1 8 INTRODUCTION. 



with the first ages of mankind. Their manners still 

 present that mixture of rude freedom and patriarchal 

 simplicity which we find in the infancy of society, 

 before art had taught men to restrain the sentiments 

 of nature or disguise the original features of their 

 character. This extraordinary people have not only 

 preserved inviolate the dominion of their deserts and 

 their pastures ; they have also, with a singular tena- 

 city, retained from age to age, and in spite of changes 

 and revolutions, the vices and virtues, the habits and 

 customs of their ancestors, without borrowing im- 

 provement from the progress of knowledge or their 

 intercourse with other nations. 



The physical aspect of this country is not less 

 interesting than the peculiar character of its inhab- 

 itants. Covered with vast plains of barren sands, 

 intersected by ranges of mountains and fertile val- 

 leys, it unites the extremes of sterility and abun- 

 dance, and enjoys a variety of chmate that gives it at 

 once all the advantages of the torrid and the tem- 

 perate regions. There smiling plenty is often found 

 imbosomed in the midst of desolation ; and the indi- 

 genous productions of climes the most distant and 

 different from each other flourish there in equal 

 perfection. These grand and distinctive features of 

 Arabia have suffered little alteration from the lapse 

 of time, or the contingencies of human events. Cen- 

 turies have passed over it without leaving any 

 changes but those produced by the hand of nature. 

 It presents few of those moral vestiges of servile 

 degradation, or those melancholy ruins of departed 

 splendour, that abound in almost every other king- 

 dom in the world. It has, indeed, remains of cities 

 and towns that tell us of a wealth and a population 

 long since vanished ; but it has no monuments of art 

 to be compared with the stupendous and imperish- 

 able architecture of EgYPt, or the classic temples of 

 Greece and Italy- 

 It possesses, however, scenery of another descrip- 



