ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN THE CAMEL COUNTRY

By
A. E. and S. M. ZWEMER

Zigzag Journeys in the Camel Country

Topsy-Turvy Land

The Desert Scout

ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN
THE CAMEL COUNTRY

ARABIA IN PICTURE
AND STORY

By
SAMUEL M. ZWEMER
and
AMY E. ZWEMER
Authors of “Topsy Turvy Land”

New York Chicago Toronto
Fleming H. Revell Company
London and Edinburgh

Copyright, 1911, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

To
the children of missionaries
all the world over

PREFACE

Here is another book of pictures and stories for the big children and small grown-up folks who enjoyed reading “Topsy Turvy Land” and want to know more about Arabia. A great part of this strange Camel Country is still unknown, and there are wide deserts which only the camel and his Arab guide have ever crossed. A few travellers and missionaries, however, have seen something of Arabia on their zigzag journeys along the coasts and inland. Would you like to hear the story?

The camels are waiting and the caravan is ready to start. You will not grow weary by the way, we hope. If the desert tracks are long and tiresome through the following chapters, just refresh yourself in the oasis of a picture.

S. M. Z.

A. E. Z.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Grateful acknowledgment is given to Mr. J. M. Coutinho, photographer at Aden, for permission to use several full-paged photographs. And gratitude is also expressed here for the use of other pictures taken by our missionary friends, the Rev. J. C. Young, M. D., and Dr. Sharon J. Thoms.

I
ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN ARABIA

Zigzag are the lines across the deserts of Arabia that mark the weary journeys of the camel caravans for centuries. Arabia has no straight roads. The crooked, winding paths through valley and along mountainside or over sandy tracks are worn smooth by the shuffling feet of the animal-with-the-long-neck. Every bit of desert thorn or green herb on either side of the path means a step away from the straight line. The caravan zigzags towards its destination. The ship of the desert makes more tacks in its onward course than a sailing-boat with a contrary wind in a narrow harbour.

The Arab, like the camel, is not in love with straight lines. An Arab carpenter cannot draw a right angle, and the Arab mason seldom uses a plummet. An Arab servant has great trouble in laying a table-cloth square on the table. The old Arab temple at Mecca is called “a Cube” (Kaaba), and yet has none of its sides and angles equal but is a zigzag building. Streets are never parallel or at right angles, but go crisscross in all sorts of ways except the shortest way.

And so it came to pass that when the tribes of men after the deluge scattered from the Tower of Babel far to the south of the big Arabian peninsula they too travelled in zigzag lines. Some went to the far east on the Persian Gulf and began to be pearl-divers at Bahrein. Others took their best camels all the way across the waterless desert of the interior and settled in Oman to become the breeders of the finest dromedaries. Others went meandering southward along the river-beds, called wadies, till they came to the beautiful mountains of Yemen, green with trees and bright with blossoms. Others loved the dry, clear, keen air of the high plateau, and making tents of goat-hair they lived with their flocks, and are the Bedouin tribes of to-day. Still others were driven to the west and, because the country was barren and dreadfully hot, settled near a spring called Zem Zem, and built the city of Mecca. The waters of the spring were good, they said, for fever and pain, and so Mecca became a health resort and a market-place, and finally a religions centre. Every year the distant tribes came in great caravans to visit the city and exchange mares, camel-foals and bits of poetry.

The big Camel Market in the crater at Aden where we preached our first sermon in 1891

The children of Ishmael and other grandchildren of “Father Abraham” also wandered down, and before the time of David the zigzag lines of the caravans that carried costly merchandise from Persia and India were all over Arabia. The single-track roads were as thick as the wrinkles on an old man’s forehead. But the great trunk lines were three: one of them extended from Aden on the far south, which was the chief harbour, along the whole western stretch of Arabia to Egypt. This was the road which the Queen of Sheba took when she came to see Solomon in all his glory. The other road extended from Babylon across the desert to Damascus, the oldest city in the world; and the third caravan route, nearly as important as the other two, went slant-wise from the mouth of the Euphrates River to the old capital of the Queen of Sheba, Marib. These three great railroads of the desert were busy day after day and month after month and year after year for many centuries. Great cities sprang up beside these camel tracks, and the ruins of Tadmor still show the wonderful importance of old time Arabia.

But for one reason and another trade chose other channels, and Arabia lost its importance. When the Wise Men came from the East to Bethlehem’s Manger the trunk lines were still in existence, but soon after Mohammed’s birth other parts of the world became more important, and Arabia became less and less known except to those who live in its deserts.

It had to be rediscovered in the present century, and the story of the rediscovery of Arabia is full of interest. This story, also, is a story of zigzag journeys.

Some bold travellers in Europe were anxious to visit the birthplace of Mohammed and see the holy city of Mecca, and at the risk of their lives, men like Burckhardt, Burton and others reached Mecca and Medina, travelling with the Arab caravans and dressed as Moslem pilgrims. In 1862 Palgrave made his celebrated journey across Arabia from west to east. And in 1876 Doughty, one of the bravest travellers, made his long and difficult zigzag journeys through Northwest and North Arabia, often in danger of his life. Suffering hunger and thirst with the Bedouins, he was driven from place to place until he finally got out of the interior safely.

Even earlier than these well-known travellers were the journeys of Cursten Niebuhr in Yemen. In 1763 he was sent by the King of Denmark to explore the unknown peninsula, and set out with five companions. After many wonderful adventures he came back, but he was the only one of the five: the others died in Arabia through fever or on the voyage.

Except for the portion of Arabia seen by those bold travellers and by others like them, a great part of the country is still unknown. No missionaries have ever crossed Arabia although they have made journeys into the interior and along the coasts. It is surprising, but it is true that the most unknown country in the world to-day is Arabia. We have better maps of the North Polar regions and even of the moon than we have of Southeast Arabia and portions of the interior.

The barren desert, fear of the Bedouin, always ready to rob and waylay the caravan, and the hatred of the Moslem for the Christian have closed the country for many years against travellers and missionaries; but, although so long neglected, Arabia is now becoming better known. The coasts have been explored, and they are actually building a railway to-day across the desert from Damascus to Mecca and another railway along the northern borders to Bagdad. A few months ago a British traveller crossed Arabia in a motor car. How the camels must have been surprised!

In the chapters that follow, we will take some zigzag journeys together,—sometimes on camels, sometimes on donkey-back, or in the Arab sailing-boats along the coast. We will not tell you what others have seen or heard in this wonderful country of the camel, but tell our own story; and we hope that you will learn to love the Arab, his country, and his camel as much as we do, and make many a new zigzag track across the map of Arabia to mark your journeys as future missionaries.

II
THE CAMEL AT HOME

Mr. and Mrs. Camel

At Home All Over Arabia.

B. C. 4000 — A. D. 1911.

Persia for goats, Egypt for crocodiles, Cashmere for sheep, Thibet for bulldogs, India for tigers, but Arabia for the camel! To see real live dromedaries, you must come to Arabia. For although the camel is often met with elsewhere, no country can show him in all his beauty like that country which is called by the Arabs themselves “Um-el-Ibl,” mother of the camel. The Oman dromedary is the prince of all camel breeds, and is so highly esteemed in the markets of the East as to fetch three times the price of any other camel. And no wonder that this animal has reached perfection in Arabia! He has been at home in its deserts and trained by its tribes for many, many centuries. Arabia and the camel are so closely connected that one can neither understand the Arab nor his language without him. Without the camel, life in a large part of Arabia would at present be impossible. Without the camel, the Arabic language itself would lose a vast number of words and ideas and possibly also a great many of its difficult sounds. There is not a page in the Arabic dictionary which does not have some reference to the camel and the life of this wonderful ship of the desert. The Arabs give him five thousand, seven hundred and forty-four different names, but the most common name by which he is known, not only by the Arabs but in all languages, is that of “Jemil,” that is to say, “camel.”

When the Ishmaelites brought Joseph to Egypt, and when the Queen of Sheba came to visit Solomon, they travelled on camels. The caravan was the earliest trunk line across the great lands of the East, and has probably carried more freight and more passengers than the Pennsylvania Railroad or the largest ocean liners. Long before wagons were invented, wheat, barley, wool and spices came across the desert on camels to Nineveh and Egypt.

Have you ever seen such a desert ship? A large, bony animal, six or seven feet high to the top of its hump, and rude and ungainly in appearance. Its neck is long, but curved beautifully. Its ears are ridiculously small, and the upper lip is cleft nearly to the nose, while the lower lip hangs down, and gives the whole face the appearance of “having the blues.”

The camel has many uses. When too old to carry a burden, it is used for food. Camel’s milk is very wholesome. Camel’s hair is used for making both fine and coarse cloths, and the skin is used for sandals, water-bags and thongs.

A Swift Dromedary and an Arab Post-rider

The dromedary is the swift post-camel, which carries its rider on long journeys seventy miles a day on the stretch. A caravan of ordinary camels is like a freight train and is intended to go slowly and surely with its heavy load of merchandise; but a company of dromedary riders is like a limited express. The ordinary caravan travels six hours a day and about three miles an hour, but a good dromedary can perform wonders on the road. A merchant once rode the entire distance from El Kasim to Taif and back, over seven hundred miles in fifteen days; and a post-rider at Maan in North Arabia can deliver a message at Damascus, two hundred miles away, at the end of three days. The ordinary camel is like a packhorse, but the dromedary by careful breeding has become a race-horse. The camel is thick-built, heavy footed, ungainly, jolting. The dromedary has more slender limbs, finer hair, a lighter step, a wonderfully easy pace and is more enduring of thirst. All the camels in Arabia have a single hump. The two-humped camel, which you sometimes see in the circus, does not come from Arabia, but from Central Asia. As for the ordinary camel, his life is as hard as the desert soil and as barren of all comfort as the desert is bare of grass. Surely, no animal would have more right to feel sulky and dull. Always in hard use as a beast of burden, underfed and overloaded in the desert land where even a thorny bush is considered a tit-bit, and where water costs money, it is no fun at all to be a camel.

