TOPOGRAPHY, RACES, RELIGIONS, LANGUAGES AND CUSTOMS. 85 



The Author. — As to Arabia Felix, there is, I hold, only one 

 kind of gum there. Spices came through Arabian merchants 

 mainly from Africa, across the Red Sea. I was in Arabia for 

 many years, and there was, for instance, no more coffee grown in 

 Mocha than in London. The traditions of all nationalities show 

 that the Queen of Sheba came from the African coast. 



Rey. P. A. Walker, D.D., P.L.S. — I should like to mention 

 that in Africa many African fruits are sold as Arabian — dates 

 and such like — which are supposed to have great virtue by coming, 

 or being supposed to come, from the birth-place of the prophet. 



The Meeting was then adjourned. 



Arab and other traders." Chambers' Cyclo'pcedia says, vol. ix, under the 

 head of " Spices " : " In ancient times and throughout the middle ages all 

 the spices known in Europe were brought from the East, and Arabia was 

 regarded as the land of Spices, but rather because they came through it 

 or were brought by its merchants." A member of the Institute, the late 

 Mr. Theodore Bent, referred, in a paper read in 1894 before the Eoyal 

 Geographical Society (and also in other writings), to his travels in the 

 Hadramut, during which he witnessed the culture of spices there as it is 

 in the present day ; and Dr. Thiselton C. Dyer, C.M.G., F.R.S., the 

 director of the Botanical Gardens at Kew, speaking on that occasion, 

 said: "The fact is, that the vegetation of Arabia is practically that 

 of Somaliland and Abyssinia, with the same myrrh and frankincense in 

 the one country as in the other." — En. 



