Lest the reader should think me unduly prejudiced against these sons of the desert, I here introduce a quotation from the “Desert of the Exodus.” Be it remembered that this splendid work was written by Prof. E. H. Palmer, a member of the faculty of Cambridge University, England. Perhaps no man has lived during the present generation who knew more than he about Arab life and character. The fact that Prof. Palmer was afterwards brutally murdered by these people shows that his estimate of their character was correct and just. He says: “Robbery is not regarded by the Bedawin as in the least a disgraceful thing, but ‘a man taketh his sword, and goeth his way to rob and steal’ (Esdras IV., 23), with a profound feeling of conscious rectitude and respectability. Several plans have been tried, from time to time, to make him a respectable member of society, but have signally failed; missionaries have gone to him, and, so long as they could supply him with tobacco and keep open tent for all comers, have found him sufficiently tractable. But they have made absolutely no impression upon him, after all. Indeed, the state of desert society has but little changed since the messenger came in to the tent of Job, and said: ‘The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword’” (Job I., 17). “Agriculture might be made a means of improving the condition of the Arabs; indeed, the only other method of attaining this end would be to civilize them off the face of the earth altogether. By Arab I mean the Bedawi, the typical son of Ishmael, ‘whose hand is against every man,’ and who is as much hated and feared in the towns and villages of Central Arabia as in Palestine. Wherever he goes, he brings with him ruin, violence, and neglect. To call him a ‘son of the desert’ is a misnomer; half the desert owes its existence to him, and many a fertile plain from which he has driven its useful and industrious inhabitants becomes in his hands, like the ‘South Country,’ a parched and barren wilderness. He has a constitutional dislike to work, and is entirely unscrupulous as to the means he employs to live without it; these qualities (which also adorn and make the thief and burglar of civilization) he mistakes for evidences of thorough breeding, and prides himself accordingly upon being one of Nature’s gentlemen.” (pp. 240, 241, 243).