Now this polygamic area has one pervading, predominant, physical characteristic: it is a region of dry sandy deserts; or, rather, it is one vast sandy desert, interspersed with habitable districts. This renders its climate not only exceptionally dry, but also, from its comparative cloudlessness, exceptionally bright, which is not an immaterial point, and, too, exceptionally scorching. An excess, then, of aridity, light, and heat, is its distinguishing peculiarity. These influences are all at their maximum in Arabia, which is in every way its true heart and centre; and, in particular, the seed-bed and nursery of the race best adapted to the region, and which, at last, flooded the whole of it with its blood, its customs, and its laws. These are all thoroughly indigenous, and racy of the soil—as much its own proper product and fruit as the date is of the palm, or the palm itself of the region in which it is found. But of the woman of this region. It is an obvious result of the aridity of the air, its almost constant heat, and of the floods of light with which everything living is ceaselessly bathed, and stimulated, that she is, in comparison with the woman of Europe, forced into precocious development, and maturity, and consequently, which is the main point, and, indeed, the governing element in the matter, into premature decline and decay. To signalize one particular that is external and visible, this climate appears to expand, to dry, to wither, to wrinkle the skin with a rapidity, and to a degree, unknown in our more humid and temperate regions. A woman, under these trying influences, is soon old. Between nine and ten is the age of womanhood. Marriage even often takes place at this age, or soon after. She is quite at her best at fifteen; decay is visible at twenty; there are signs of age at twenty-five. Men, too, from reasons easily explained, marry much younger there than is customary—I might say than is possible—with us. Our civilization is based on intellect far more than theirs; and it takes with us a long time for a youth to acquire the knowledge he will find requisite in life. School claims him, with those who can afford the time, till he is eighteen; and with many the _status pupillaris_ is continued at the university for three years longer: and no one would think that even then the age for marriage had arrived. And here, again, much more is required for supporting life through all ranks of society. This is another prohibition against a young man’s marrying early. He must first work himself into a position, in which he will have the means of maintaining a family in the way required here, or wait till he has a fair prospect of being able to do so. All this requires time; but in the East, where wants are few, and not much knowledge is needed, a youth may marry very early. I saw at Jerusalem the son of the Sheik of the Great Mosk of Omar, who was then, though only a lad of sixteen years of age, already married to two wives.