THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 327, 



The Arabs were a people who lived in a country, for the 

 moll part, defert ; their dwellings were tents, and their prin- 

 cipal occupation feeding and breeding cattle, and they mar- 

 ried with their own family. The language therefore of fuch 

 a people fliould be very poor ; there is no variety of imarrcs 

 in their whole country. They were always bad poet.;, as 

 their works will teftify; and if, contrary to the general rule, 

 the language of Arabia Deferta became a copious one, it 

 muft have been by the mixture of fo many nations meet- 

 ing and trading at Mecca. It muft, at the fame time, have 

 been the moll corrupt, where there was the greatcii cuii- 

 courfe of llrangers, and this was certainly among the Beni 

 Koreilh at the Caba. When, therefore, I hear people prai£ 

 ing the Koran for the purity of its flyle, it puts me in mind 

 of the old man in the comedy, whole reafon for loving his 

 nephew was, that he could read Greek ; and being alked 

 if he underllood the Greek fo read, he anfwered, Not a word 

 of it, but the rumbling of the found pleafed him. 



The war that had dillraeted all Arabia, firft between the 

 Greeks and Perfians, then between Mahomet and the Arabs,in 

 fupport of his divine million, had very much hurt the trade 

 carried on by univerlal confent at the Temple of Mecca. 

 Caravans, when they dared venture out, were furprifed up- 

 on every road, by the partizans of one fide or the other. Both 

 merchants and trade had taken their departure to the fouth- 

 ward, and ellablilhed themfelves fouth of the Arabian Gulf, 

 in places which (in ancient times) had been the markets 

 for commerce, and the rendezvous of merchants. Azab, or 

 Saba, was rebuilt ; alfo Raheeta, Zcyla, Tajoura, Soomaal, in 

 the Arabian Gulf, and a number of other towns on the In- 

 dian Ocean. The conquell of the Abyilinian territories in 



- U 2 Arabia 



