An unusual degree of intelligence, a lively imagination, a vivid curiosity, a retentive memory, a childish love of the marvellous, distinguished the Arab of the Age of Ignorance from the other pastoral nations of Africa and Asia. Feuds between tribe and tribe, nourished by injuries mutually borne and inflicted for a hundred generations, intensified the ferocity of a nature which became, under such provocations, incapable of pity. Everything connected with the daily life of the warrior had a direct tendency to foster an already too violent inclination to deeds of blood. The war-horse had his biography; the sword of every famous chieftain had a name and a history. The sayings of the successful marauder, often uttered with epigrammatic terseness, passed into proverbs, and were quoted, with extravagant admiration, by his most remote descendants; his exploits, immortalized by the stirring verses of the poet, were recounted nightly by the camp-fires of his tribe. In case of the murder of a kinsman, no mourning was tolerated until ample vengeance had been taken for the crime. The execution of the savage law of blood-feud, while it contributed to stifle every sentiment of humanity where an hereditary foe was the offender, does not appear to have had any marked effect in increasing the fierceness of the character of the Arab in his contests with those against whom he had no special cause of enmity. Where tribal hostility was, however, a point of honor as well as a religious duty, the vendetta was prosecuted with implacable severity. No circumstance of gratitude or chivalric attachment, neither the memory of past favors nor the hope of future distinction, was permitted to interfere with its rigid enforcement. The right of revenge, originally descending to the fifth generation, passed by inheritance, and was, in fact, never lost, and seldom relinquished. A regular schedule of fines was recognized, dependent upon the age, rank, and social position of the person murdered; but no family that entertained a becoming idea of its own importance and of the dignity of its tribe would condescend to accept the stated number of camels which ancient prescription and common consent had established as the equivalent of a homicide. This barbarous custom applied to every soldier slain in honorable warfare, as fully as to the victim of the assassin’s dagger; and the wholesome dread of the consequences of a hard-fought conflict, where a score of lives might be exacted in return for every fallen enemy, usually rendered the encounters of the Arab comparatively bloodless. An extraordinary value therefore attached to human life in the Desert, where the killing of an individual might entail the extermination of a clan. Considering the bitter hostility evinced by many tribes towards one another, the consequences of animosity inherited for ages, and the continual opportunities for mutual destruction, with their insignificant results,