their common faith, savages even to the Arab sailors. There is too, even yet, the chance of meeting pirates, or of a windfall or ruin resulting from some smuggling adventure. I would that they could be conscious of the poetry of it all. To them the glory of the battle is but the hardship of everyday life, strange scenes and places only the possible failure to procure provisions or the chances of being robbed by petty tyrants. At least it is a life that makes real men, men who must have learned some communion with the God of Nature and the Sea. _Plate XIX_ [Illustration: Fig. 40. Hamitic fisherman] [Illustration: Fig. 41. A small pearling _gatîra_] [Illustration: Fig. 42. A large pearling _sambûk_ with ten canoes] The Hamites are skilful sailors of their small boats and of the little dug-out canoes in which pearl fishing is done. These measure about 16 ft. in length with a beam of 18 in. to 2 ft. For a short distance weather seems to be of no consideration to them; one sees canoes tearing along under full sail, the steersman busy throwing out[34] the water with his spare hand, while the other occupant hangs to the mast which threatens to be carried away by the wind at every moment, and leans as far over the side as he can to prevent her capsizing. I know several cases of men travelling eighty to a hundred miles along the coast in such canoes, partly on the open sea and partly on the shallow water over the reefs. One instance is particularly remarkable, a bent old man, practically blind with age, appeared, having travelled from the next village to the north, eighty miles away. His only companions were two particularly irresponsible-looking little boys, whose ages I should estimate at 8 and 10. I enquired how he managed the boat seeing he was blind. “The boys tell me to luff or bear away and I do as they say” he replied, as if that were quite a simple, safe, and easy method of travel. Pearl fishing is carried on by the Arabs all over the Red Sea by means of vessels of every size from the smallest, carrying four men and a boy, to the largest with a crew of twenty or more. Frequently the captain is a patriarch, the crew being largely his family and connections, with a few negro slaves or ex-slaves. The _sambûk_ carries as many canoes, dug out of solid tree trunks, as it can, up to half the number of the crew, and the actual fishing is done from these canoes, the large vessels being merely means of transport and eating and sleeping places.