As far as their physique is concerned, the Arabs are in general tall, thin, nimble, not very strong. Their face is pale and long, their forehead low, their nose aquiline, their mouth large, their chin receding. The complexion is brown, as becomes those who live for months under a glaring sun; the eyes are keen and glowing; the port is free and even haughty. They have black hair and beard. Of their history, prior to the day when Mohammed's genius knit them into a great proselytizing military people, little certain is known. A Shemitic tribe, descended from Joktan, grandson of Shem, settled in Arabia at a remote period of antiquity, and Joktan's great-grandson, Himzar or Homin, founded a dynasty which ruled in Yemen for upwards of two thousand years. Even the Romans could not utterly subdue them, but gradually the different tribes fell apart from one another, and for centuries waged against each other the most desperate wars, until Mohammed supplied them with a rallying-point in the creed of Islam. Thenceforth their mission was to propagate the new faith by fire and sword, and bursting from their rocky highlands like a torrent, they poured along the shores of the Mediterranean to Gibraltar on the north, and Tangier on the south. In Northern Africa they gradually mingled with the Berbers, the Numidians, and the Getulians, and from the fusion sprang the Kabyles, the Tibbous, and the Touaregs, while the Shemites themselves lost a portion of their original character. All the tribes of the desert are Moslems. The precepts of the Koran, and certain traditional usages, are almost the only laws which they recognize. The Koran authorizes polygamy, and the Arab women, therefore, are less the wives than the slaves of their husbands, who enforce upon them the strictest seclusion, and impose upon them the most arduous labours. The tyranny which weighs upon the women is, however, in inverse proportion to the degree of welfare and civilization of the various tribes. Among the poor and almost barbarous peoples of the desert, these unfortunate creatures are reduced to a condition of degradation and brutishness which inspires in the European almost as much disgust as pity. The instinct of rapine which most writers have signalized as one of the leading features of the Arab character, appears to have been greatly exaggerated, or, at least, too much generalized. This vice is a special result of their position, and, we must own, of the very antiquated views they hold upon the "rights of man," which, indeed, they sum up in much the same manner as Wordsworth's _Rob Roy_:--[76] "The creatures see of flood and field, And those that travel on the wind! With them no strife can last; they live In peace, and peace of mind. "For why?--because the good old rule Sufficeth them, the simple plan, _That they should take who have the power,_ _And they should keep who can_."