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 316 THE DECLINE AND FALL fill and nutritious ; the young and tender flesh has the taste of veal ; ^^ a valuable salt is extracted from the urine ; the dung supplies the deficiency of fuel ; and the long hair, which falls each year and is renewed, is coarsely manufactured into the garments, the furniture, and the tents, of the Bedoweens. In the rainy seasons they consume the rare and insufficient herbage of the desert ; during the heats of summer and the scarcity of winter, they remove their encampments to the sea-coast, the hills of Yemen, or the neighbourhood of the Euphrates, and have often extorted the dangerous licence of visiting the banks of the Nile and the villages of Syria and Palestine, The life of a wandering Arab is a life of danger and distress ; and, though sometimes, by rapine or exchange, he may appropriate the fruits of industry, a private citizen in Europe is in the possession of more solid and pleasing luxury than the proudest emir who marches in the field at the head of ten thousand horse, ratiejof Yet an essential difference may be found between the hordes of Scythia and the Arabian tribes, since many of the latter were collected into towns and employed in the labours of trade and agriculture. A part of their time and industry was still devoted to the management of their cattle ; they mingled, in peace and war, with their bretliren of the desert ; and the Bedoweens derived fi-om their useful intercourse some supply of their wants and some rudiments of art and knowledge. Among the forty- two cities f»f Arabia,^'' enumerated by Abulfeda, the most ancient and populous were situate in the li(ipiy Yemen ; the towers of Saana ^^^ and the marvellous reservoir of Merab ^'-* were con- structed by the kings of the Homerites ; but their profane lustre ^"Qui carnibus camelorum vesci solent odii tenaces sunt, was the opinion of an -Arabian physician (Pocock, Specimen, p. 88). Mahomet himself, who was fond of milk, prefers the cow, and does not even mention the camel ; but the diet of Mecca and Medina was already more luxurious (Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 404). [Camel's flesh is said to be very insipid.] i^Yet Marcian of Heraclea (in Periplo, p. 16, in tom. i. Hudson, Minor. Geograph.) reckons one hundred and sixty-four towns in Arabia Felix. The size of the towns might be small — the faith of the writer might be large. 18 It is compared by Abulfeda (in Hudson, tom. iii. p. 54) to Damascus, and is stil'i the residence of the Imam of Yemen (Voyages de Niebuhr, tom. i. p. 331-342). Saana [San 'a] is twenty-four parasangs from Dafar [Dhafar] (Abulfeda, p. 51), and sixty-eight from .den (p. 53). IS Pocock, Specimen, p. 57 ; Geograph. Nubiensis, p. 52. Meriaba, or Merab, six miles in circumference, was destroyed by the legions of Augustus (Plin. Hist. Nat. vi. 32), and had not revived in the fourteenth century (.'bulfed. Descript. Arab, p. 58). [It was reached but not destroyed by the legions of Augustus. Its strong walls deterred Galius from a siege. Their ruins still stand. See Arnaud, Journal Asiat. (7 s6r.), 3, p. 3 sqtj., 1874.]