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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photograph from Frederick Simpich 



BEAUTY BEHIND "BLINKERS" 



This peculiar head-dress worn by the Arab 

 women of Oman looks like a piece of foot- 

 ball gear. 



eluded in the boundaries of the new Arab 

 nation is as yet undetermined. 



Along the Red Sea coast lie three prov- 

 inces, the most important in Arabia. 

 Yemen, the most southerly and most 

 populous, has many arable valleys, pro- 

 ducing coffee, figs, spices, hides, and 

 dates. It has two port cities, Mocha and 

 Hodeida. Aseer province lies north of 

 Yemen, and north of Aseer and extend- 

 ing to the Suez Canal stretches the prov- 

 ince of Hejaz, wherein lie the famous 

 Moslem cities of Mecca and Medina. 



The ancients, for convenience, or from 

 lack of geographic knowledge, divided 

 Arabia into three parts — the Stony, the 

 Desert, and the Happy. Our knowledge 

 of its map shows most of its high interior 

 plateau occupied (except for Nejd prov- 

 ince) by four great deserts, the Syrian, 

 the Nefud, the Ahkaf, and the Dehna. 



The Mahrah and Hadramaut prov- 

 inces, stretching for hundreds of miles 

 above Aden, are unmapped and practi- 

 cally unknown. 



AN UNKNOWN OASIS 



Nejd, the great interior province, is 

 declared by Arabs to be the birthplace of 

 their most cherished institutions and tra- 

 ditions. Nejd is isolated from the out- 

 side world by a surrounding desert gir- 

 dle. To reach this hidden paradise and 

 the unknown city of Hail the traveler 

 must undergo the hardships and perils of 

 a trip across these seas of sand. This 

 same desert belt, touched at its outer rim 

 in the long ago by Greek and Roman ex- 

 plorers, was mistakenly believed by them 

 to be the edge of a wilderness that filled 

 all of inner Arabia. 



Niebuhr, the eighteenth century trav- 

 eler, seems to have known the Arabian 

 peninsula better than any other white 

 explorer. The narratives of Palgrave, 

 Burton, and Lady Ann Blunt, however, 

 are far more entertaining. 



Hasa province, at the head of the Per- 

 sian Gulf, and Koweit, its busy port, 

 from which many cargoes of dates, 

 sponges, and a wealth of pearls are 

 shipped, is no doubt destined to see great 

 commercial development in connection 

 with Great Britain's activities in Meso- 

 potamia. 



THE KAISER'S FIRST TERMINUS 



The Germans had selected Koweit as 

 the salt-water terminus of their famous 

 Bagdad railway, but the British, by a 

 clever coup a decade ago, made a treaty 

 with the Sheik of Koweit and blocked 

 the Kaiser's plan for a railway port on 

 the Persian Gulf. And now a British 

 light railway, starting at Bassora, on the 

 Shat-el-Arab, runs up the Tigris plain 

 past the tomb of Ezra, past the Arch of 

 Ctesiphon, and into the ancient city of 

 the Caliphs. From Berlin to Bassora by 

 rail will soon be an easy journey via 

 Aleppo, Mosul, and Bagdad. 



A confusion of plant life is spread over 

 Arabia's many rich wadis (valleys) af- 

 fording much "unfinished business" for 

 eager botanists. Besides the friendly 

 palm, such trees as the sycamore, almond, 

 chestnut, pomegranate, the "gum Ara- 



