caustically satirize the members of some other clan, meanwhile boundlessly extolling the bravery of their own warriors and the surpassing beauty and chastity of their women. All this bloated braggadocio paved the way to feuds between different tribes, and thus the fairs, which were supposed to allay hatreds and inculcate friendships, often led to results that were precisely opposite. Thus, for weeks and even months, the glittering, gorgeously colored spectacle went on--a dazzling drama that, in its violent contrasts of mystical adoration and wanton lechery, of humility and gross egotism, of entrancing beauty and fetid squalor, furnishes perhaps the best clue to the complex and divergent character of Arabia’s children. Her religion was an all-pervading form of indigenous and manifold idolatry, tinctured with faint traces of Judaism and Christianity. The worship of the stars, that furnished a nightly quota of detached beauty and--what was more important--utility as a never-failing compass, is easily understandable; but just why she should have reverenced the blazing tropical sun and the tons upon tons of stones that were sprinkled over her parched surface, tempts to a metaphysical speculation which--as certain learned dissertations prove--is more fascinating than illuminating. Perhaps the most original and poetic element in this idol-worship was a vague belief in the Jinn: those vast, inchoate, awe-inspiring creatures, now friendly and now inimical, that--so every devout Arab believed--brooded like gigantic birds in the illimitable heavens that canopied Arabia. Judaism had made some effort to proselytize the Arabs, but had wisely given up the attempt after it realized what fascinating opportunities existed for the profits of trade. Christian Abyssinia, too, had manifested a laudable desire to turn her Pagan neighbor to the right way; but proud and impetuous Arabs were not particularly susceptible to the pleas of negroes, even though they chanced to be Christian negroes; and besides, the dialectical hair-splittings which so enthralled the followers of Arius and Athanasius could hardly be expected to offer much interest to minds that unfortunately had never been given an opportunity to become enraptured by the intricate charms of theology. But, in common with the devotees of Moses and Christ, the Arabs exalted ancestor-worship, and they even claimed, with a faith as touching as it was irrelevant, that Abraham himself was one of their most distinguished forefathers.