108 TlIK TROPICAL WORLD. 



thousands of other footsteps cross the road in all directions. 

 Thus the proverbially unstable and fugitive sands reveal many 

 a secret to the practised glance of the Arab ; and every footstep 

 becomes a witness recording the offender's guilt. 



Of their wonderful acuteness in hearing, some well-attested 

 anecdotes are told of those who act as pilots in the Red Sea. 

 They know very nearly the time when ships from India may be 

 expected, and going down to the water's edge every night 

 and morning, they lay their ear close to the surface for three 

 or four minutes, and if the ship is not more than 120 miles 

 distant, they can hear the report of the signal gun, or feel the 

 ground shake, upon which they immediately set off in their 

 pilot boat. 



The manners of the Bedouins are free and simple ; vulgarity 

 and affectation, awkwardness and embarrassment, are weeds of 

 civilised growth, unknown to the people of the desert. Yet 

 their manners are sometimes dashed with a strange ceremonious- 

 ness. When two friends meet, they either embrace or both extend 

 the right hands, clapping palm to palm ; their foreheads are 

 either pressed together, or their heads are moved from side to 

 side, whilst for minutes together mutual inquiries are made 

 and answered. It is a breach of decorum, even when eating, 

 to turn the back upon a person ; and when a Bedouin does it, 

 he intends an insult. When a friend approaches an en- 

 campment, those who catch sight of him shout out his 

 name, and gallop up, saluting with their lances or firing 

 matchlocks in the air. 



The patriotism of the nomadic Arab is intense. As the 

 Scottish Highlander wherever he roams turns with fond regret 

 to his heath-clad hills, or the exiled Swiss pines for his snow- 

 peaked Alps, thus his sterile sands are dearer to the wandering 

 son of the desert than the fairest regions of the earth. It is 

 in the lonely wilderness that all his attachments centre, for 

 there alone he can enjoy the independence which in all ages 

 has been his cherished possession. The very wildness of this 

 inhospitable scenery constitutes in his eyes its principal 

 charm, and were these features destroyed, the spell would be 

 broken that associates them in his mind with the romantic 

 freedom of his condition. Disdaining the peaceful and me- 

 chanical arts, he looks down with contempt upon all those who 



