In the atlas Arabia looks like a big mail-pouch hung up by the side of
some railway station, pretty empty of everything. But this queer
mail-pouch country is not as empty as people imagine. It is a country
larger than all of the United States east of the Mississippi. It is longer
than the longest mail-pouch and much wider. From north to south you can
ride a camel one thousand miles and from east to west more than six
hundred. But the geography of the country is topsy-turvy altogether and
that is why it has been so long a neglected peninsula. People kept on
wondering at the queer exterior of the mail-pouch and never opened the
lock to its secrets by looking into the interior.
First of all, Arabia is perhaps the only land that has three of its
boundaries fixed and the other always shifting. Such is the case with the
northern boundary of Arabia. It is different on every map and changes
every year because the inhabitants go about as nomads; that is, they "have
no continuing city."
Arabia has no rivers except underground. It has no railroad and very few
roads at all. Some parts of the country are very green and fertile and in
other parts there is not enough grass the year around to give one square
meal to a single grasshopper. Arabia has four thousand miles of coast and
yet only six harbours where steamers call. There are better maps of the
North Pole and of Mars and of the moon than of southeastern Arabia. The
reason is that men have spent millions of dollars to find the North Pole
and telescopes are all the time looking at the moon; but no one has ever
spent time or money to explore this part of Arabia. The Greek geographers
had a better knowledge of Arabia than we have to-day.
[Illustration: MAP OF ARABIA.]
There are no lakes in Arabia, but there is a large sea of sand called _Al
Ahkaf_, in which the traveller Von Wrede threw a lead and line and found
no bottom! No one has been there since to see whether his story was true.
At Bahrein, in eastern Arabia, there are salt-water wells on shore and
fresh-water springs in the midst of the salt sea from which water is
brought to shore. Arabia has no postage-stamps and no political capital
and no telegraph system. Different coins from different parts of the world
are used in different provinces. It is a land of contradictions and even
the waters that bound it are misnamed. The Red Sea is blue; the Persian
Gulf has no Persian ships and should be called an English lake; and the
_Straits_ of Hormuz are crooked. This topsy-turvy land has no political
divisions. Some say it has five and some seven provinces; no one knows
what is its population as no census was ever taken. In nearly all
countries the mountain ranges run north and south, but in Arabia they run
nearly east and west. There are desert sands six hundred feet deep and
mountain peaks nine thousand feet high. On the coasts it is fearfully hot
and the climate is often deadly. On the highlands it is often bitterly
cold; and yet the people are all of the same race and speech and custom
and language and religion.
[Illustration: READY FOR A CAMEL RIDE.]
There are no pumps in Arabia, but plenty of wells. There are no woods in
Arabia, but plenty of trees. The camel is a topsy-turvy ship and the
ostrich a topsy-turvy bird. The Arabs call the former the ship of the
desert; and the latter they say is half camel and half bird. In some parts
of Arabia horses and cows are fed on boiled fish because that is cheaper
than grass! In other parts of the country donkeys are fed on dates. Arabia
has more sultans and princes than any other country of the same size and
yet it is a land without a settled government. The people never meet one
another without saying "Peace to you"; yet there has never been any peace
over the whole land since Christ's birth or even since the days of
Ishmael.
Every one carries a weapon and yet there are very few wild animals. It is
more dangerous to meet a Bedouin than a lion when you are a stranger on
the road. The Arabs are a nation of robbers. Now you will wonder how we
can also say that Orientals are the most hospitable of any people in the
world for the Arabs are Orientals. And yet it is strictly true that these
robbers are more hospitable, in a way, than you people of Western
countries. They have a proverb which says that "Every stranger is an
invited guest"; and another which says, "The guest while in the house is
its lord." If an Arab gets after you to rob or kill you, it is only
necessary to take refuge in his tent for safety. He is bound then, by the
rules of Oriental hospitality, to treat you as his guest. But you must not
stay there too long and you must be careful how you get away! You will
find instances of this respect for the duty of hospitality all through the
Bible story. It was in the earliest Bible times, as later and as now, a
grievous sin to be inhospitable. The cradle of the Mohammedan religion is
Arabia, and yet in no country are they more ignorant of their religion.
How sad to think that when they do worship God they do it in such an
ignorant and idolatrous way! In our next chapter we shall see more about
this.
Arabia has no national flag, no national hymn and no national feeling.
Every one lives for himself and no one cares for his neighbour. This does
not sound strange of robbers but it does of people who are so hospitable.
This queer country we are about to visit together and talk over with each
other.
You will not grow weary by the way, we hope. If the desert tracks are long
and tiresome through the following chapters, just refresh yourself in the
oasis of a picture.