CHAPTER I. DESCRIPTION OF ARABIA.

 

CLIMATE. RIVERS. WINDS

A region so extensive as Arabia, varying in elevation, in climate, and soil, must naturally be subject to considerable irregularities of temperature, as well as of natural productions. While the inhabitants of the plains and valleys suffer from heat, and enjoy perpetual abundance, those on the mountains are obliged to wrap themselves in sheepskins, and subsist by plunder. In the desert the thermometer is generally above 100° during the night, at 108° in the morning, and in the course of the day it rises to 110°, and sometimes higher, even in the coolest and best shaded parts. All travellers who have visited the coasts of the Red Sea appear to have been oppressed by the extraordinary heat, and to have considered the temperature of other tropical countries as moderate in comparison. Burckhardt remarks that the climate of Mecca is sultry and unwholesome; the rocks that enclose its narrow valley interrupt the northern breezes, and reflect the rays of the sun with redoubled intensity. The air at Medina is much colder in winter; but in summer it is said that the heat is greater here than in any other part of Hejaz. At Mocha, it averages from 90° to 95° in July; owing to its vicinity to the arid sands of Africa, over which the south-east wind blows for so long a continuance as not to be cooled in its short passage across the strait. In Muscat the thermometer varies from 92° to 102° during the day, and the heat of the night is felt to be almost equally oppressive and unfavourable to European constitutions. Among the mountains of Petraea the diversity is much greater; while, in the upper regions, the maximum in May was 75°; in the lower country, and particularly on the seashore, it stood from 102° to 105°, and sometimes at 110°. In the desert, near the Euphrates, Griffith observed that the variation in the thermometer, from two to four in the day and the same hours in the morning, was frequently sixteen degrees; and that, during the prevalence of the land-winds, it rese to 132° under the tent, and 156° when exposed to the sun's rays. The highlands on the coast, and in some parts of the interior, enjoy a more temperate atmosphere. Near Sanaa, about 200 miles inland from Mocha, Niebuhr was informed that ice had been seen. Storms of hail are not uncommon at Taif; and snow sometimes falls on the hills near Medina. In winter the whole of the Upper Sinai is often covered with snow; many of the passes are chokerd up, so that the mountains of Moses and St. Catherine are inaccessible. Mr. Fazakerley, who ascended them in the month of February, found it very deep; though he fared better than Pietro della Valle, who went up in a violent snow-storm, and gives a lamentable account of his adventures on that occasion. For this peculiarity of climate Arabia is partly indebted to its position, hemmed in between the continents of Asia and Africa, and effectually debarred by the latter from the influence of the south-west monsoon, which blows during summer on the coasts of India, and ushers in the periodical rains.

One great characteristic of this vast continental desert is aridity. Whole years occasionally pass away without rain; the drought is consequently extreme, and destructive of all vegetation. All the highland tracts, and the different ridges which shoot forth into the interior, by attracting clouds and vapors, enjoy the advantage of frequent and copious showers. Those rains occur at different times of the year, according to the position of the mountains. On the western declivity of Yemen, and along the shores of the Red Sea, they commence in June and terminate in September. This district is also refreshed by a spring rain; while on the eastern declivity of the same mountains the wet season is between the middle of November and the middle of February In Hadramaut and Oman, and on the coasts of the Persian Gulf, it extends from the middle of February to the middle of April. Thus it would seem that the rains make the tour of the peninsula every season according to the prevalence of the winds. They often fall, however, in storms rather than showers; and, instead of irrigating the ground, are drunk up by the thirsty sands, or collected in sudden pools. In the valleys, near Taif, Burckhardt was overtaken by a tempest of thunder, hail, and rain, which, covered Wady Noman three feet deep; innumerable cascades immediately tumbled from the sides of the hills, and the inundation became general, so as to render travelling for a time impossible. The historians of Mecca record various instances in which that town was completely deluged. In 1626 a torrent rushed so rapidly into the plain that five hundred of the inhabitants were drowned; the great mosque was filled; three sides of it were swept away; and every human being within it perished. There appears to be no general or fixed law by which these periodical rains are determined; and it is only the skirts, as it were, of the Arabian peninsula that enjoy this necessary provision of nature for sustaining the productive powers of the earth. The same latitudes in Asia and Africa present the same peculiarities. Persia, except where it is watered by the Euphrates and the Indus, exhibits all that frightful sterility which has been depicted by the historians of Alexander in recording the perils and sufferings of his army while traversing Gedrosia (Mekran). But for the Nile, Egypt were a desert; and if Barbary is more fertile than Sahara, it is because the Atlas range attracts the moisture of the clouds.