Yet to describe the camel is to describe God’s goodness to the desert dwellers. The Arabs have a saying that the camel is the greatest of all blessings given by Allah to mankind; and when Mohammed, the prophet, wished to call attention to the providence and loving-kindness of God among the Bedouins, who were not at all religious, he said, “And will ye not look then at the camel how she is created?” With his long neck he is able to reach far out among the desert shrubs on both sides of his pathway and to eat as he trudges along. The skin of his month is so thick and tough that it enables him to eat hard and thorny plants, the only herbage of the desert. The camel’s ears are very small so that he can close them when the desert storm begins and the sand-drifts come like a snow-storm. But his nostrils are large for breathing and yet can be closed up tight during the fearful simoom or hot desert winds. His eyes are protected by heavy, overhanging lids against the direct rays of the noon sun, and his cushioned feet are adapted for the ease of the rider and of the animal himself. Five horny pads, one on each knee, and one under the breast, support the animal when kneeling to receive a burden or when he rests on the hot sand. The camel’s hump was nature’s pack-saddle for the commerce of many lands and for many ages. The arched backbone which supports the hump is constructed, just like the Brooklyn Bridge, to sustain the greatest weight in proportion to the span. A strong camel can bear one thousand pounds’ weight, although the usual load is not more than six hundred pounds. The camel is the most useful of all domestic animals, as you can see in the pictures. He can carry burdens or draw water or carry the swift post or bring in fire-wood from the desert, or grind corn. While still living he provides fuel, milk, excellent hair for making tents, ropes, and shawls. And when dead the Arabs eat his flesh for food, use his leather to make sandals, and the big broad shoulder-blades are used as slates in the day-schools in many parts of Arabia. A camel march is the standard of distance among the Arabs, and the price of a milch camel is the standard of value among the Bedouins of the desert. The camel is the most patient animal in existence, and yet he often has an ugly temper and is undoubtedly stupid to a degree. He will never attempt to throw you off his back, but if you fall off he will never dream of stopping for you; and if turned loose in the desert, it is a chance of a thousand to one whether he will find his way back to his accustomed home or pasture. When the camel becomes angry, he bends back his long, snaky neck and opens his big jaws to bite. Do you notice the powerful jaws of the camels in the pictures? Yet with all his faults, his ungainly gait, and his ugly appearance, you cannot help loving this ship of the desert when once you have made a zigzag journey on camel-back with the Arab caravans. Perched high in the air you feel as if you were riding on a church steeple or an aeroplane and the swinging, swaying motion after you become used to it is as good as that of a pleasure yacht in New York Bay when the wind is blowing. Then you feel like singing with the Arab poet:

“Roast meat and milk; the swinging ride

On a camel sure and tried,

Which her master speeds amain

O’er low dale and level plain.”

A caravan from Yemen bringing in hides for American kid shoes

There are two lessons we can learn from the camel, and I think all the boys and girls who read this chapter will like to know them. The first is, how to bear a burden and never complain. The secret of carrying this burden you will see when the caravan prepares for the long journey. Every camel kneels down to receive its load in the morning; every camel kneels down to have its load taken off in the evening. And that is why he is able to carry his burden to the end of the desert road. How much easier the great burden of a lost world in need of the Gospel could be carried, if we all learned to kneel morning and evening! To kneel and have the Master’s hand lay the burden on us, and the same hand take it off. Then we would feel the responsibility, and yet not miss the quietness and rest of real missionary service. Will you not kneel to-night, and to-morrow, and ask Jesus to teach you this lesson? Because, you know, the burden of these heathen lands is very heavy. There is on all of them, on Arabia too, the burden of sin, and of suffering, and of sorrow. What an awful burden! And yet the Bible tells us, “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

The second lesson is that of patience, which is the chief virtue of the camel, the most necessary virtue for every little missionary, and absolutely necessary for every big missionary. As the long train of camels goes on through the narrow sand path and between the thorn-shrubs of the wilderness, step by step, without sound and without ceasing, tramp, tramp, tramp, I have often thought of the text: “They shall walk and not faint.” Patient walking is better than impatient hurrying, in mission work and everything else. Patient waiting, too, you can learn from the camel. To wait patiently for results and not to dig up the seed we have sown before it sprouts. The Great Husbandman has long patience over every seed that He sows; why should not we?

“Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate,

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labour and to wait.”

III
ALONG UNBEATEN TRACES IN YEMEN

Those who think Arabia is a sandy desert with a few nomad tents and camels and ostriches scattered over it, have never seen Yemen. Yemen is the most fertile and most beautiful of all the provinces of Arabia. It means the right hand, and this name was given it as one of good omen by the early Arabs. It was called by the Romans Arabia Felix, or Happy Arabia, to distinguish it from Arabia Petrea (Stony Arabia) and Arabia Deserta (Desert Arabia).

Those who have never gone inland from Aden cannot imagine how very different the hill country is from the torrid coast, but a journey of even thirty miles inland is convincing. Corn never grew more luxuriantly in Kansas or Iowa than in some of the valleys of Yemen. If the country had a good government and the people were Christians, it would be one of the happiest in the world; a country where the orange, lemon, quince, grape, mango, plum, apricot, peach and apple yield their fruit in their season; where you can also get pomegranates, figs, dates, plantains and mulberries; a country where wheat, barley and coffee are staple products, and where there is a glorious profusion of wild flowers—although the camel drivers call it grass. Here one can see the nest of the oriole hanging from the acacia tree, and wild doves chasing each other from the clefts of the rocks, while farther up in the highlands, wild monkeys sport among the foliage of the trees.

It was my privilege to make two journeys through Yemen to its beautiful capital, Sanaa. On my first journey (1891) I went by the usual road from Hodeida on the coast, but in 1893 I chose the unbeaten tracks from Aden directly north, in order to see some of the places not yet visited and meet the people.

At the time of my first and also of my second journey, the Arabs were in rebellion against the Turks. They have been fighting them now for fifteen years, trying to secure their independence, and this year the country is more disturbed than ever, but the Arabs have no unity, no leadership, and, worst of all, no artillery, and so the Turkish government succeeds in crushing the rebellion time after time, and holding this province of Arabia in her grasp.

It was five o’clock on Monday morning, July 2d, that I set off from Aden with my camel boy Salih, and we did not stop until we reached the village of Wahat, nearly at noon. Starting again at seven o’clock, we followed the Arab custom of marching the whole night with the caravan. There was no breeze, and it was very hot. Vegetation does not begin until you enter Wady Merga. Here we had fresh dates, and made our camp under a big acacia tree. The road begins to rise rapidly as we follow the Wady northwards, and at midnight we pass Suk-el-Juma, or Friday market. This part of the road, they tell us, is dangerous, and so the Bedouins who accompany our eighty-two camel caravan swing the lighted wicks which they use to fire their flint-lock shotguns. Only one man in the party had a Springfield rifle. On July 4th we fell in with some Arabs who wanted to seize me as a spy of the British government and keep me as a prisoner until money was paid for my release. After some difficulty we persuaded them that I was not a British subject, and that no money would be paid even if they kept me a prisoner for many days.

The following day we had another adventure. Climbing up the valley and past fields of verdure, where men were plowing and women were weeding the gardens, we suddenly stumbled upon a Turkish castle, where an unmannerly negro official was in charge. He said no strangers were allowed beyond the Turkish frontier, seized all my baggage, confiscated my books and maps, and sent me under guard to Taiz, the next important town. On the afternoon of this same day, a heavy thunderstorm burst upon us from a clear sky, the wind became a hurricane, some of the camels stampeded, our umbrellas turned inside out, and, worst of all, a mountain torrent, swollen by the sudden rains and hail, carried away a donkey and part of our baggage. Drenched to the skin, we at last forced the camels up the slope to the house of an Arab, and were hospitably entertained, around a big fire which he built, on Arab coffee and sweetmeats.

We were now three thousand feet above sea level, and it was very cold at night even in July. We pressed on the next day, travelling through a country where every one fears his neighbour. I asked my guide why he had not prayed since we left Wahat, and his answer was, “If I pray on the road, my heart gets soft, and I fear to shoot an Arab robber because he may be a Moslem.” We saw many centipedes and scorpions sleeping after their rain bath, and warming themselves on the rocks. Every turn of the road brought us in sight of new villages, and everywhere the peasants have done their best to cultivate the soil by irrigation, until you can count a dozen terraces one above the other up the mountainside, in various shades of green of the different crops. Once and again we met caravans going down to the coast, carrying coffee or sheep-hides, as you see in the picture. One could hear the approach of a caravan by the camel drivers’ song. In a high, monotonous key and with endless repetition, they would sing verses like this about their camels:

“O Lord, keep them from all dangers that pass,

And make their long legs pillars of brass.”

Two days later we arrived at the interesting old town of Taiz, and I think I was the first Western traveller to visit it since the days of Niebuhr in 1763. While waiting for the governor to investigate the seizure of my baggage and the question of my passport, I had a good opportunity to study the town. Taiz has a population of about seven thousand people; two or three very old mosques with minarets, a Jewish synagogue, and a very respectable market. Just back of the town rises a mountain called the Bride’s Castle, from the top of which you can see clear across to the African coast. The Turkish government takes its own time about such a little matter as the inspection of baggage and the granting of a passport, and it was July 26th before I left Taiz. Even then I was not released, but sent on from the local governor to the capital under guard of a mounted trooper, who rode a beautiful horse, while I followed on a mule. It was no hardship, however, to get away from Taiz, and once more to breathe the country air and climb the mountain passes.

