160 CHARACTER, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS 



its pure state, and in lumps from the size of an olive 

 to that of a nut.* Diodorus has a statement to the 

 same effect. Through the whole country of the 

 Debae (inHejaz),hetells us, passedariver so abound- 

 ing with small gobbets of gold, that the mud at its 

 mouth seemed to consist almost entirely of that 

 metal, which was of so bright and glorious a colour 

 that it added an exceeding lustre and beauty to the 

 most valuable gems that were set in it. 



Such is the brilliant picture which the enraptured 

 imagination of foreigners drew of the Happy Arabia. 

 It were almost unkind to disenchant the reader of 

 these golden visions ; but truth compels us to avow, 

 that the discoveries of modern travellers have drawn 

 aside the veil of romance from this fairy-land. They 

 do not find it that paradise of ambrosial felicity and 

 inexpressible delights which antiquity represented 

 it. Its real or ideal treasures have vanished ; and 

 no Alexander in our times would dream of making 

 its balmy vales the seat of his mighty empire. Old 

 Ocean, to use Milton's simile, is no longer cheered 

 with the grateful smell of the spicy odours that are 

 blown by the north winds from the Sabaean coast.f 

 Many valuable articles which, under the Ptolemys 

 and the Caesars, were considered as the productions 

 of Arabia, were afterward found to be imported 

 from India, Caramania, and Serica. Even the 

 boasted incense, which Pliny treats at length in the 

 twelfth book of his Natural History, is not whoUy 

 the indigenous gift of that country. The kind caUed 



* This cheapness of gold may appear incredible ; but the Mexi- 

 cans and Penivians seem to have held it in as little esteem as 

 the ancient Arabs : they exchanged it readily with the Spaniards 

 for knives, hatchets, glass beads, and other trifles. 



f " Many a league 



Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles." 



Farad. Lost, book iv. 

 The writer of an old history of the Turkish Empire says, 

 " The air of Egypt sometimes in summer is like any sweet per- 

 fume, and almost suffocates the spirits ; caused by the wind that 

 brings the odours of the Arabian spices." 



