210 EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OF THE CONTEMPLATION 



the towns of Medina and Mecca (the latter with its highly 

 ancient and enigmatical sacred Kaaba) were distinguished 

 as places of importance visited by foreign nations. In 

 districts adjacent to the sea, or to the caravan roads 

 which act as river vallies, the complete savage wildness 

 engendered by entire insulation never prevailed. Gibbon, 

 whose conception of the different circumstances of man- 

 kind is always so clear, notices the important distinction 

 to be drawn between the nomadic life of the inhabitants of 

 the Arabian peninsula, and that of the Scythians described 

 by Herodotus ap.d Hippocrates ; since among the latter, no 

 part of the pastoral population ever settled in towns, whereas 

 in the great Arabian peninsula, the inhabitants of the country 

 have always kept up intercourse with the inhabitants of the 

 towns, who they regard as descended from the same original 

 race as themselves. ( 325 ) In the Kirghez Steppe, a portion of 

 the plains inhabited by the ancient Scythians (Scoloti and 

 Sacse) and exceeding Germany in superficial extent, ( 326 ) no 

 town has existed for thousands of years; yet at the time of my 

 Siberian journey, the number of tents (yourtes or kibitkos) 

 in the three wandering hordes still exceeded 400,000, indi- 

 cating a nomadic population of two millions. I need not 

 enter more fully on the influence which such differences, in 

 regard to the greater or less insulation of nomadic life, must 

 have exercised on the national aptitude for mental cultivation, 

 even supposing an equality of original disposition and 

 capacity. 



In the noble and richly-gifted Arab race, the internal dis- 

 position and aptitude lor mental cultivation concur with the 

 external circumstances to which I have adverted, I mean the 

 natural features of the country, and the ancient commercial 