A long day’s journey, always climbing up the mountainside, brought us to Ibb, where my servant was imprisoned because he had told me the names of the villages. After some difficulty he was released, but the incident shows how suspicious the Turks are of strangers who travel in their country. Twelve hours farther on we came to Yerim, an unhealthy town situated near a marsh. It was July 29th, but the high elevation and the rain-storms brought the temperature down to fifty-two degrees, which was a great change from the temperature at Aden which, when I left, was 105 degrees in the shade. At another village, Maaber, even at noon the temperature was not over fifty-six degrees, and we wrapped ourselves up as though we were on a polar expedition. In these highlands of Yemen snow falls during the winter season, and frost is common. Just after leaving Yerim, we passed a large boulder on the road with an impression in it as though it were of some one’s foot. The Arabs say it is that of Ali, the grandson of Mohammed, who came along this road, and whenever they pass it they anoint it with oil and stop to pray.

From Yerim on to Sanaa the plateau is more level. Wide fields of barley and wheat took the place of coffee plantations, and the funniest sight we saw was camels hitched up for plowing. What with their long necks and queer harness, so much too big for the job, it was an odd sight. Damar, a large town with three mosques and houses built of stone, was our next stopping place. From Damar to Waalan was thirty-five miles, and then to Sanaa eighteen miles more. The roads here are splendid and are kept in good repair for the sake of the Turkish artillery, although there are no carriages nor horses in use.

On Thursday, August 2d, I entered Sanaa by the Yemen gate. Three years before I entered the same city from the other side, coming from Hodeida. Handed over to the care of a policeman, I waited for the governor to hear my case, and after finding an old Greek friend who knew me in Aden, and offered to go bail, I was allowed liberty, and for nineteen days was busy seeing the city and visiting the Arabs. We shall hear more of Sanaa in a following chapter. I forgot to say that at Yerim, while sleeping in the coffee shop, I was robbed of all my money, and so I ended my zigzag journey not only tired out, but a pauper; and if I had not pawned my watch and coat, I would have been in debt to the hotel keeper. Pioneer journeys in Topsy Turvy Land are not without difficulty.

IV
GOING TO MARKET TO SOW SEED

The Arabs are a very old-fashioned people. In fact, their customs have not changed since the time that Ishmael as a boy went with his mother Hagar on the camels and landed somewhere in Arabia. I suppose that even in those old times the Arabs and the Syrians kept a weekly market where all the people from all the villages came together to barter their wares, to shake hands and make acquaintance and go back with a larger idea of their small world. The custom of holding weekly markets on a special day of the week even in the smallest villages is still common in Arabia. In fact, there are villages that take their name from a market day, and are called “Thursday” or “Saturday” because on those days of the week the village takes on an air of importance and doubles in population. The Arabs, however, do not have the same names for the days of the week that we have. Instead of naming them after idols, Thursday after Thor and Wednesday after the old god Woden, they number the days of the week just as in the first chapter of Genesis, and have “The First Day,” “The Second Day,” etc. The only exception is Friday which is the sacred day of the week and the Mohammedan Sabbath and is named “The Day of the Congregation” because then they all go to the markets to pray and hear a sermon.

A busy market is held at “Suk el Khamis” every Thursday all the year round, rain or shine (and it generally is shine in Arabia), out in the open air near the ruins of an old mosque about three miles distant from Menama village at Bahrein where the missionaries live. The two tall minarets on the mosque can be seen from the market. It is one of the oldest mosques in East Arabia, and was built several hundred years ago and rebuilt several times. Now it is no longer used to pray in nor does the call to prayer ever ring out from the minarets. The fret is that one Moslem sect after another took possession of the building, and in the religious disputes that arose the building itself went into decay. One part of the mosque is now used for a goat pen. The gray square stones of which the mosque was once built are scattered about and serve as seats for visitors, and every traveller who visits Bahrein climbs up one of the minarets and gets a fine view of the islands. If you can read the old writing carved on the stones in Arabic script, you can see how often this mosque has changed hands between the rival parties in the Moslem world called Shiahs and Sunnis, and if you should ever visit the missionary rooms of the Reformed Church in New York, the secretary there can show you a gavel or mallet made from a beam of wood which was once in the roof of this very mosque. A piece of the old beam fell to the ground and was made into a mallet to show that the religion of Islam in Arabia is decaying and that missionaries to Moslems need not be afraid to enter the country of Mohammed.

Every Thursday morning the plain around this mosque is a busy scene. How often I have ridden down to this market on a donkey or walked in the heat of the sun and have seen a thousand or more people crowded together in all their bright coloured garments, men and women and children, busily engaged in trade, in play, or in quarrels over the price of an article! One man, perhaps, brings a load of water jars from the village of Ali. Another has a big donkey load of ropes or mats for sale, and still another brings great baskets of melons, pomegranates, dates, limes and vegetables. Women, covered over with their heavy black veils and looking very mischievously through little peep holes for their eyes, crouch on the ground before their little open-air stands where they sell cheap jewelry and trinkets or tiny bottles of perfume and black antimony powder, which the Arab girls use for their eyes.

The barber is also busy and plies his razor with a deft hand while he shaves the heads and beards of those who come, charging only a few coppers for the job. The breadmaker arrives on the scene very early, and builds his small open oven to bake his flap-cakes. He rolls the dough on a board, flattens it out with his fingers and then tosses it against the sides of the hot oven where it sticks fast and bakes into a large, light, palatable cake. Oh, how good such Arab bread is when you are hungry, or when you sit down to an Arab guest meal and have it served with fresh butter and honey!

More numerous and more loud than all the others who come are the half-naked Bedouins who come to sell a drove of sheep or barter for a couple of camels. They are all there this morning:

“Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief;

Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief;

Butcher, baker and candlestick maker.”

And if the candlestick maker, who sells more candles than candlesticks, is present, why should the missionary, who is sent to bring the Light of Life to men, be absent?

As often as possible therefore we visit this market-place, and sell books and Bibles or preach to those who will listen. It is not at all an easy place to sell or to preach, but those who come there witness fine, splendid opportunities to meet men face to face, to get acquainted and to renew old acquaintance with villagers who come from distant parts of the Bahrein Island group. Here it is that many a gospel portion has exchanged hands and many a story of the power of Christ has been sowed as good seed in the hearts of the Arabs in the hope that God would use it to make them think of Jesus Christ as their Saviour. If books are sold they are often carried from here to distant villages, and it is possible to make acquaintance here with Arabs who come from the mainland and are visiting the islands, while one is sure to meet old friends who have not been able to come to see you for a long time.

One merchant used to keep a dry-goods stand and was one of the few Moslems in the early days of our work who was always glad to welcome a missionary. When the sun was very hot the shelter of his mat-screen was a nice shady nook to sit down in and talk with wayfarers. Right near the tall minarets we sometimes discuss the Koran and its teachings, and tell the Arabs how the book of Mohammed is really a finger-post pointing them to the Gospel and to Jesus Christ, the Great Prophet Who is alive forevermore. Will you not pray that every Thursday God will bless this little acre, the market-place of Suk el Khamis, where we sow the seed of God’s Own Word, waiting for the harvest?

“Sowing the seed with an aching heart,

Sowing the seed while the tear-drops start,

Sowing the seed till the reapers come

Gladly to gather the harvest home;

Gathered in time or eternity,

Sure, ah sure, will the harvest be.”

V
WHERE THE QUEEN OF SHEBA LIVED

You have all read the story given in 1 Kings x. of the Queen of Sheba and her visit to Solomon of whose fame she had heard in her distant kingdom in Southwest Arabia, but the story as told in Mohammed’s Bible, the Koran, is very different, and has many curious fables mixed up with it. It is found in the chapter called “The Ant,” and this is how he tells it.

“We heretofore bestowed knowledge on David and Solomon: and they said, Praise be unto God, who hath made us more excellent than many of His faithful servants! And Solomon was David’s heir; and he said, O men, we have been taught the speech of birds, and have had all things bestowed on us; this is manifest excellence. And his armies were gathered together unto Solomon, consisting of genii, and men and birds; and they were led in distinct bands, until they came unto the valley of ants. And an ant, seeing the hosts approaching, said, O ants, enter ye into your habitations, lest Solomon and his army tread you under feet, and perceive it not. And Solomon smiled, laughing at her words, and said, O Lord, excite me that I may be thankful for Thy favour wherewith Thou hast favoured me and my parents; and that I may do that which is right and well-pleasing unto Thee; and introduce me, through Thy mercy, into Paradise, among Thy servants the righteous. And he viewed the birds, and said, What is the reason that I see not the lapwing? Is she absent? Verily I will chastise her with a severe chastisement, or I will put her to death, unless she bring me a just excuse. And she tarried not long before she presented herself unto Solomon, and said, I have viewed a country which thou hast not viewed; and I come unto thee from Saba, with a certain piece of news. I found a woman to reign over them, who is provided with everything requisite for a prince, and hath a magnificent throne. I found her and her people to worship the sun, besides God.”

The Koran then goes on to tell how Solomon sent her a letter, and she sent ambassadors to him, and finally asked one of his terrible jinn to bring her to him, throne and all, from Southwest Arabia. He did it in the twinkling of an eye, and after she saw Solomon and his glory she was converted to his religion!

Although this latter story of the Queen of Sheba is evidently fabulous, there is no doubt that the Bible story is true, because recent explorers have visited the country of the Queen of Sheba and her old capital Marib, a short distance east of Sanaa, and have brought back inscriptions which tell of the ancient glory of her kingdom. In the Old Testament the Sabaeans lived in Sheba, and their caravans brought gold and precious stones and spices into distant lands. (See Job vi. 19; Ezek. xxvii. 22, and Psalm lxxii. 10.)

