THE HISTORY OF ARABIA

CHAPTER I. DESCRIPTION OF ARABIA.

THE RED SEA

A description of Arabia necessarily includes the two gulfs that form its eastern and western boundaries. Both of these seas figure in the early annals of oriental commerce; they are filled with sunken rocks, sandbanks, and small islands, which throw impediments in the way of free and safe navigation. Pliny has remarked, that nowhere are the depositions from rivers more perceptible than at the mouth of the Euphrates. He mentions the famous reservoir, which he calls Baramalchum (Bahr el Malec, i. e. the Royal Lake), formed by Nebuchadnezzar, who raised a mound, or wall, to confine the waters at the mouth of the Tigris. The Persian Gulf is included by Nearchus, Arrian, Strabo, and other Greek writers, under the name of the Erythraean Sea,—so denominated, as they allege, from a certain king, Erythrus, who reigned and was buried in one of the islands at its estuary. Ormuz stands associated with the ancient wealth of India; and Tyrus and Aradus are supposed to be the cradle of the Tyrians arid Phenicians. The Bahrein group, on the Arabian coast, have always been, and still are, celebrated for their pearl-fishery. In the neighborhood of these islands fresh springs are found in the middle of the salt water. The Persian coast is safer and more elevated than the Arabian. Near the upper end the gulf is forty leagues in breadth, and about seventy in the middle; but the strait at Cape Mussendom does not exceed fifty-five miles.

The Red Sea occupies a deep rocky cavity, extending about 1160 miles in length, and its mean breadth may be taken at about 120. Strabo has compared its shape to that of a broad river; and, as has already been noticed, it does not receive the waters of a single tributary stream. The name greatly puzzled the ancients, and has occasioned in later times a display of much superfluous learning to determine whether it was derived from the colour of the water, the reflection of the sandbanks and the neighbouring mountains, or the solar rays struggling through a dense atmosphere. These various conjectures are set at rest; both the air and water are unusually clear; the theory of King Erythrus is exploded; and the name is now admitted to be merely a Greek translation of the Sea of Edom (a Hebrew word denoting Red), so frequently mentioned by the sacred writers. The surface is diversified with a number of islands; some of which, such as Kotembel, and Gebel Tar, near Loheia, exhibit volcanic appearances. The western coast is bold, and has more depth of water than the eastern, where the coral rocks are gradually encroaching on their native element.

These reefs are found dispersed over the whole gulf, rising in gome places ten fathoms above the water. The bottom is covered with an abundant harvest of this substance, as well as of certain plants; and, if examined in calm weather, it has the appearance of verdant meadows and submarine forests, phenomena which procured this gulf the appellation of Yam Zuph from the Jews, and Bahr Souf with the Arabs, signifying the "Sea of Green Weeds". These beautiful productions attracted the admiration of antiquity. Strabo seems to allude to them when he speaks of trees, resembling the laurel and the olive, growing at the bottom and along the eastern coast of the Red Sea, which at ebb tide were left uncovered, though at other times they were wholly under water; a circumstance deemed the more surprising when contrasted with the nakedness of the adjacent shores. Burckhardt remarks that the coral in the inlet of Akaba is red, and that in the Gulf of Suez the white is chiefly to be seen; facts which may reconcile the discordant statements of Bruce, Valentia, Henniker, and other modern travelers.

All who have frequented the Red Sea have observed the luminous appearance or phosphorescence of its waters. "It was beautiful", says a picturesque writer who sailed from Mocha to Cosseir, "to look down into this brightly transparent sea, and mark the coral here in large masses of honeycomb rock, there in light branches of a pale red hue, and the beds of green seaweed, and the golden sand, and the shells, and the fish sporting round the vessel, and making colours of a beauty to the eye which is not their own.

Twice or thrice we ran on after dark for an hour or two; and though we were all familiar with the sparkling of the sea round the boat at night, never have I seen it in other waters so superlatively splendid.

A rope dipped in it and drawn forth came up as a string of gems; but with a life, and light, and motion, the diamond does not know."

Those sealights have been explained by a diversity of causes; but the singular brilliancy of the Red Sea seems owing to fish-spawn and animalculae, a conjecture which receives some corroboration from the circumstance that travellers who mention it visited the gulf during the spawning period, that is, between the latter end of December and the end of February.

The coral banks are less numerous in the southern parts. It deserves notice, that Dr. Shaw and Mr. Bruce have stated, what could only be true, so far as their own experience went, that they observed no species of weed or flag; and the latter proposes to translate Yam Zuph, "the Sea of Coral", a name as appropriate as that of Edom.

Bab el Mandeb, the narrowest part of the gulf, is the strait at its entrance, which is between twelve and fourteen miles across; it is divided by the island of Perim, which stands about three miles from the Arabian shore. Strabo relates, that the Egyptian merchants who had possession of this sea used to draw a chain across to the African side, to prevent the intrusion of foreigners; an assertion which is probably to be classed among the other marvels of the ancients. The high land of Africa and the Peak of Assab are distinctly visible, although the latter is reckoned seventy miles distant from Mocha. This proves that there is a great degree of refraction in the atmosphere. In further confirmation of this fact, Lord Valentia mentions a singular phenomenon which occurred, and which has also been noticed by the ancients. The setting sun had the appearance of a flaming column, having totally lost its usual round form; a splendid testimony in favour of Agatharcides, who also says that it rose like a pillar of fire. The northern part of the Red Sea separates into the two gulfs of Akaba or Eilat and Suez, called by the Greeks and Romans the Elanitic and Heroopolitan, from the cities that stood at their extremities. The former is dangerous, owing to its shoals and coral rocks; the common opinion that it terminates in two points has been corrected by Burckhardt, no such bifurcation being found to exist.

The Gulf of Suez extends about 160 miles in length, and is of safer navigation; its depth varyirtg from nine to fourteen fathoms, with a sandy bottom. On the Elanitic side, the whole coast, from Ras Mohammed to Akaba, consists of a succession of bays bounded, by rocky headlands. Here, as in other parts, the shores have undergone a material change. On the Arabian coast the water has retired, so that towns anciently mentioned as seaports are now several leagues inland. The land at Suez presents evidence that the sea had then extended much farther northward, appearances which tend to favour the hypothesis that the Arabian Gulf was at some remote period a strait which united the Indian and Mediterranean Seas; and that the isthmus which now divides them has been subsequently filled up with sand. The tides and medium level of this gulf are subject to great variation from the influence of the periodical winds; so much so, that Niebuhr tells us the point near Suez may be sometimes crossed on foot.

THE EXODUS