as it begins to rise and the yard is not at the mast head till some distance has been travelled. Similarly on coming into harbour the sail is lowered completely, long before the anchorage is reached. Like most sailors of the warmer seas the Arabs are amphibious. For instance, the order is given to carry out an anchor away from the vessel, which is to be moved by hauling on the anchor rope. If the distance is not great and the depth inconsiderable the sailors will consider it less trouble, instead of lowering a canoe in which to carry out the anchor and rope, to throw them overboard and then go after them with a run, a yell and splash, to the sea bottom, where two or three men seize and run with the anchor a few yards under the water, come up for a breath of air while others go down, descend again and carry the anchor another stage, until the anchor rope is fully extended. Generally when the anchor goes overboard at the end of the day’s journey one or two of the crew go down after it and work it nicely into the mud. Similarly in getting an anchor up if it is caught in the coral, instead of manœuvring the boat to loosen it in the usual way a man goes down to see what is the matter, and either loosens it or directs the operations of those in the boat. How would an English yachtsman regard diving after his anchor? Not as an everyday occurrence, but as an adventure of a lifetime. To the Arab sailors such a voyage as from Bombay to Aden, and on through the whole length of the Red Sea, must be an adventure like that of a voyage of Ulysses. As to the old Hero so to them all accidents are due to the personal intervention of God, or of good and evil spirits, and there is no dividing line between fact and legend. Distances, which for us have so dwindled, remain for them enormous. I have myself spent as long over a voyage of a hundred miles, anchoring each night in yet another desolate creek or “khor,” as over the whole voyage by steamship from Marseilles to Port Sudan. At that rate 1000 miles in a _sambûk_ would be almost equivalent to a circumnavigation of the globe in a modern vessel. But what a difference! In the latter case, to the passenger deck chairs and novels, to the officers methodical routine and the keeping the running correct as per time-table, in the former ceaseless personal effort, at frequent intervals the direct pitting of oneself against the chances of the sea, the winds and waves, reefs and hidden coral pinnacles, the everyday hardship often aggravated by the rarity of the points at which water and food may be procured. Rarely are two days alike, and the date of the voyage’s close is, as they would express it, known to God. And adventures everywhere, the calling at strange little desert towns, the outer fringe of even Arabian and Turkish civilisations, islands and harbours unknown to the outer world, wild peoples, communities living apart, connected with the world only by some rudiments of