On my first and second visit to Sanaa, the high mountain capital of all Yemen, I was privileged to look over into the borders of the country where the Queen of Sheba lived, and on the journey described in Chapter III I probably travelled from the coast by the same road which was used in the days of Solomon. It is not easy to build roads in so mountainous a country. Everywhere one can see the ruins of the old Himyarite civilization which flourished here from the time of Solomon until the Christian era. Some of the roads undoubtedly have been kept in repair ever since they were built along the mountainside by these early engineers. Stone bridges across torrent beds, tanks for holding water, and old castles with inscriptions in the strange language, still witness to the strength and vigour of this old empire. The accompanying picture is not that of the Queen of Sheba herself, but is undoubtedly that of a princess in the Sheba country. It was found among many, many other inscriptions and carvings in the land south of Marib, the old capital, where the famous dyke was built which was destroyed by a flood. When you study the picture, you will notice that the woman’s dress, with its ornaments and without a veil, the use of a throne, the carved pillars, and the page boys (or are they girls?) in waiting, are all so very different from the Arabia of to-day. The picture is also interesting when we remember how the early travellers and scientists who copied or brought back these famous inscriptions have confirmed the history of the Old Testament and its many references to South Arabia. One of them says: “The Queen of Sheba proved Solomon with hard questions, all of which in his wisdom he answered her. Now we who study the Old Testament, reversing the process, go to the wonderland of that queen with a multitude of inquiries, to many of which it has already given us a satisfactory reply.”

The capital of the Queen of Sheba, Marib, is largely in ruins, but something of the glory of the old civilization still lingers at Sanaa, which is at once one of the most beautiful and one of the most ancient cities of Arabia, built before the time of Solomon. It lies in a wide valley 7,250 feet above sea level. Jebel Nakum, with its marble quarries, rises abruptly like a fortress, just east of the city. The town is surrounded by a high wall, and has four gates. The houses are many of them four and five stories high, built of stone, and as they have no window-glass, they use slabs of alabaster instead. The population of the city is about fifty thousand, of whom more than twenty thousand are Jews.

A picture carved in stone 2,000 years old, with its inscription, from the land of Sheba

My first visit to the city was in 1891, and the second in 1894. The first time I came straight up from Hodeida through Menakha, and in four days reached the city. The second journey was from Aden northward, leaving on July 2d, but what with delays and accidents and imprisonment by the Turks at Taiz, I did not reach Yemen’s capital until the 2d of August. The most surprising thing about Sanaa is not its old ruins, nor the wonderful fertility of the country round about, but the interesting character of its population. Here was a large city full of Jews who came to this part of the world, as they themselves testified, long before the destruction of Jerusalem; Greek merchants were carrying on a brisk trade in all the manufactured articles of Europe with the Arabs of the interior; Turkish army officials in splendid uniform trying in vain, as they are to-day, with their regiments of Turkish troops to put down Arab rebellions; and then the Arabs themselves, men, women and children, strong mountaineers, with love for liberty and heartily despising the government of which they are unwilling subjects.

Looking northward from this city you can see the highlands of Asir and the distant road that leads through Nejran. All this country was once Christian, and in Sanaa itself stood the great cathedral built by the Abyssinian king, Abraha, about the time when Mohammed was born. From Sanaa he led his army to Mecca, hoping to take the city and convert it to the Christian faith, but he was not successful. In the Koran chapter of “The Elephant,” you may read how the Christians were defeated when smallpox broke out among them. Standing on the slopes of Jebel Nakum and looking eastward, the country of the Queen of Sheba is spread out before you. You can imagine I was very sorry that, having been robbed of all my money on the way, it was impossible to carry out my plan of going from Sanaa to Marib, and from there right across Arabia to Bahrein. Perhaps some of you who read these lines will be privileged to make this journey. If you are, you will pass through some of the most interesting ruins in the world, and the hardships of a camel journey will be abundantly compensated by what you see on the road.

VI
THE JEWS OF KHEIBAR

Nearly all of the people who live in the country of the camel are Mohammedans, but it was not always so. Before the days of Mohammed, the prophet, there were very many Christians in Arabia and also many Jews. The former lived mostly in the southern part of the great peninsula, but the Jews had large settlements not only in the country of the Queen of Sheba—of which we have heard—but also at Mecca and Medina, which are now the two sacred cities, and especially in the country north of Medina, Kheibar. Some of these children of Israel came to Arabia at the time of the captivity when they were driven from their own country by persecution, and settled down in the rich and fertile valleys of Nejran and on the hills of Yemen. Others came to Arabia about the time when Jesus Christ was born.

There are Jews in Arabia still but not nearly as many as in the olden time. Their condition, too, is very sad and they are often sorely oppressed by the Moslems. There is no missionary working among them at present, although they have been visited by colporteurs who brought them the New Testament in the Hebrew language so that they might read for themselves the story of the Saviour Jesus Christ. I once had the pleasure of talking to a large company of Jews in the capital city of Yemen, Sanaa, and it was very touching to realize that these Jews were not of the number whose ancestors rejected Jesus and led Him out to be crucified, because as they themselves told me their forefathers had left the Holy Land many, many years before Jesus was born at Bethlehem.

But I want to tell you about the Jews of Kheibar. Northeast of the city where Mohammed lies buried, Medina, there is a barren stretch of rocky country and in the midst of it a valley where there are some springs of water and where with great toil it is possible to produce some vegetation. Here it was that thousands of Jews settled in the days before Mohammed, tilled the soil and lived happily until the Arabian prophet with his fierce warriors came preaching a new religion and filling the valley with the dead bodies of those who would not accept it.

THE CASTLE OF KHEIBAR.

You may read the story of this expedition of Mohammed in the history of his life. So bloody was the battle fought between the Jews and the Moslems that the Bedouins of that region when they see the iron rust on the banks of the brooks still say: “Look how the earth is purging itself of the much blood of the Jews that was spilled in the conquest of Kheibar.” According to the stories told by the Arab writers it was a desperate struggle. The Jews did not give Mohammed, the prophet, any easy victory. To defend themselves against Bedouin robbers and against assault they had built in the midst of their valley several castles or forts, one of which was so wonderful that it has very often been celebrated among the Arabs. It was called the Castle of Kheibar or Kamoos. An old Jewish warrior told the people that if they would build a fort in exact obedience to his written command it would be so strong that no enemy could overcome them or enter the fort. And these were his instructions: “Build the castle with eight gates and only one entrance; the walls eightfold and square; the entrance from the fifth; the second, the fourth; the third, the first; the fourth, the second; the fifth, the third; the sixth and seventh and eighth unchanged.” I will not leave you to puzzle over these strange instructions. An Arab friend of mine who told me the story drew the castle for me and here you have it. If you will try to find your way to the keep of the castle where the Jews defended themselves, you will agree that it is not surprising that it took Mohammed twenty days to storm it. When the castle was taken, the booty divided and the captives slain in a most cruel manner, Mohammed took Safia, the widow of the chief of Kheibar to his tent as his captive. Zainab, the sister of the warrior who fought against Mohammed and who herself had lost her brother, her husband and her father in the battle, tried the next day to kill the prophet of Arabia by sending him some mutton into which she had put poison, but her attempt at vengeance was not successful. The Moslems say it was a miracle that their prophet escaped.

The conquest of the Jews was complete, for all the Jews that escaped from the siege of Kheibar were obliged to turn Moslems and there never was freedom for the Jew again in all Arabia. They are generally heavily taxed, have no redress against abuse and repression and are looked down upon by all the Moslem population. In the capital city of Sanaa they are not even allowed to carry arms or to ride in the streets. They must live in a separate part of the town and draw water from wells of their own.

Water carts used at Aden to bring water from the wells to the city

At Aden and in other parts of British Arabia the Jews are prosperous, but everywhere else their lot is not a happy one. The total number of Jews in Arabia is perhaps two hundred thousand. One half of them at present live in Yemen and the rest mostly in Bagdad and Busrah.

The traveller who goes on shore at Aden on his way to India never fails to meet the Jews. In fact, they besiege every passing steamer and are anxious to sell their wares, ostrich eggs, ostrich feathers, coins, and curios. You can at once tell them from their peculiar habit of wearing two locks of hair in front of their ears. Many of the Jews in Arabia are utterly given over to money getting and worldly pleasures, but others are strong in their religion and look forward still for the hope of Israel. They are always glad to purchase the Hebrew Bible and to send their children to school.

Pray for this despised and rejected people there in Arabia and everywhere that more may be done for their salvation and that missionaries may be sent to work especially for these “lost sheep of the house of Israel” who have so long been living in the tents of Ishmael! Perhaps God wants one of you to come out and tell them the story of Jesus Christ Who must love them more than we do as He is one of themselves.

VII
AMULETS AND OTHER EVERY-DAY THINGS

Did you ever see a woman or a girl dressed in such a strange way as the one in the picture? Of course you know that Moslem women wear veils, but this veil is like a window-casing with the panes of glass knocked out. It is made of stiff cloth, heavily embroidered, sometimes with gilt or silver embroidery, and has a nose piece and strings to fasten around the head. In addition to this curious veil you notice that she has three bracelets on each arm, and you can get a glimpse of her nose jewel hanging underneath the veil. Of course she wears earrings and anklets. The most conspicuous part of her jewelry, however, is the amulet case which hangs by a silver chain from around her neck, and has beautiful bangles attached to it below. Nearly every one in Topsy Turvy Land wears amulets. They are worn not for ornament, but for protection, and no one would think of leaving them at home if he went on a journey.

A Woman of the Hill Tribes, showing veil and amulets worn

Amulets and charms are worn not only by the Arabs themselves and to protect their children from the evil eye, but they are put over the doors of their houses, and hung on camels, donkeys, horses, fishing boats, in fact, anywhere and everywhere to ward off danger and death. Only yesterday a little boy came to our church service, whose mother is still a Moslem, and he had hanging from his neck a whole collection of curious things, beads, bones, sacred relics, etc., all to protect him from the evil eye.

