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 OF THE ROMAN EMPIKE 319 the peculiar wilderness in which Ismael and his sons nuist have pitched their tents in the face of their bi'ethren. Yet these exceptions are temporary or local ; the body of the nation has escaped the yoke of the most powerful monarchies ; the arms of Sesostris and Cyrus, of Pompey and Trajan, could never achieve the conquest of Arabia ; the present sovereign of the Turks '^'^ may exercise a shadow of jurisdiction, but his pride is reduced to solicit the friendship of a people whom it is dangerous to provoke and fruitless to attack. The obvious causes of their freedom are inscribed on the character and country of the Arabs. Many ages before Mahomet,^'-' their intrepid valom' had been severely felt by their neighbours in offensive and defensive war. The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life. The care of the sheep and camels is abandoned to the women of the tribe ; but the martial youth under the banner of the emir is ever on horseback and in the field, to practise the exercise of the bow, the javelin, and the scymetar. The long memory of their independence is the firmest pledge of its perpetuity, and succeeding generations are animated to prove their descent and to maintain their inheritance. Their domestic feuds are sus- pended on the approach of a common enemy ; and in their last hostilities against the Turks the caravan of Mecca was attacked and pillaged by fourscore thousand of the confederates. When they advance to battle, the hope of victory is in the front ; in the rear, the assurance of a retreat. Their horses and camels, who in eight or ten days can perform a march of four or five hundred miles, disajjpear before the conqueror ; the secret waters of the desert elude his search ; and his victorious troops are consumed with thirst, hunger, and fatigue, in the pui-suit of an invisible foe, who scorns his efforts, and safely reposes in the heart of the burning solitude. The arms and deserts of the Bedoweens ai'e not only the safeguards of their own freedom, but the barriers also of the happy Arabia, whose inhabitants, remote from war, are enervated bj- the luxury of the soil and climate. The legions of Augustus melted away in disease and lassitude ; ■''^' and it is only by a naval power that the reduction -"^Niebuhr (Description de 1' Arabic, p. 302, 303, 329-331) affords the most recent and authentic intelligence of the Turkish empire in Arabia. [Harris's Travels among the Yemen Rebels is the latest account (1894).] ^' Diodorus Siculus (tom. ii. 1. xi.x. p. 390-393, edit. Wesseling [c. 94, s</^.]) has clearly exposed the freedom of the Nabathrean Arabs, who resisted the arms of Antigonus and his son. •"J Strabo, 1. xvi. p. 1127-1129 [3, § 22 si/t/.] ; Plin. Hist. Xatur. vi. 32. yElius Gallus landed near Medina, and marched near a thousand miles into the part of