BEUoUIN WAUmORS. 



CHAPTER XI. 



THE BEDOUINS OF ARABIA. 



The Deserts of Arabia— Sedentary Arabs and Bedouins — Physical Characteristics 

 of the Bedouins — Eemarkable acuteness of their Senses — Their Manners— Their 

 intense Patriotism and Contempt of the dwellers in Cities — The Song of May- 

 sunah— 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 Hos- 

 pitality — Mode of Encamping — Death Feuds — Blood-money — Amiisements — 

 Throwing the Jereed — Dances — Poetry- Story- telling— Language — The Bedouin 

 and the North American Indian. 



THOUGrH 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 some- 

 times 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 