All sorts of things are used as amulets in Arabia, and their use is justified by the saying of Mohammed himself: “There is no wrong in using charms and spells so long as you do not associate anything with God.” The most common things used as amulets are a small Koran suspended in a silver case; words from the Koran written on paper and carried in a leather receptacle; the names of Allah or their numerical value; the names of Mohammed and his companions; precious stones with or without inscriptions; beads; old coins; clay images; the teeth of wild animals; holy earth from Mecca or Kerbela in the shape of tiny bricks, or in small bags. When the Kaaba covering at Mecca is taken down each year and renewed, the old cloth is cut up into small pieces and sold for charms.

The women in Mecca use an amulet of special power called “Mishkash,” which is supposed to exercise its virtue for the increase of the family. The “Mishkash” is really a copy of an old Venetian coin, representing the Duke of Venice kneeling before St. Mark on the one side, and on the other side is the image of Christ surrounded by stars. Of course the women themselves are in total ignorance of the inscription on the coin and of its Christian character.

According to the principles of Islam only verses from the Koran should be used, but the door of superstition once being set ajar by Mohammed himself, as we know from the story of his life, it is now wide open. The chapters from the Koran which are most often selected for use as amulets and put in the little cases shown in the picture are Surahs I, VI, XVIII, XXXVI, XLIV, LV, LXVII, LXXVIII. There are five verses in the Koran called the verses of protection, “Ayat-el-Hifdh,” which are the most powerful to defend from evil. They read as follows: “The preservation of heaven and earth is no burden unto Him;” “God is the best protector;” “They guard him by the command of God;” “We guard him from every stoned devil;” “A protection from every rebellious devil.” These verses are written with great care and with a special kind of ink by those who deal in amulets, and are then sold for a good price to Moslem women and children. The ink used for writing amulets is saffron water, the juice of onions, water from the sacred well of Zem Zem, and sometimes even human blood. It is very important that the one who writes the amulet be a holy man in the Moslem sense of that word. We are told in Arabic books on the subject (and these books are printed by the thousands) that “The diet of the one who prepares charms depends on the kind of names of God which he intends to write or recite. If they are the terrible attributes of Allah, then he must refrain from the use of meat, fish, eggs, honey and musk. If they are His amiable attributes, he must abstain from butter, curds, vinegar, salt and ambergris.”

A favourite kind of amulet is called the magic square, and I have drawn one here for you. Most of the Arabs believe that there are only four elements, earth, air, fire and water, and under these four names they have numerical squares, as you see them, of the numbers one to sixteen, and whichever way you add the columns up and down or across the total is always thirty-four. Try it.

EARTH

WATER

AIR

FIRE

Among the Shiah Moslems, whom we meet everywhere in East Arabia, the most common amulet is called Nadi-Ali. It consists generally of a lead or silver plate with little bells at the bottom, inscribed with these words:

“Cry aloud to Ali; he is the possessor of wonders,

From him you will find help from trouble.

He takes away very quickly all grief and anxiety

By the mission of Mohammed and his own sanctity.”

There are innumerable cases where such amulets are used for the cure of disease. The native doctors firmly believe that when every remedy fails, the book of Allah, if properly administered, internally or externally, will drive away pain and cure the patient.

The hospitals and book-shops and schools will doubtless in time drive out the use of amulets in Arabia, and the march of civilization, with its modern scientific miracles and spirit of investigation, is also a means to that end. Nevertheless, I have known of cases where printed Arabic gospels were bought to be used as amulets and where patients tried to rub off ink from the printed paper used to wrap powders in at the hospital, in order to drink the solution as a remedy.

There are other things in Arabia which, though not amulets, will strike you as very strange. First there is the market basket, deftly woven out of palm leaves. When this is smeared with bitumen inside, it will hold water as well as an American pail or a bucket. The Arab broom is made of palm leaf fibre, with a short handle, and the dish cover below it is also made of palm fibre and rope, and is beautifully stained with colours, and when they bring in a dish of Hassa dates to entertain guests, such a cover is always put on to protect it from the flies.

The sewing basket and the fan and the woman’s sandals are also very interesting. The men’s sandals, as well as the women’s sandals, have a peg or leather thong, which goes between the big toe and the one next to it, and by which they cling to their footgear in a way that would surprise you. Because the women’s slippers are made of wood, you can hear their footsteps when they are a great way off, and the clap-clap of the women’s sandals is a familiar sound to all of us here in Arabia.

What do you think of their beautiful furniture? There are small tables used to hold water jars or trays of food, and folding bookstands cleverly made out of one piece of hard wood that fold up for a journey. Larger bookstands are made of date sticks and are strong enough to support a big volume of the Koran. The Arabs love to sit and swing back and forth as they chant its chapters. And lastly is something that looks very much like an amulet, but which is a traveller’s bag for bread and dates, often fastened to the camel saddle by leather thongs. Bread or dates kept in such a receptacle will keep moist for many, many hours in the hot, dry climate of Arabia.

The Arabs are not skilled as the Japanese and Chinese are with tools, nor are they much given to art of any kind, but you must admit that such every-day things are many of them artistic and some of them really beautiful.

VIII
THE MOST WONDERFUL STONE IN THE WORLD

The Ten Commandments were written on two tables of stone but these original stones are lost; the High Priest Aaron had twelve most precious stones in his breast plate when he went into the holy place to minister; Jacob placed a stone for a pillow when he fled from his brother, but no one has found this old memorial. Many other wonderful stones are held almost sacred because of past history. Stone worship is one of the oldest forms of idolatry. The old Druid stone in England, where the priests offered sacrifice during their worship and where even human blood was spilt in the name of religion, are examples.

Plymouth Rock is also a famous stone from its part in history. It marks the place where the Pilgrim fathers landed in 1620. There have also been precious stones which have had a remarkable history and for which much money and often life was sacrificed, and then none of the boys can forget the pebble which David found in the brook and which was the weapon of his victory over great Goliath.

But the most wonderful stone in the world to-day is none of these that I have told you of. It is the Black Stone of the old idol temple in Arabia, now the centre of Mohammedan worship.

Every-day things in Arabia

The greater number of the tribes of Arabia in Mohammed’s day, if they had any religion at all, were little better than fetich worshippers, each tribe having its own idol or god, which in many cases was some peculiar tree or rock in their territory, around which they built rude shrines, and to which they made pilgrimages. From time immemorial, however, there was one fetich which the whole race seemed to regard as peculiarly sacred, and that was the Kaaba, or sacred stone of Mecca. It is probable that this stone was a shooting star, which, falling from heaven in the presence of spectators, became ever after an object of superstitious veneration, just as the stone of Diana of Ephesus became the centre of worship for the Greek world. The tribe to which Mohammed belonged had held for several generations the office of stewards to this great national shrine, to encourage the flocking of pilgrims to the Kaaba. From this source the wealthy families of Mecca got the great part of their money. They admitted impartially figures of all the idols of the tribes from one end of Arabia to the other, so that each man might feel at home when he arrived there for his devotions.

When Mohammed had fully established his new religion he turned out all the old deities except the Black Stone, which he himself worshipped, and concerning which worship he left minute directions for his followers. Such was the inconsistency of the prophet whose creed was “There is no god but Allah.” The object of the pilgrimage as instituted by Mohammed was to worship the Sacred Mosque and Kaaba. According to Moslem writers, the Kaaba was built by Adam, exactly under the spot occupied by God’s throne in heaven. It is an oblong building in the centre of the mosque, covered with a black cloth, and in it is the sacred Black Stone which came down from heaven snow-white, and was turned black by the sins of the people.

The Black Stone is located on the southeast corner of the Kaaba, about five feet from the ground. It is probably an aerolite, black and sprinkled with lighter patches and came down as a falling star. Many years after Mohammed’s death it was stolen by some of the Arabs on the Persian Gulf and carried across the desert to Katif; when it was carried back again it fell from the camel on its long journey and was broken. Now a silver band holds the pieces together and the whole stone is imbedded in the wall.

The Black Stone at Mecca

It is necessary for every Moslem to visit Mecca at least once during his lifetime. When all these pilgrims arrive within a short distance of the Holy City, they must put off their every-day clothing and put on the pilgrim garb, which consists of two pieces of white cloth,—one tied around the loins and the other drawn over the shoulders, under their arm, leaving one shoulder bare. The pilgrims are allowed to wear sandals, but not shoes. Thus clad every one goes in turn to the sacred well of Zem Zem, washes his whole body with a pailful of the water, and then drinks as much as he cares. Then he enters the “door of peace” and kisses the most wonderful stone in the world, running around the Kaaba seven times and each time when he passes the stone he strokes it with his hand or kisses it. After this all the Moslem pilgrims say the regular prayer and retire.

The next day, those who are seeking Paradise along the zigzag road of Mohammed’s religion must do other things as well. They must visit the place where Abraham is supposed to have stood, when he rebuilt the Kaaba. Then they must run between the mountains of Safa and Milra, two little hills near Mecca, and do other things every day until the sixth day, when all the pilgrims surround the Kaaba as they did on the first day. On the seventh day the sermon is preached from the great pulpit in the middle of the building. The preacher no doubt urges all those who are present to persevere in their religion and make converts among the nations. It is a large gathering indeed which comes to Mecca. Between seventy and eighty thousand people travel every year to visit the city from every part of the Moslem world,—Europe, Asia, Africa and the islands of the sea. After the sermon is over two more days are spent in various visits to sacred places around Mecca and then comes the greatest day of all, which is celebrated all over the Moslem world, namely, the day of Sacrifice.

