In 1886 General Haig was asked by the committee of the Church Missionary Society to undertake an exploration of the Red Sea coast of Arabia and Somaliland with a view to ascertaining the openings for missionary effort. He set out from London on October 12th, 1886, reaching Alexandria on the 19th, and proceeded by way of the Red Sea coast in an Egyptian steamer to Aden, calling at Tor, Yanbo, Jiddah, Suakin, Massawa and Hodeidah. Dr. and Mrs. Harpur of the Church Missionary Society were already at Aden seeking an opening for mission work; the former accompanied General Haig back to Hodeidah and occupied that place for a time as the first _medical_ missionary in Arabia. General Haig then took the journey inland by the direct route to Sana with Ibrahim, the British and Foreign Bible Society colporteur and from Sana they went straight across Yemen to Aden. Shortly afterward General Haig proceeded to Muscat and up the Persian Gulf calling at all the ports. From Busrah he journeyed along the river to Bagdad and thence across the Syrian desert by the overland post route to Damascus. It was this long and difficult journey which formed the basis of two papers[138] entitled: “On both sides of the Red Sea,” and “Arabia as a Mission Field.”[139] A few brief extracts from these papers will interest the reader and show the character of this first appeal to evangelize the land of the Arabs. Writing of Yemen he says; “We have in this southwestern part of Arabia a great mountainous country with a temperate climate, and a hardy laborious race. This hill-country and its races extend northward into Asir, eastward into Hadramaut for an indefinite distance, while to the northeast they extend inland as far as the borders of the great desert. The finest and most warlike races are those to be found to the north and northeast of Sana. These have never yet submitted to the Turkish yoke; in fact the limits of the Turkish territory to the east of Sana are only a few miles distant from that place. Is it not of extreme importance in connection with the evangelization of all Southern Arabia that the gospel should be preached and the Word of God brought to these hardy mountaineers? They are mostly Zeidiyeh, a sect akin to the Shiahs in doctrine, but I saw no trace of fanaticism among them, rather they seemed everywhere willing to listen to the truth. For the most part I suspect they are but poor observers of the prescribed religious practices of Islam. During the whole of my travels in Yemen I never once saw a man at prayer, and in only a few of the larger villages is there a mosque. The women are particularly accessible; in the villages they wear no covering to the face, and those that we met at the khans, or inns, were always ready to come forward and talk. The little girls used frequently to run into our room, and, if invited, would come and sit down by our side. Ignorance is, I should say, the predominant characteristic of the whole population—ignorance of their