The peninsula of Arabia, divided into two parts by the Tropic of Cancer, is about four times the size of France. No rivers, and few streams or springs nourish the thirsty land, whose barren sands are scorched by a fierce sun. The central part is a table-land of moderate height, which, however, is said to have an elevation of 8000 feet in the province of Haudramaut. To the south of the tropic it is an almost interminable ocean of drifting sand, wafted in clouds by the gale, and dreaded even by the wandering Bedouin. At wide intervals, long narrow depressions cheer the eye with brushwood and verdure. More to the north, mountains and hills cross the peninsula from S.E. to N.W., enclosing cultivated and fine pastoral valleys adorned by grooves of the date-palm and aromatic shrubs. Desolation once more resumes its domain where the table-land sinks into the Syrian desert, and throughout the rest of its circumference it descends in terraces or parallel ranges of mountains and hills to a flat sandy coast from 30 to 100 miles wide, which surrounds the greater part of the peninsula, from the mouths of the Euphrates to the Isthmus of Suez. The hills come close to the beach in the province of Oman, which is traversed by chains, and broken into piles of arid mountains not more than 3500 feet high, with the exception of the Jebel Okkdar, which is 6000 feet above the sea, and is cleft by temporary streams and fertile valleys. Here the ground is cultivated and covered with verdure, and still farther south there is a line of oases fed by subterraneous springs, where the fruits common to Persia, India and Arabia, are produced. The south-eastern coast is scarcely known, except towards the provinces of Haudramaut and Yemen or Arabia Felix, where ranges of mountains, some above 5000 feet high, line the coast, and in many places project into the ocean, sometimes forming excellent harbours, as that of Aden, which is protected by projecting rocks. In the intervals there are towns and villages, cotton-plantations, date-groves, and cultivated ground.