To the advantages of a genius for poetry, and a lively fancy, the Bedouins add the possession of a rich and harmonious language capable of expressing every shade of meaning and every variety in the aspects of nature. Its copiousness[10] may be inferred from the fact that it can boast of no less than eighty expressions for honey, two hundred for a serpent, five hundred for a lion, and, characteristic of a warlike race, above a thousand for a sword. Fastidious critics have admitted the remarkable delicacy of the Arabic tongue, and its energetic sublimity, equally adapted to the simple pathos of love and elegy, the piquancy of satire or the loftiest efforts of popular oratory. In casting a retrospective view over the manners and habits of the Bedouins we are struck with the strange contradictions they exhibit both in their social and moral character. The spirit of patriotism among them is strong and universal, yet they have no home but the pathless waste and wretched tent. They are a nation of brothers, yet live continually at war, jealous of their honour and yet stooping to the meanness of theft; fierce and sanguinary in their temper, and yet alive to the virtues of pity and gratitude; covetous and by no means of good faith in pecuniary transactions, yet true to their pledged word and charitable to the needy. Their religious character is marked by the same irreconcilable extremes. Their fanaticism is coupled with a lax observance of the precepts and ceremonies of Islam. In a pleasant indifference about the precepts of the Koran, they remark that the religion of Mohammed never could have been intended for them. ‘In the desert,’ say they, ‘we have no water; how, then, can we make the prescribed ablutions? We have no money, and how can we bestow alms? Why should we fast in the Rhamadan since the whole year with us is one continual abstinence; and if the world is the house of Allah why should we go to Meccah to adore him?’ The almost absolute independence of the Arabs and of that noble race, the North American Indians of a former generation, has produced many similarities between them. ‘Both,’ says Captain Burton, ‘have the same wild chivalry, the same fiery sense of honour, and the same boundless hospitality; love elopements from tribe to tribe, the blood feud and the vendetta. Both are grave and cautious in demeanour, and formal in manner--princes in rags or paint. The Arabs plunder pilgrims, the Indians backwood settlers; both glory in forays, raids, and cattle-lifting, and both rob according to certain rules. Both are alternately brave to desperation and shy of danger. Both are remarkable for nervous and powerful oratory, and for the use of figurative language. Both, addicted to war and to the chase, despise all sedentary occupations. But the Bedouin claims the superiority over the red Indian by his treatment of women, his greater development of intellect, and the grand page of history which he has filled.’