of Arabia from north-west to south-east, following the direction of my actual journey through that country, and then distinguish the several regions of the peninsula by belts of color brightening while they represent the respective degrees of advancement in arts, commerce, and their kindred acquirements, they will have for the darkest line that nearest to the north, or Wadi Serhan; while the Djowf, Djebel Shomer, Nejed, Hasa, and their dependencies, grow lighter in succession more and more, till the belt corresponding to 'Oman should show the cheerfullest tint of all. In fact, it is principally owing to the circumstance that the Northern and Western parts of Arabia have been hitherto those almost exclusively visited by travellers, that the idea of Arab barbarism or Bedouinism has found such general acceptance in Europe." pp. 166, 167.

The Djowf is a kind of porch or vestibule to central Arabia. The Northern desert separates it from Syria. Between it and the nearest mountains of the central Arabian plateau stretches a wide pass of sand. Thus isolated, it forms an oasis, a large oval depression sixty or seventy miles long, by ten or twelve broad. It has twelve towns or villages and 40,000 inhabitants. Its rich gardens, its real civilization, and the hospitality of its genuine Arabs, were a surprise and a delight to the traveller from Syria and the desert. But we must let Mr. Palgrave speak:

"Here, for the first time in our southward course, we found the date-palm a main object of cultivation. The apricot and the peach, the fig-tree and the vine, abound; and their fruit surpasses, in copi

ousness and flavor, that supplied by the gardens of Damascus or the hills of Syria and Palestine. Corn, leguminous plants, gourds, melons, &c., &c., are widely cultivated. Here, too, for the last time, the traveller bound for the interior, sees the irrigation indispensable to all growth and tillage in this droughty climate kept up by running streams of clear water, whereas in the Nejed and its neighborhood it has to be laboriously procured from wells and cisterns. . . . Were we to place the general standard of the Djowf thermometer in the shade at noon during the months of June, July, and August at about 90° or 95° Fahr., we should not, I think, be far wrong for this valley. At night the air is, with very few exceptions, cool, at least comparatively, so that a variation of twenty or more degrees often occurs within a very short period." pp. 58, 59.

"Among all their different kinds of produce, one only is considered as a regular article of sale and export, the date. . . . It is almost incredible how large a part the date plays in Arab sustenance; it is the bread of the land, the staff of life, and the staple of commerce. Mahomet, who owed his wonderful success at least as much to his intense nationality as to any other cause whether natural or supernatural, is said to have addressed his followers on the subject in these words: 'Honor the date-tree, for she is your mother;' a slight extension of the fifth commandment, though hardly, perhaps, exceeding the legislative powers of a prophet." p. 60.

From the Djowf Mr. Palgrave advanced to the chief district of Telal's kingdom, Djebel Shomer. To do this, he had to cross a wide inlet of the desert, no longer gravelly, but deep sand formed into waves more lofty and more fearful than those of the sea, though more stable. This formation occurs throughout the desert, the sand-billows taking a height proportioned to the depth of the sea of sand. Our author had the truly infernal pleasure of breasting, in midsummer, waves two hundred feet high. The trough of this sea was naturally a pit of fire. But in and out, in and out, through perilous nights and days, was necessary to reach the great plateau on which Arabia is no longer Bedouin and savage, but Arab and civilized. The passage of this fearful Nefood was accomplished in safety, and Mr. Palgrave presented himself at the court of Telal in the city of Ha'yel. It is impossible in any sketch to convey an adequate idea of the picture of life at