The Deserts of Arabia--Sedentary Arabs and Bedouins--Physical Characteristics of the Bedouins--Remarkable acuteness of their Senses--Their Manners--Their intense Patriotism and Contempt of the dwellers in Cities--The Song of Maysunah--Their Wars--Their Character softened by the Influence of Woman--Their chivalrous Sentiments--The Arab horse--The Camel--Freedom of the Arabs from a Foreign and a Domestic Yoke--The Bedouin Robber--His Hospitality-- Mode of Encamping--Death Feuds--Blood-money--Amusements--Throwing the Jereed--Dances--Poetry--Story-telling--Language--The Bedouin and the North American Indian. Though Arabia possesses some districts of remarkable fertility which enjoy a succession of almost perpetual verdure, yet the greater part of that vast peninsula consists of burning deserts lying under a sky almost perpetually without clouds, and stretching into immense and boundless plains where the eye meets nothing but the uniform horizon of a wild and dreary waste. These naked deserts are encircled or sometimes intersected by barren mountains, which run in almost continuous ridges and in different directions from the borders of Palestine to the shores of the Indian Ocean. Their summits tower up into rugged and insulated peaks, but their flinty bosoms supply no humidity to nourish the soil; they concentrate no clouds to screen the parched earth from the withering influence of a tropical sky. Instead of the cooling breezes periodically enjoyed in other sultry climates, hot winds frequently diffuse their noxious breath, alike fatal to animal and vegetable life. The steppes of Russia and the wilds of Tartary are decked by the hand of Nature with luxuriant herbage, but in the Arabian deserts vegetation is nearly extinct. The sandy plains give birth to a straggling and hardy brushwood, while the tamarisk and the acacia strike their roots into the clefts of the rocks, and draw a precarious nourishment from the nightly dews. Were it not for the wadys, or verdant spots lying here and there among the hills, and the various wells or watering stations supplied by periodical rains, the greater portion of Arabia must have remained unpeopled, and for ever impervious to man. In a country like this, where whole years occasionally pass away without a refreshing shower, the possession of a spring is not unfrequently the most valuable property of a tribe. There are large tracts, however, where the luxury of water, as it may well be called, is unknown, and where the desert extends for many a day’s journey without affording the traveller the welcome sight of a single well.