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 312 THE DECLINE AND FALL but irre ;ular dimensions. From the northern point of Beles ^ on the Euphrates, a line of fifteen hundred miles is terminated by the straits of Babelmandeb 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 en- larged, 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 The soil and e])ithets of the stmuj and the sand)/. Even the wilds of Tartary c mate ^^^ decked by the hand of nature with lofty trees and luxuriant lierbage ; and the lonesome traveller derives a sort of comfort and society from the presence of vegetable life. But in the dreaiy 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 direct and intense rays of a tropical sun. Instead of refreshing breezes, the winds, particularly from the south-west, diffuse a noxious and even deadly vapour ; the hillocks of sand which they alternately raise and scatter are compared to the billows of the ocean ; and whole caravans, whole armies, have been lost and buried in the whirl- wind. The common benefits of water are an object of desire and contest ; and such is the scarcity of wood that some art is requisite to preserve and propagate the element of fire. Arabia opened to us the Arabia of Abulfeda, the most copious and correct account of the peninsula, which may be enriched, however, from the Biblioth^que Orientale of d'Herbelot, p. 120, et alibi passim. 3. The European ii-avellers ; among whom Shaw (p. 438-455) and Niebuhr (Description, 1773, Vo3-ages, tom. i. 1776) deserve an honourable distinction; Busching (Geographic par Berenger, tom. viii.p. 416-510) has compiled with judgment; and d'Anville's Maps (Orbis Veterihus Notus, and ire Partie de I'Asie) should lie before the reader, with his Gtiographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 208-231. [Of European travellers since Niebuhr, we have the accounts of J. L. Burckhardt, Travels in Arabia, 1829; J. R. Wellsted, Travels in Arabia, 1838; W. G. Palgrave, Narrative of a year's journey through central and eastern Arabia (ed. 2), 1868. For the Nejd : Lady Anne Blunt's Pilgrimage to Ncjd / (1881). See also below, n. 21. The historical geography of Arabia has been treated by C. Forster (" The Hist. Geography of Arabia," 1844).] ^ Abulfed. Descript. Arabia;, p. i. D'.Anville, I'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 19, 20. It was in this place [Balis], the paradise or garden of a satrap [-ri BeAeon/o? ^oo-iAcio], that Xenophon and the Greeks first passed the Euphrates (Anabasis, 1. i. c. 10 [_leg. c. 4, g 10], p. 29, edit. Wells). •»[This measurement is not accurate. The distance is 900 miles. The "southern basis" is 1200 miles from Bab al-Mandeb to Ras al-Hadd.] 5 Reland has proved, with much superfluous learning, i. That our Red Sea (the Arabian Gulf) is no more than a part of the A/ti/f Rtihrum, the 'EpvSpa SoAao-o-a of the ancients, which was extended to the indetniite space of the Indian ocean. 2. That the synonymous words epi^Spiis, aieio.//, allude to the colour of the blacks or negroes (Dissert. Miscell. tom. i. p. 59-117).