No greater contrast can be imagined than that presented by the respective lives of the Arabs and their neighbors and kindred, the denizens of the Valley of the Nile. The actions of the former, like those of all pastoral nations, were irregular, uncertain, capricious. The existence of the latter was controlled by the unvarying phenomena of the Great River, whose influence was perceptible in every phase of political, religious, and social life; whose inundations were symbolical of prosperity, and whose rise was announced by the celestial messenger Sirius, the most magnificent star in the heavens. The subjects of the Pharaohs were dependent upon Arabia for the gums and aromatics so extensively used in embalming; and these precious substances, which must have been produced far more abundantly then than now, were also exported to Phœnicia and Palestine, whence considerable quantities annually found their way into Europe to be consumed in sacrificial ceremonies, in the service of medicine, and in the ostentatious pomp of patrician luxury. The maritime and agricultural advantages possessed by the southern coast of the Peninsula--designated by the Romans as Arabia the Happy, and afterwards, by the natives, as Yemen, “The Country on the Right Hand” (because the speaker was supposed to stand at Mecca)--had enabled that region to attain to a degree of prosperity and civilization unknown to the pastoral settlements of the interior. Nothing can now be ascertained concerning the early history of Yemen, the royal genealogies of whose sovereigns nevertheless include a period of twenty-two hundred years. Nor can speculation, with any degree of probability, assign even an approximate date to the beginning of its commercial relations with the East. Not only did the bold and adventurous spirit of the Arabian sailors lead them to the extreme Orient, but their coasting vessels regularly visited the shores of the Persian Gulf and the bays and inlets of the African coast; undertakings far more hazardous, if not more lucrative, than voyages to distant Hindustan. From the latter country the native and foreign merchants introduced, with articles of traffic, many idolatrous practices and dogmas of a corrupt philosophy, destined subsequently to manifest the powerful hold they had obtained upon the popular mind by their incorporation into the creed of Islam.