Although Mohammedans deny the death of Christ and the need of an atonement for sin, it is strange that this great feast should still be a feast of sacrifice, like that of the Jews of old. Every earnest believer takes a goat, a sheep or a camel, places it so as to face the Kaaba and plunges a knife into its throat as he cries out—“God is great and Mohammed is His apostle.” When the sacrifice is over the pilgrim is allowed again to shave his beard and trim his nails and put on his ordinary clothing, all of which was forbidden during the ten days of pilgrimage. He is also given a certificate stating that he has finished the pilgrimage and is now ready for Paradise, or words to that effect.

The most of the pilgrims who come back from Mecca are not any better for going, because the city is the centre not only of diseases such as cholera and plague, which cause the death of many, but is also the centre of immorality and wickedness.

Although travellers have visited Mecca by pretending to be Mohammedans and at the risk of their lives, no Christian, were he known to be so, would be allowed to enter the sacred city. The first European to visit Mecca was an English sailor boy, called Joseph Pitts, who was captured as a slave in Algiers and taken to Mecca against his will. He was forced to become a Moslem, but afterwards escaped to England and wrote a book on what he had seen.

Opening of the Hedjaz Railway

The new railroad which is now being built by the Turkish government from Damascus to Medina and on to Mecca will soon be completed, and who can say whether it will not open up the whole country to the Gospel? A big American locomotive will soon be puffing steam and sounding its whistle right near the Kaaba, over against the most wonderful stone in the world.

IX
THE CAMEL DRIVER WHO BECAME A PROPHET

If one could have all the boys of the world pass by in single file and take down their names one by one, there would be a great many who bore the same name. Johns and Henrys and Carls and Hans there would be by the thousands, but there would be no name which so many boys had in common, I am sure, as the name of Mohammed. It is a very safe estimate to say that there are living in the world to-day no less than five million boys and men who bear that name.

Yet I wonder how many of you know who Mohammed was, where he lived and died, and why he has such a world-wide reputation? He was a poor orphan; his father died before he was born and his mother only a few years after, but although he was so forlorn and lived in a very barren part of Arabia, in one of the valleys of the city of Mecca, he had powerful relatives who were kind to him and helped him. He was born in the year 570 A. D., about a thousand years before Columbus discovered America. His mother’s name was Amina, which means faithful.

There are many strange stories told about him when he was a boy. One story is that while he was away in the desert with his foster brother, living with the Arab tribes and growing strong by exercise and drinking camels’ milk, one day two men dressed in white came and threw him on the ground. They then took out his heart, by opening his breast, and squeezed out a drop of black blood, and put the heart back again, closing up the wound. The Arabs believe that in this way he got rid of his original sin and was made pure. As a boy he was pleasing and industrious, and won the name of “the faithful one.” However, at the time of Mohammed’s childhood, morals and manners in Mecca were as bad as possible, and he did not have many good influences to help him in the right way.

When he was about twelve years old, his uncle, Abu-Talib, took him along on a journey to Syria, as far as Bozra, a town that is mentioned in the Bible, and not the same as Busrah on the Persian Gulf. This journey lasted for some months, and it was at this time that Mohammed met a Christian monk, who, it is reported, told Abu-Talib to take good care of the youth, for great dignity awaited him.

On this journey Mohammed for the first time came in touch with Christianity, and was surely impressed by the national and social customs of Christians; and being a bright boy, he was easily able to see the difference between the habits and religion of his own nation and those of the Christians. It was after this journey that he was anxious to reform the dreadful idolatry and wicked ways of the Arabian people. From the age of twelve to twenty he lived in the usual manner of the boys of his day, tending sheep on the hillsides and valleys of Mecca, and he was so honest and pure and fair during these years, and such a contrast to those around him, that everybody gave him the name I told you of—Al Amin, i. e., “the faithful.” During this time, too, he learned something of what war was like, for he went with his uncles on two expeditions to fight against another tribe. When Mohammed was twenty-five years old, his uncle suggested that he should take charge of a caravan for a rich lady living in Mecca, and trading products of Mecca for other things from Syria and other parts of Arabia. On this journey Mohammed again came in contact with Christians and Jews, and he must have noticed, too, how, while professing to serve and love the one true God, they always seemed to be quarrelling about their religion. Perhaps he saw the truth in both systems and afterwards thought he could make out of them one simple creed and unite all mankind in the worship of the only true God.

After his return from this trip, he was married to Khadijah, by whom he had been employed as camel driver, making zigzag journeys across the country to sell and exchange his merchandise. After his marriage he lived happily, so we are told, until his fortieth year, when he began to have dreams, and became persuaded that God had called him to be a prophet. Many verses of the Koran were recited and written down. Mohammed wanted most of all at this time that his countrymen should put away their idols and worship only Allah, but some of them were very angry and would have killed him, if he had not hidden.

Mohammed and Khadijah had six children, but most of them died when they were young. His daughter Fatimah, when she was old enough, was married to her adopted brother, Ali; her name is very much honoured and used by Moslems everywhere.

Sometimes Mohammed would have his dreams very often, and then again he would go a long time without a revelation. But he began to believe in himself and told his visions to others, and they too began to believe in him as a prophet of God. His relatives were the first ones to come out and follow the new religion. He wanted to take the idols out of the Kaaba at Mecca, and preached against idolatry, and for this reason the keepers of the Kaaba were very angry and persecuted him for his preaching. When the persecution became too bad, he then recanted or withdrew some of his statements in regard to the idols and the true worship, and he told them he had had a vision or revelation that they might retain their most important gods, or rather, the favourite ones. But after a few days he repented of this leniency, and told the Meccans he had made a mistake and all the idols must be destroyed, and they must worship Allah only. The people began to treat him badly and they would have killed him if he had not fled to Medina. The persecutors followed him and nearly overtook him, when he came to a cave and slipped inside, and one tradition says that after the prophet (on him be prayers and peace) had gone inside, some pigeons came and sat on the edge of the cave; also a spider quickly wove a web across the mouth of the cave and when his pursuers came and looked they said: “He is not in there, for see the pigeons and the spider’s web; he cannot be inside,” and thus God preserved the life of Mohammed. Afterwards those men turned back, and he came out of the cave and went on to Medina. And there his religion prospered, and Mohammed saw a vision of the power he might hold, so little by little the stern purpose of his life—to cleanse his people from idol worship—became weaker. He gave in, here a little and there a little, and gave to his followers many harmful privileges, which he said were revelations from the Angel Gabriel to him. These same privileges have degraded the nations they have governed, and the religion of the sword and of plunder appealed to the human heart more than spiritual things possibly could. He soon gained many thousands of followers, and grew strong and bold, and began to organize bands to go out and kill and destroy all who would not follow the new religion.

When the Arabs return from pilgrimage, they load their baggage on the poor, patient camel

And thus the camel driver became a great prophet. His name to-day is called out five times a day from the minarets (i. e., mosque steeples) in Central Asia, along the shores of the Mediterranean, in the heart of Africa, in India and the islands of the sea, as well as all over Arabia and Persia and the Turkish Empire. And if you wish to help bring back these nations to Jesus Christ and away from Mohammed, you must be up with the muezzin before the dawn, and pray and call others to prayer and work in earnest, so that the children of this generation may have a chance to learn about our Saviour and theirs, and of all the helpful things He has taught us.

“Hark! ’Tis the muezzin’s cry;

Pray, children, pray;

Moslems in darkness lie,

Pray, children, pray.

Thousands in bondage die;

O hear, while moments fly,

Yours is a calling high:

Pray, children, pray.”

X
THE LANGUAGE OF THE ANGELS

The Arabs are a proud and noble race. They are proud of their liberty and of their free open-air desert customs. They are proud of their religion and of their prophet. They are proud of their history and of their patriarchal descent. But most of all, they are proud of their language, one of the oldest and most wonderful forms of human speech. Mohammed himself in his Koran, which you know is the Moslem Bible, speaks of the Arab tongue as “the language of the angels.” He and the Arabs believed that Adam and Eve spake Arabic in Paradise, and that the language of revelation in which God spoke to His prophets, Abraham, Moses and Solomon, was none other than the language of the desert, the speech of the Arabs.

One of the most learned Arabs who lived about three hundred years after Mohammed said: “The wisdom of God hath come down upon three things:—the brain of the Franks, the hand of the Chinese and the tongue of the Arabs.” What this Arab philosopher meant was that while the people of Europe are distinguished for their power of invention and discovery, the Chinese are distinguished as artists and artisans, but the Arabs are all of them born orators and poets. The people of Europe, he meant to say, have brain power, the people of the Orient skill in handicraft, but the Arabs, eloquence. If you will read the Book of Job, which was doubtless written in Arabia and describes early Arabian life, or read the latter chapters of Mohammed’s Koran, or better still some of the Arabian poetry, you will appreciate the truth of this wonderful statement.

The first thing that is remarkable about the language of the Arabs is its wide-spread use. Like English it has spilled itself all over the map of the world, far beyond its original limits, and like English it was carried by commerce and by conquest, by merchants and by missionaries.

FIRST CHAPTER OF THE KORAN

Some time ago an American typewriter firm in advertising a machine with Arabic characters made the statement that the Arabic alphabet is used by more people than any other alphabet in the world. Some one thought that this was an exaggeration, and asked a professor of languages, “How big a lie is that?” He answered: “It is true.” The total population of all the countries whose inhabitants use the Arabic “A B C”—if they use any at all—is larger than the number of those who use the Latin alphabet or the Chinese character. The Arabic Koran is read by the Moslem boys in the day-schools not only of Arabia, but of Turkey, of Afghanistan, Persia, Java, Sumatra, the whole of North Africa and throughout Central Asia. In the Philippine Islands there are three hundred thousand Mohammedans whose only alphabet came from Arabia, and as far west as the mosques of Morocco the Arabic tongue has travelled and become the language of law and commerce and religion.