Perhaps the most singular feature in the Arabian continent is its entire want of rivers or perennial streams. This deficiency has indeed been generously supplied by the industry of geographers, who have traced winding lines in various directions, terminating, after a long course, on the margin of the ocean. Ptolemy reckoned four rivers in Arabia Felix; Diodorus and Strabo describe several fine streams; and Herodotus speaks of one traversing the desert, at the distance of twelve days' journey. By the times of D'Anville and Niebuhr these had greatly diminished; and modern travellers have discovered that names which have so long flourishes as pompous rivers are either quite imaginary, or only temporary currents, which are absorbed in the sand, and never reach the sea except after copious rains. The great Aftan of Ptolemy, on which stood the city of Yemama, and which is still made to roll its tributary waters into the Persian Gulf, is now found to be a very modest brook, nourished by the clouds, and having no existence but during one season of the year. Those at Aden, Mocha, and other places are of the same description. The Jews and poorer inhabitants erect their huts of wicker-work in the dusty channels. In some of the wadys there are streams of considerable size that run a course of sixty or eighty leagues; but they are generally drunk up in the sandy belt before reaching either gulf. The lakes in the interior, mentioned by the Greek and Turkish geographers, must have been temporary collections of water formed by the rains.

The winds are extremely variable, and their refreshing influence is but partially felt. During summer, the heat in the lower plains on the coast is so steady and equable that the atmosphere remains in a state of repose. No change of temperature takes place to set the air in motion; hence dead calms occur which sometimes continue for sixty days without interruption. The nature of the winds differs according to the point of the compass from which they blow, or the tract over which they respectively pass. On the shores of the Persian Gulf, the south-east wind is accompanied with a degree of moisture which, when the heat is intense, occasions violent perspiration, and on that account is deemed more disagreeable than the north-west, which is more torrid, and heats metals in the shade. Water placed in jars, exposed to the current of this hot wind, is rendered very cool by the effect of the sudden evaporation; but its blasts often suffocate both men and animals. In the lower part of the Red Sea, the winds blow from the same quarter about nine months in the year, or from the end of August till May; but from Cosseir to Suez the opposite monsoon or north wind prevails.

Arabia is frequently visited by the terrible simoom, called by the natives shamiel, or the wind of Syria, under whose pestilential influence all nature seems to languish and expire. This current prevails chiefly on the frontiers, and more rarely in the interior. It is in the arid plains about Bussora, Bagdad, Aleppo, and in the environs of Mecca that it is most dreaded, and only during the intense heats of summer. The Arabs, being accustomed to an atmosphere of great purity, are said to perceive its approach by its sulphurous odor, and by an unusual redness in the quarter whence it comes. The sky, at other times serene and cloudless, appears lurid and heavy; the sun loses his splendor, and appears of a violet color. The air, saturated with particles of the finest sand, becomes thick, fiery, and unfit for respiration. The coldest substances change their natural qualities; marble, iron, and water are hot, and deceive the hand that touches them. Every kind of moisture is absorbed; the skin is parched and shrivelled; paper cracks as if it were in the mouth of an oven. When inhaled by men or animals, the simoom produces a painful feeling, as of suffocation. The lungs are too rarefied for breathing, and the body is consumed bv an internal heat, which often terminates in convulsions and death. The carcasses of the dead exhibit symptoms of immediate putrefaction, similar to what is observed to take place on bodies deprived of life by thunder, or the effect of electricity.

When this pestilence visits towns or villages, the inhabitants shut themselves up, the streets are deserted, and the silence of night everywhere reigns. Travelers in the desert sometimes find a crevice in the rocks; but if remote from shelter, they must abide the dreadful consequences. The only means of escaping from these destructive blasts is to lie flat on the ground until they pass over, as they always move at a certain height in the atmosphere. Instinct teaches even animals to bow down their heads, and bury their nostrils in the sand. The danger is most imminent when they blow in squalls, which raise up clouds of sand in such quantities that it becomes impossible to see to the distance of a few yards. In these cases the traveller generally lies down on the lee side of his camel; but as the desert is soon blown up to the level of its body, both are obliged frequently to rise and replace themselves in a new position, in order to avoid being entirely covered. In many instances, however, from weariness, faintness, or sleepiness, occasioned by the great heat, and often from a feeling of despair, both men and animals remain on the ground, and in twenty minutes they are buried under a load of sand. Caravans are sometimes swallowed up; and whole armies have perished miserably in these inhospitable deserts.

 

Such are the effects of these resistless whirlwinds; but the noxious qualities ascribed to them, though pernicious to health, have certainly been exaggerated by credulous or ill-informed travelers. Their deadly influence seems to arise solely fom heat contracted in passing across burning wastes; hence, when suddenly inhaled, they occasion sickness and suffocation, and even those livid appearances that have been ascribed to atmospheric poison. The simoom usually lasts three days; but if it exceed that time it becomes insupportable. It blows from the east and the north, and is of such excessive aridity that water sprinkled on the ground evaporates in a few minutes. When the wind changes to the south, every thing is in the opposite extreme,—the air is damp, and substances when handled feel clammy and wet to the touch. The predominating winds in the Nejed are the gharbi, or south-west, which is dry, and pernicious to cultivation, and occasionally blows from the same point seven months in succession; the hesiah, or west wind, is of a burning heat, and prevails in June, July, and August. The shamal, or north, is cool and refreshing; the jenoub and sharki (south and east), "the fathers of the rains", are the welcome harbingers of clouds, which soon dissolve in grateful showers.

THE RED SEA