While empires and kingdoms rose and fell; and the shock of contending armies shook all Europe and Northern Africa, and convulsed the rest of Asia, on its southwestern border, protected by the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf and vast stretches of burning sand, lay a great peninsula by the name of Arabia, almost untouched by the cataclysm of centuries. In the depths of its deserts, its primitive character and independence remained unchanged, nor had the nomadic tribes of Ishmael ever bent their haughty necks to servitude. For more than two thousand years Ishmael had been "a wild man; his hand against every man and every man's hand against him" and now the other word "I will make him a great nation" was about to receive its fulfillment. Our first thought of Arabia is of a barren, desert country inhabited by a few wandering tribes, of little importance. But it is an immense country, almost as large as India, with a population of millions. Among its mountains are beautiful and fertile valleys, towns and castles surrounded by orchards and vineyards, groves of palm trees and date-palms, fields of grain and well-stocked pastures. In the south were the people of Yemen--or Arabia the Happy--that land of spices, perfumes and frankincense; the Sheba of the Scriptures. These were the most active and skillful navigators of the eastern seas and brought the wealth of the far East to their ports: thence by caravans all these mingled products were distributed to Syria, Egypt and other lands on the borders of the Mediterranean. The caravans were generally fitted out and conducted by the nomadic tribes, who added to the merchandise of other lands the exquisite and costly garments woven from the finest fleeces of their countless flocks and herds. In Arabia, above all the other lands in the East, the track of the caravan has borne on it greater riches even than the ships of Tarshish. At the intersection of two such tracks where the goods of India and of Africa were interchanged, and where the gold of the Roman Empire was weighed against the spices of "Araby the Blest," was situated the great emporium of Mecca. Mecca was both the commercial and religious center of the whole peninsula. Although there was no political capital, the tribe feeling had led to the establishment of a form of government aristocratic rather than despotic. The noblest tribe among them all was the Koreish; the noblest family of the Koreish was that of Hashem: and the family of Hashem at the time of which we are writing were the rulers of Mecca and the guardians of its Kaaba.