THE ARABS 205 



curately described by Ehrenberg), and the so-called balsam of 

 Mecca (the Balsamodendron Gileadense of Kunth). These 

 products constituted an important branch of commerce be- 

 tween the contiguous tribes and the Egyptians, Persians, and 

 Indians, as well as the Greeks and Romans ; and it was 

 owing to their abundance and luxuriance that the country 

 acquired the designation of "Arabia Felix," which occurs as 

 early as in the writings of Diodorus and Strabo. In the 

 southeast of the peninsula, on the Persian Gulf, and opposite 

 the Phoenician settlements of Aradus and Tylus, lay Gerrha, 

 an important emporium for Indian articles of commerce. 



Although the greater part of the interior of Arabia may be 

 termed a barren, treeless, and sandy waste, we yet meet in 

 Oman, between Jaiian and Basna, with a whole range of 

 well-cultivated oases, irrigated by subterranean canals ; and 

 we are indebted to the meritorious activity of the traveler 

 Wellsted for the knowledge of three mountain chains, of which 

 the highest and wood-crowned summit, named Dschebel-Akh- 

 dar, rises six thousand feet above the level of the sea near 

 Maskat.* In the hilly country of Yemen, east of Loheia, and 

 in the littoral range of Hedschaz, in Asyr, and also to the east 

 of Mecca, at Tayef, there are elevated plateaux, whose perpet- 

 ually low temperature was known to the geographer Edrisi.t 



The same diversity of mountain landscape characterizes the 

 peninsula of Sinai, the Copper-land of the Egyptians of the 

 old kingdom (before the time of the Hyksos), and the stony 

 valleys of Petra. I have already elsewhere spoken of the 

 Phoenician commercial settlements on the most northern por- 

 tion of the Red Sea, and of the expeditions to Ophir under 

 Hiram and Solomon, which started from Ezion-Geber.| Ara- 

 bia, and the neighboring island of Socotora (the island of Di 

 oscorides), inhabited by Indian colonists, participated in the 



quently found growing on the vast grassy plains (llanos) of Calaboso, in 

 South America. Idea, like BosweUia, belongs to the family of Burse- 

 racecB. 



The red pine {Pinus abies, Linn.) produces the common incense of 

 our churches. The plant which bears myrrh, and which Bruce thought 

 he had seen (Ainslie, Materia Medica of Hindostan, Madras, 1813, p. 

 29), has been discovered by Ehrenberg near el-Gisan in Arabia, and 

 has been described by Nees von Esenbeck, from the specimens col- 

 lected by him, under the name of Balsamodendron myrrha. The Balsa- 

 modendron Kotaf of Kunth, an Amyris of Forskaal, was long errone- 

 ously regarded as the true myrrh-tree. 



* Wellsted, Travels in Arabia, 1838, vol. i., p. 272-289. 



t Jomard, Etudes G6ogr. et Hist, sur I' Arabic, 1839, p. 14 and 32. 



t See ante. p. 13C. 



