As I have given a description of this part of Arabia in the life of Dr. Shaw, it will not be necessary here to repeat what I then said. Niebuhr found that the Arabs, whose profession it is to serve as guides, were distinguished, like all other persons of that class, for their extravagant cupidity. So long as they could live at the expense of strangers their own provisions and means were assiduously spared; but on other occasions they exhibited various symptoms that the old national virtue of hospitality was not wholly banished from their minds. The women in this part of Arabia are not in the habit of concealing their faces from strangers, as is the fashion in Egypt. Niebuhr, in his solitary rambles through the country, discovered the wife and sister of a sheïkh grinding corn beside their tent; who, instead of flying and concealing themselves at his approach, as he seems to have expected, came forward, according to the good old custom of the East, with a present in their hands. On arriving at what his guides called the “Mountain of Inscriptions,” a lofty rugged eminence, which it cost them much time and toil to climb, he found--not what he had expected--but a vast Egyptian cemetery, in which were a great number of sepulchral monuments, covered with hieroglyphics. These inscriptions he was not permitted to copy at the time, because the sheïkh of the mountain apprehended he might thereby gain possession of the immense treasures concealed beneath; but one of his guides, who probably had little faith in that point of the sheïkh’s creed, afterward, on his return from Mount Sinai, enabled him to copy whatever he pleased. On his arrival at the convent of St. Catherine the monks politely refused to admit him, alleging, as their excuse, that he had not brought along with him a letter from their bishop. The patriarch’s letter, which he presented to them, they returned unopened. He was, in fact, destined to meet with nothing but disappointment in these celebrated regions; for his Arabs, having conducted him up to a certain height on Mount Sinai, refused to proceed any farther, and he was not possessed of sufficient resolution to ascend the remainder alone. Niebuhr now hastened back to Suez, and on his return forded the Red Sea on his dromedary, a thing which no European had done before, though the guides, who were on foot, did not find the water above knee deep. Being desirous of surveying the extremity of the Arabian Gulf, he procured a guide soon after his return from Mount Sinai, with whom he set out upon this expedition. They travelled, however, in constant fear; and the sight of a stranger in the distance increased the terrors of the guide to so extraordinary a pitch, that I suspect he had blood upon his hands, and dreaded the hour of retribution.