OF THE ANCIENT ARABS. 155 



ter of houses when business calls them to visit 

 crowded cities. They are seen passing the night 

 in the gardens or public squares of Cairo, Mecca, and 

 Aleppo, in preference to the apartments that are 

 offered for their accommodation.* These local 

 attachments seem strongest in the inhabitants of 

 mountainous countries. The Scottish Highlander, 

 wherever he roams, thinks with pleasing regret on 

 his dark hills. The exiled .Swiss pines for his bleak 

 Alps, and the wild melody of his native songs. The 

 Laplander has fixed the site of the terrestrial para- 

 dise amid his own dreary wastes. The boatmen 

 on the Nile lighten the cares of bondage or banish- 

 ment by singing " Nubia is the land of roses !" The 

 Druse on the rugged summits of Lebanon looks down 

 with indifference on the blooming valleys of the 

 Jordan, that spread their enchanting beauties at 

 his feet. The same feeling glows with more than 

 ordinary warmth in the bosom of an Arab ; and in 

 preferring the rude simplicity of his paternal soli- 

 tudes to the comforts and luxuries of more refined 

 society, he yields only to a common but a kindly 

 instinct of human nature. 



In some parts of the northern deserts there were 

 migratory tribes not entirely addicted to the pastoral 

 life. Whether from the advantages of a less steril 

 soil, or the vicinity of Palestine and Syria, or the 

 example of the emigrants from Yemen, they were 

 distinguished from their central brethren by their 

 residence in to^^^ls, and their application to the arts. 



• Abulfed. Annal. Moslem, a Reiske, vol. i. p. 116. RejTiier, 

 de I'Economie Pub. et Rur. des Arabes, p. 25. Prot. Carlyle 

 has translated this fragment in his Specimens of Arabian Poetry, 

 p. 31. The same feeling inspired other royal bosoms than 

 Maisuna's. 



' Nebassar's queen, 



Fatigued with Babylonia's level plains, 

 Sigh'd for her Median home, where Nature's hand 

 Had scoop'd the vale, and clothed the mountain's side 

 With many a verdant wood."— Robert's Judah Restored. 