When the early Arabs in their conquests crossed the strait between Africa and Spain and conquered that country they left many words behind. And therefore many of the place names in Spain to-day are Arabic. Gibraltar, for example, is the corrupted form of Jebel Tarik, which means the mountain of Tarik, the Arab general who first crossed the straits with his soldiers. And Quadiliquiver, one of the rivers of Spain, should be spelled Wady El Kebir, or the Big River.

Even the English language has a number of words that came as Arab guests to the feast of reason and have been adopted into our family and put into our dictionary. When you speak of algebra, ciphers, zero, alchemy, alcove, minaret, alcohol, coffee, sofa, amber, artichokes, gazelles or magazine you are using good Arabic words which nearly every Arab would understand. To use these words, however, is quite a different thing from speaking “the language of the angels” correctly. It is easier to borrow a carpenter’s jack-knife than to acquire his skill in building a house. Many languages have borrowed from the Arabs and the Arabs have borrowed from them in return, but no language is richer than the Arabic in its number of words.

Would you like to know how the boys and girls talk in Arabia? If you have read “Topsy Turvy Land” you will remember how they write their words backward and begin to read at what we call the end of the book. Their talk as well as their writing seems to us at first very topsy turvy. Of course, I need not tell you how much they talk, for in that respect they are just like the boys and girls in America. As they speak a language, however, very different from English, I am sure you would like to hear a little about it. Arabic is one of the oldest and most beautiful languages, and also one of the hardest to learn. It has so many words that their name for a dictionary is “Kamoos,” which means “an ocean.” They have five hundred different names for a lion and two hundred words for serpent. It is said that there are one thousand different terms in Arabic for sword, and eighty different words for honey.

Like English the Arabic language has grammar with many rules (and more exceptions) and the boys dislike it just as much as some of you do. They have a severe struggle with the alphabet because each letter has three different forms, as it is used in the beginning, the middle or the end of a word; and then there are but fifteen conjugations and twenty different ways of forming the plural, not to speak of all the moods and tenses and the irregular verbs.

Some people think that Arabic is the most difficult language in the world. Keith Falconer, the first missionary to Arabia, said, “Arabic grammars should be strongly bound because learners are so often found to dash them frantically on the ground.” Another missionary said that he would rather cross Africa from Alexandria to the Cape of Good Hope than undertake a second time to master the Arabic speech.

I shall never forget my early struggles with the language, nor the place where I sat down to learn my lesson with Dr. Cornelius Van Dyke. He was a master of Arabic and with Dr. Eli Smith translated the whole Bible into the Arabic speech. Here it was in the shade of his beautiful veranda at Beirut, Syria, that I began to learn the irregular verb. It takes a long time for grown-up people to learn a new language, but it does not seem hard for the Arab boys and girls.

Beside the proper talk of grown-up people there is baby talk in Arabia which mothers teach the little brown toddlers before they walk out of the mat-huts and the black, camel-hair tents into the wide world. Yes, and there are also slang words which the camel drivers and the donkey boys use with and on each other.

The baby talk is much like English. Father is baba; dog is wowwow; pretty is noonoo; stop is tootoo; chicken is kookoo, and when baby falls they say baff!

The language of these little angels and the grown-up ones in Arabia is very poetical. The Arabs, because they live in the desert and look up into the big, blue sky and far out to the horizon where the mirage paints desert pictures every day, are full of imagination and live in an atmosphere of poetry. They love jingling words and proverbs and pretty sayings and figures of speech.

A mosquito has only a sting in New Jersey. In Arabia they call him aboo fas, which means “father-of-an-ax”! In America a tramp is a tramp, but the Arabs call him a son-of-the-road. And what could be prettier than their name for echo, bint-el-jebel, “daughter of the mountain”? Why, there is a whole fairy story in that one word! And if you go down the columns of the Arabic dictionary you can find many a story locked up in some word and only waiting to be opened.

In North Arabia when they say, “How-do-you-do,” the proper expression is, “What is the colour of your condition?” This may be philosophical, but it does not make good sense in English. Strawberries are called French mulberries, and the name given to potatoes when first brought to Bahrein was aliyeywellam; why this name was given, I cannot tell. Where could you find a better name for wine than the Arab um-el-khabaith, “mother of vices”? No wonder all the Arab children are staunch prohibitionists. And you will know more about the nights in Arabia when I tell you that the common name for jackal is “son-of-howling”!

“The language of the angels” is not altogether lovely and beautiful; alas, it bears the marks of a false religion all over it like scratches on marble or ink-stains on a beautiful piece of handwriting. Mohammed’s life and Mohammed’s teaching were not like the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, and so the Arabic language abounds in words that are not pure and not lovely. The missionaries in Egypt and in Syria have done much to purify and elevate the language of the Arabs by giving them Christian books and papers and above all the Holy Bible in their own tongue. The Arab children in the mission schools now sing Christian hymns and many of the stories that you love to read, such as “Ben Hur” and “Black Beauty” and “Robinson Crusoe,” have been translated into Arabic. At the Beirut press alone about twenty-five million pages of Christian books are printed every year.

When the Bible takes the place of the Koran, the Arab speech with all its beauty and strength will become more than ever “the language of the angels.”

XI
PEARLS AND PEARL DIVERS

Nearly all the British India steamers in their zigzag journeys up the Persian Gulf, calling first at the Arabian coast and then at the Persian coast, stop at the pearl islands of Bahrein. Half-way up the Gulf and thirty miles from the mainland of Arabia, this group of islands has been famous for centuries as the most valuable pearl fishery in the world. For at least two thousand years the Arabs have been diving in these waters and bringing up the costly shells. Before the days of Christ, and even before the time of Solomon, pearls from Bahrein were shipped to the Western world, and it is probable that the dress and the conversation of the men and the boys of to-day is about the same as it was a thousand years ago. The boats are probably of the same pattern, with very little improvement.

Bahrein is an Arabic word which means the two seas, and this name was given to the islands because the Arabs fancied that here two seas met, the fresh water and the salt water mingling together. The islands have very little rainfall—during the summer none at all—and yet they are famous for their fresh-water springs, which find their source on the mainland of Arabia or Persia, and the water not only bubbles out in pools and wells on shore, but below the tide level there are fresh-water springs several miles out at sea. You would be interested to see the Arabs go out in their boats, place a bamboo over the opening in the rock and then collect fresh water above sea level in their great leather skins.

Bahrein is historically most interesting, because here the old Chaldeans and Phœnicians made their home. Some of the mounds on the island are older than the ruins of Babylon, and it is said that the Phœnicians worshipped the fish-god who, it is supposed, carried Noah’s ark over the flood.

The pearl fisheries at Bahrein employ about 3,500 boats, large and small. The boats measure from one to fifty tons. The smaller boats carry from three to fifteen men and work near the shore; the large boats, employing from fifteen to thirty men, fish all over the Gulf. It is a pretty sight to see the fleet sailing out of the harbour, the large sails, set to the wind, gleaming white in the sun, the blue waters underneath and the bluer sky overhead. Have you ever seen a diving outfit? It looks rather ungainly to me. The Arab divers do not use anything so elaborate as do the divers in America. White overalls to cover their dark skin (because they say sharks do not care for white people), a fatam, or clothes-pin on the nose, and leather thimbles for scratching up the shells, and a basket to hold the catch, with a rope attached to a girdle to draw them up with—this is the complete outfit. When prayers have been said and a Bismillah, down he goes, quickly fills the basket, and with a tug on the rope, he is hauled up, his basket is emptied while he takes a short breathing spell, then down again; and so on from sunrise to sunset.

The divers pass through many dangers in bringing the pearls from the bottom of the ocean to the surface. Sharks are the most terrifying, and during the pearl season a number of divers lose their lives, or are maimed; a leg or an arm has to be amputated because the cruel, sharp, powerful mouth of the shark caught the fisherman while he was seeking goodly pearls for us. A large number of them are afflicted with rheumatism as a consequence of their calling. In the boat, besides the men who are doing the work, is a man who is a substitute for them in prayer. The divers are too busy to observe the stated hours of prayer, so this man will repeat the prayers in place of each man. He is the Levite, and performs the religious ceremonies for every other man and boy. He must be occupied all the time on the boats where there is a crew of thirty men, and he must say the prayers five times a day for each man.

The Evolution of a Pearl Button

The Arabs say that pearls come from a raindrop which fell while the oyster had its mouth open; each drop of rain thus caught is a prize for the diver. “Heaven born and cradled in the deep blue sea,” it is the purest of gems and, in their eyes, the most precious. When the pearl oysters are brought up, they are left on deck over night, and next morning are opened by means of a curved knife six inches long. Until a few years ago, all the shells were thrown back into the sea as useless, but now they are brought to shore by the ton and deposited in some merchant’s yard. He employs natives to scrape off the outside roughness, and then they are packed in wooden crates and exported in large quantities.

On shore the pearls are classified according to weight, size, shape, colour and brilliancy. You would think the pearl merchants a strange kind of people. They carry the most valuable pearls around with them everywhere, tied up in turkey-red twill. They have no safes nor banks, so the only safe way they can think of is to carry them around and run the risk of being knocked down and robbed; but since the Indian government has made Bahrein a protectorate, such robberies are rare.

The pearl merchants are called tawawis, which means those who handle the brass sieve, or tas. When the pearls are brought on shore, they are classified according to size first of all, and to do this, each merchant has a nest of beautiful sieves fitting one into the other. The smallest has holes as big as the end of a pencil, and they go down gradually in size until the largest sieve, which is about six inches across, has holes as fine as mustard seeds. Any day during the pearl season you may see the Arab merchants sitting cross-legged in their houses, sifting pearls, and when they are classified and piled up in little heaps, white and shining in the bright sunlight on the red cloth that covers the floor, it is a sight worth seeing.

