390 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



perhaps, even then, so far to the east as the "bank of 

 the Indus, producing constant hostilities against the 

 Parthians, while other tribes, pressed to the borders 

 of Kourdistan, equally embroiled them with the Byzan- 

 tine Romans, at a period when the Arabian horse first 

 began to acquire its superior qualities. Ages before 

 that time, the Phoenician traders, who were masters in 

 the Persian Gulf and the islands of Bahrein, had no 

 doubt stimulated the Arabs' love of adventure, and 

 from pirates turned their attention to legitimate trade, 

 ultimately becoming the successors of the parents of 

 commercial industry. They traded as they had roved 

 to Madagascar, and in the monsoons reached not only 

 the marts of India, but it appears, penetrated by their 

 own efforts, or in connection with a remote navigating 

 system in the South Seas, to the ports of China. For 

 ages the southern portion of Arabia was possessed by 

 Phoenicians and Cuthites: the last mentioned, after 

 they had been driven across the Red Sea to Africa, 

 returned, and again swayed the commercial provinces 

 by their authority; they opposed the progress of 

 Islam, but were at length vanquished, not by the 

 power of the true Arabians, but by the affiliated tribes 

 of Mostarabi, who, with the Koran in hand, rallied all 

 parties in a career of unexampled victory, extinguish- 

 ing in their progress languages, nations, traditions, 

 and history, to the ^all of China, and to the Pyre- 

 nees. 



Notwithstanding the vicissitudes and intermixture 

 of races, the aspect of the present typical Arabs is a 



