20 VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 



and Negroes. They are slightly made, and below the middle size, yet hardy and 

 untiring in whatever they attempt. Cruelty and selfishness are their characteristic 

 traits, and they possess also the vices which flow from ignorance and bigotry. 



The Saracens, so celebrated for their conquests, first occupied the country 

 between Mecca and the Euphrates; but they spread themselves rapidly over 

 Africa, and soon established their kingdom in Spain, whence they were not 

 expelled until the sixteenth century, after a dominion of seven hundred years. 

 The Saracens, w^ho are no longer known as a nation, surpassed the contemporary 

 Arabians in the cultivation of literature, science and art. 



The Bedouins^ whose original country is northern Arabia, are among the 

 most primitive and characteristic people of this family. Some of their tribes pass 

 the spring and summer on the frontiers of Syria, seeking pasture and water : in 

 the autumn they purchase their winter provision of wheat and barley, and return 

 after the first rains into the interior of the desert. Tribes of this family inhabit 

 or rather ambulate the district of Balbec, and the vicinity of Homs and Palmyra : 

 a few pay tribute to the Pasha of Damascus, but most of them acknowledge no 

 superior. "The Aenzes, a powerful Bedouin tribe, are easily distinguished from 

 the Shemal Arabs by their diminutive size, few of them being above five feet two 

 or three inches in height : their features are good, their noses often aquiline, their 

 persons extremely well formed, and not so meagre or slight as some travellers 

 have reported ; their deep-set, dark eyes sparkle from under their bushy black 

 eyebrows, with a fire unknown in our northern climes ; their beard is short and 

 thin, but the black hair of all abundantly thick. The females seem taller in 

 proportion than the men ; their features in general are handsome, and their deport- 

 ment very graceful. In complexion these Arabs are very tawny ; the children, 

 however, at their birth are fair, but of a livid whiteness."* They are a nation of 

 robber-shepherds, among whom wealth creates no influence, for the chief and 

 the meanest Arab eat daily of the same dishes, partake of the same privations, and 

 mingle in the same amusements. Like all Arabs they are passionately fond of 

 music and poetry, but whole tribes of them can neither read nor write. They 

 are highly courageous, but they fight rather for the acquisition of plunder than 

 for the love of glory. 



The Wahabys^ so celebrated in recent times for having overrun and conquered 

 all Arabia, were at first a mere tribe of sectarian Bedouins, who derived their 

 name from a favorite chief. Their creed has been defined " a mussulman puritan- 



* BuRKHARDT, Bedouins and Wahabys, p. 28. 