The total value of the pearl harvest each year is at least a million dollars, but most of the profit goes into the hands of the dealers. The divers work for wages, and many of them are heavily in debt. In spite of the dangers they incur, the divers love their work, because pearl diving always has in it the element of gambling. One may work a whole day and find only pearls of small value, and then perhaps bring up a fortune in an hour. The most beautiful pearl I ever saw was found in the waters at Bahrein some ten years ago, and was sold for ten thousand dollars. It must have been to such a fortunate pearl diver that Browning referred in his verses:

“There are two moments in a diver’s life:

One when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge,

Then when, a prince, he rises with his prize.”

The time for pearl diving is from May until the end of September. During the winter months the cold weather interferes with the work, and the men live inshore. Then it is that they come in crowds to our hospital, and we have the joy of preaching to them from the parable of the Pearl of great price, and no audience appreciates a sermon on that text as much as the men who know what it costs to bring up the pearls. You remember the parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a merchant seeking goodly pearls, and having found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.” When we tell the Arabs that the Pearl of great price was the kingdom of God, peace and righteousness and joy, which Jesus Christ purchased for us at the cost of His own life and now offers freely to all who will believe in Him, they understand something of the message.

Will you not pray for the pearl divers of Bahrein that many of them may find the Pearl of great price, and that their humble homes,—mat-huts along the shore of the great sea—may be made glad by the joy of a Christian civilization and the knowledge of our Saviour? It is not hard to love them for their own sake, and I well remember many a happy hour spent with them in their boats or sitting on the beach, talking over their work. Sir Edwin Arnold referred to them in these lines:

“Dear as the wet diver to the eyes

Of his pale wife, who waits and weeps on shore,

By sands of Bahrein in the Persian Gulf;

Plunging all day in the blue waves; at night,

Having made up his toll of precious pearls,

Rejoins her in their hut upon the shore.”

XII
A PIONEER JOURNEY ON THE PIRATE COAST

It was on Saturday morning, February 9, 1901, that Elias, our colporteur, and I started for a journey along the eastern coast of Arabia, and, as we hoped, inland. Our expectations of a long camel journey and the sight of villages not yet marked on the map between the coast and Muscat were disappointed. But the result was a journey of 440 miles and more along the coast to the rocky cape that guards the narrow entrance to the Gulf. Our experiences were so interesting that I will relate some of them to you.

Did you ever read the droll story, “Three Men in a Boat”? Well, we were eleven men in a boat, not to speak of a fine Arab horse and a yelping greyhound, presents from the Ruler of Bahrein to the Ruler of Abu Thabi. Our boat was of the usual native style without any cabin or even an awning, and measured twenty feet across the beam and fifty from bowsprit to poop. The noble quadruped had the largest share of the scanty space midships; the dog was confined to the forecastle lest prayers be impossible; for the Mohammedans believe that the dog is an unclean animal, and that it is impossible to pray in any place where a dog has walked or sat without first washing it. The two first-class passengers and their boxes were on the left side of the poop; the crew slept, smoked, washed themselves, and ate their dried fish and rice anywhere; and the captain with a priest and a merchant squatted at our right. I will not weary your patience to relate how many days after we intended to start the sail was hoisted and we were off. One never expects a native sailing craft to leave until the three days of grace (and grumbling impatience) are twice over. But good Abdullah bin Kambar was not altogether to blame; two of his sailors ran away, and he had to look them up and urge them on board. With a fair, brisk wind filling the huge sail we were all happy to start and forgot the delays and our dried bread baked three days too early.

Our boat was bound for Abu Thabi, the first important town on the coast south. The wind continued favourable, and on Monday we were sailing between two islands, mere rocks and uninhabited except by a few fishermen during the season. A little further towards the mainland is the large island of Dalma, and there was a long dispute between the captain and the mate as to which island we were passing. When the words waxed warm between them my chart decided the dispute. This island is an old centre for the pearl-fishers, and every season there is a large gathering here of merchants and divers; a sort of market-place on the highway of the sea.

The weariness of five days and nights in the boat was relieved in many ways. There was opportunity to read and plenty of interruption.

We had our meals to cook and tried to fish with a line and hook; once the captain hit a wild duck with his rusty gun, but although all helped to lower the boat and they pursued the wounded bird, she escaped. One day we saw a large shark, and that afternoon there were some good fish stories. At night the black slave Abdullah sat at the wheel and told stories as only a Negro-Arab can tell them; stories of the new Arabian Nights, and of how an Arab sharper stole a favourite horse by putting the bridle on his own neck and having his mate run off with the horse! Several times it was our turn to lead the conversation, and we had a splendid opportunity to give “line upon line and precept upon precept.” One can judge at once of the ignorance and open-heartedness of the Arab sailors by the remark they commonly make after they have had a missionary or colporteur for passenger: “We had no idea that Christians were such decent folk and even prayed to Allah.”

At three o’clock on Thursday afternoon we were in sight of Abu Thabi, or “father-of-the-gazelle.” It was my first visit to this town, although Elias had been there before. We found the ruler kind, friendly and very intelligent. We were assigned to a large room in one of his houses, and during our stay of four days there was abundance of food sent to us from the ruler’s table, and all our wants were supplied from his beneficence,—huge dishes piled with rice, steeped with gravy and crowned with several pounds of prime roast mutton, the whole surrounded with dates and bread loaves, on a large circular mat, and washed down with perfumed water. We were never hungry.

When the dwellers in the mat-huts heard of the arrival of foreigners with a medicine chest and books our room was filled with the curious or the ailing from early dawn until after sunset. That is the only drawback to their kindness; the Arab idea of hospitality does not include the blessing of privacy for their guest. One is never left alone, and if you seek solitude they set you down as a magician, or delver into the hidden things of nature which are forbidden to all true believers. So we had to forego meditation, reading, and even the change of clothing until nightfall, after our long sea journey.

It was a queer crowd that collected in the court and filled our little room; a long row of Arabs sitting on the mats all around the four sides of the court. Most of them were Oman Arabs, but there was one priest from Mecca who had more to say than all the rest. He was a wanderer who wore a spotless white turban and a sneering smile. His present residence, he said, was on the Island of Kais, in the Gulf, and he lived as do all of his kind by teaching school and copying charms for the ignorant. We had some discussions and more quiet talks together after the crowd left. It was sad to hear from him what dense ignorance there is regarding our religion. The news of Queen Victoria’s death had just reached there and the sage from Mecca told fabulous stories of how and why Christians were ruled by women! Our sales of Scripture were not large, but there was a demand for other books. One poor but learned man brought a manuscript copy of Al Hariri (the Arabian Shakespeare) in exchange for other books.

We left Abu Thabi by sailing-boat for Debai, eighty miles up the coast in a straight line. The wind compelled us to go zigzag.

This place has become the metropolis of Western Oman, and in population, progress, commerce and architecture far surpasses all the other towns. Between Abu Thabi and Debai the coast is desert and neither date-tree nor hut is seen; so flat is the country that a hill two hundred feet high (the only landmark for sailors) is called “the High Mountain.”

We did not tarry long at Debai, although we had a pleasant morning at the house of the ruler and met some Arabs from the interior. One of them said he was willing for a proper consideration to take me all the way across Arabia to Jiddah, the port of Mecca. In the afternoon we started selling Scriptures on the outskirts of the town and in a very short time the crowd collected. Women came with copper coins and bright boys brought their savings to purchase Gospels—in the language of our trade, “the true story of the Living Prophet Jesus.” After we left Debai on donkeys two boys who were late ran after us and overtook us a mile from the town; they brought money and paid for three more books. The captain of our boat took us to his house for breakfast on our arrival, and showed us some poetry his wife had written. She talked with us and seemed versed in the Koran; we left her a Gospel.

From Debai to Sharkeh we rode on asses, and as our two chests were heavy they were put, one each, on the backs of two other asses; the distance is about ten miles. At Sharkeh we met old friends and were glad that even after a previous visit we were welcomed. An Arab merchant showed us much kindness and offered us a shop with a prophet’s chamber above it for rent. Since this visit our missionaries often come here. From Sharkeh we crossed over to Lingah, and thence back to Bahrein by the mail steamer, but Elias went on visiting Ajman and the villages beyond all the way to Ras-el-Jebel, which means “the top of the mountain.” The Arabic version of the seventy-second Psalm gives the promise in this way: “There shall be an handful of corn in the earth on Ras-el-Jebel; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon.”

XIII
ACROSS THE DESERT OF OMAN

Oman is a little peninsula that sticks out eastward from the big peninsula of Arabia, and it might almost be called an island. On three sides are the waters of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, and on the west is the great sea of sand which the Arabs call the “empty abode,” and which has never been crossed by any traveller as far as we know. The Arabs themselves are afraid to venture beyond the limits of the oases that touch its borders, and on all the maps of Arabia this desert is marked “blank and unexplored.” Because the people of Oman for centuries past lived on such an island with the sea on one side and the desert on the other, they are quite distinct from the other Arabs. The language they speak has a peculiar accent, and their religion, although they are Mohammedans, is in many respects different from that of the other parts of Arabia.

I want to tell you of two journeys taken across this province. Many others have been made since, and our medical missionaries can now visit all the villages in the mountains back of the coast. On May 9, 1900, a colporteur and I put our two chests of books and medicines on board a small sailing-boat, and at four o’clock the wind was favourable to leave Bahrein harbour. We intended to visit the pirate coast, and thence, if the way proved open, to cross the horn of Oman to Muscat, overland.

The captain and crew of our boat were all strict Moslems, and made no secret of the fact that formerly they were slave-traders. Crossing by zigzag lines to the Persian coast to avoid shoals and catch the wind, we reached Bistana and then sailed across the Gulf direct for Sharkeh. Half-way across is the little island of Abu Musa, with a small Arab population, but splendid pasturage, good milk and water. The chief export is red oxide, of which there are two hills with a boundless supply. Steamers occasionally call here for this cheap, marketable ballast; we left our witness in the shape of Arabic Gospels.