What Jerusalem and Palestine are to Christendom this, and vastly more, Mecca and Arabia are to the Mohammedan world. Not only is this land the cradle of their religion and the birthplace of their prophet, the shrine toward which, for centuries, prayers and pilgrimage have gravitated; but Arabia is also, according to universal Moslem tradition, the original home of Adam after the fall and the home of all the older patriarchs. The story runs that when the primal pair fell from their estate of bliss in the heavenly paradise, Adam landed on a mountain in Ceylon and Eve fell at Jiddah, on the western coast of Arabia. After a hundred years of wandering they met near Mecca, and here Allah constructed for them a tabernacle, on the site of the present Kaaba. He put in its foundation the famous stone once whiter than snow, but since turned black by the sins of pilgrims! In proof of these statements travellers are shown the Black stone at Mecca and the tomb of Eve near Jiddah. Another accepted tradition says that Mecca stands on a spot exactly beneath God’s throne in heaven. Without reference to these wild traditions, which are soberly set down as facts by Moslem historians, Arabia is a land of perpetual interest to the geographer, and the historian. Since Niebuhr’s day many intrepid travellers have surveyed the coasts and penetrated into the interior, but his charge that we are ignorant of the real character of the vast peninsula is still true as far as it relates to the southern and southeastern districts. No traveller has yet crossed the northern boundary of Hadramaut and explored the Dahna desert, also called the Roba-el-Khali, or “empty abode.” The vast territory between the peninsula of Katar and the mountains of Oman is also practically a blank on the best maps. Indeed the only noteworthy map of that portion of the peninsula is that of Ptolemy reproduced by Sprenger in his “Alte Geographie Arabiens.”