The beauty and fertility of the portion of Arabia occupied by the Sabæans and the Chatramites must have early served to fix them there as permanent settlers, and their constantly growing commerce with Egypt, Syria, and Babylonia unquestionably resulted in a great influx of wealth to these tribes. Thus even the tales current among western nations of the splendour of their cities--the sixty temples of Sabbatha, and the gold and silver vessels, pillars, and couches of Mareb--must have had strong foundation in fact. Ruins of mighty aqueducts, dams, and basins remain, which are the wonder and admiration of our tourists for the excellence of their plan and the solidity of their construction. They reveal to us not only the skill of the ancient Sabæans and Chatramites in erecting important works, but their complete understanding of the subject of irrigation; since the whole system of canals and basins was evidently designed to utilise upon their own lands the streams rushing down from the mountains. Remains of magnificent structures, not alone near Mareb but near Nejran, Ghorab, Nakb-el-Hajara, go far towards confirming what western and Arab tradition tell us of the glories of ancient times; and inscriptions on these and other ruins in the southwest of Yemen give us, though they do not go back further than the year 120 B.C., an insight into the life and culture of the tribes of South Arabia. We also learn the earlier forms of their spoken and written language, and discover that their alphabet was derived from that of the Phœnicians, developing later independently side by side with it. Of a more recent date (the first century A.D.) are inscriptions on the rocks of the Sinai peninsula in the extreme northwest of Arabia, which are written in the north Arabian language and characters. A glance at the meagre array of facts made known to us reveals the basis of the religious conceptions of the Semitic tribes in Arabia to be almost the same as that of the Semitic tribes in Syria, or those by the Euphrates and Tigris. It can readily be believed that the rites of those tribes nearest Syria partake somewhat of the character of the Syrian rites and that the worship of the southern tribes is closely allied to that of the Babylonians.