158 ORANGE CULTURE IN FLORIDA. 



the new religion of Mahomet rendered fanatics and 

 conquerors, menaced on one side the tottering em- 

 pire of the Greeks, and on the other threatened to 

 plunge into barbarism the West, just beginning to 

 be civilized. Yet it was precisely at this point of 

 time, and by the conquering spirit of this people, 

 that the great changes were prepared which should 

 revive and extend farther than ever before the com- 

 mercial relations of Europe with Asia, and of Asia 

 herself with the more distant regions of her own 

 continent. 



The Arabs, placed in a country which binds 

 together three grand divisions of the globe, have 

 extended their conquests into Asia and Africa much 

 farther than any people before them. Masters 

 of the Red Sea and Mediterranean, they had in- 

 vaded all the African Coast this side of Atlas 

 and penetrated beyond to the region of the Trog- 

 lodytes (Ethiopians living in caves), the ancient 

 limit of the Roman establishments on the east 

 coast of this continent ; they had made settlements 

 there, and according to the testimony of a historian 

 of the country, cited by Barros, they had populated 

 in the fourth century of the Hegira (A.D. 944) the 

 towns of Brava, Mombas, and Quiloa, whence they 

 extended themselves to Sofalo, Melinda, and to the 

 islands of Bemba, Zanzibar, Monfra, Comoro, and 

 St. Laurent. On the side of Asia they had carried 

 their conquests, in the third century of the Hegira, 

 to the extremities of the Relnahar, and toward the 



