Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/260

240 ARABIA vince of Woshom, miming down to Ivascem. South of Sedeyr is the province of " Ared " or " The Broad ; " it in cludes the highest and widest table-lands of Toweyk. Thence the range trends away, taking the ordinary S.S.W. direction of the alternate elevations and depressions that furrow the Arab peninsula ; here, though keeping the same geographical character, it changes its name into that of " Ared," and, like a long limestone wall, stretches almost to Mecca. Parallel to it, on the south, extends the long and barren valley of Dowasir, ending in the district of Kora, Shahrem, and Soley-yel ; broken ground, the passes of which lead to Nejran and Yemen. The upland laby rinth of Aflaj, south of Ared, forms the extreme elbow of this mountain formation. Just below it, and constituting its south-eastern slope, comes Yemamah, a hot but fertile province, with numerous wells and copious irrigation. Further yet to the south rise the fantastic peaks of the Hareek mountains, granite ridges, not over 2000 feet in height, but making up to the eye for their want of elevation by their strange abruptness : they crop out like the moun tains of Shomer on the north, from the first sands of the Great Desert, and form an island, as it were, of irrigation and tillage, though both comparatively scant, and scarcely able to maintain themselves against the excessive heat amid the desolation around. The great Beyond Hareek, or Burning," as the name means, to desert j S0uth as also behind Wadi ^o^asir and its neighbour hood, lies the great Arab desert or Dahna, " The Red " as the Arabs call it, a vast extent of sand, said to cover nearly 50,000 square miles, and only jotted here and there at far intervals by a few clustered bushes or dwarf palms indicative of moisture below the surface, else wholly deso late. Its surface is ribbed into huge sand waves, the principal ones being from north to south, that is, at right angles to the prevailing wind, which is here the east ; but these main waves are again crossed, intersected, and jumbled with other less regular undulations, the work of more variable breezes. But neither here nor elsewhere in Arabia do those clouds or columns of moving sand, the terror of caravans, appear, that have been fabled by travellers and poets! Tracks are indeed speedily covered and effaced, to the great annoyance and occasional danger of the wayfarer; but neither he nor his beast run the least risk of being thus buried alive. Hunger, and, still more, thirst, are sufficient guardians of a region, to which, however, Arab fancy has attributed the additional protection of evil spirits and monsters of death. The Dahna. This greater desert, the " Roba el Khaliyeh or " Empty Space " of geographers the " Dahna " or " Crimson " of modern Arabs, so called from the prevailing colour of its heated sands, extends to Yemen and Hadramaut on the south-west, south, and south-east, and to Oman on the east. It is separated, however, from the northern half of the waste-ring that girdles Nejd by the continuation of Wadi Dowasir and Shahran, up to the mountains of Tayef, near Mecca ; and this is the only line by which the plateau of Nejd can be reached from the coast without actually crossing the sandy or stony wilderness. Lying as it does on or within the tropics, the heat of this great desert is said to be fearful by day, and, owing to the general low level, to be scarcely mitigated at night. But it is never traversed in its full width, not even by Bedouins ; and little or no credit can be attached to the relations of those who pre tend to have explored it, and to have found wonders in its recesses. The Akhaf. East of Hareek rises a succession of lofty ridges, covered by a deep layer of sand, through which black rock occa sionally pierces. This region bears the name of Akhaf, and connects the watershed of Toweyk with the hHi [GENERAL FEATUIUCS. mountains behind Oman. It is, like the Dahna, un-s- claimed desert; but the recesses of its valleys conceal a few wells and springs, so that travellers from Nejd SOIP- times take this route, the most difficult but the shortest when on their way to Oman. Immediately north of the Akhaf commences the lesser Dahna, a desert reseniblin" Lit"e in every way its homonym of the south, only narrower Dahna. its breadth in many places not exceeding 50 or 60 miles This long and dreary strip runs up the whole way alon^ the easterly side of the Toweyk plateau, till it merges in the northern or stony waste land at the head of the Persian Gulf. Throughout the highlands of Nejd the climate, though Climate 01 often hot by day, is cool and pleasant at night; the sprino- Nejd. and the autumn rains seldom fail in their seasons; and the soil, where not artificially irrigated, produces excellent pasture, where irrigated, it renders very tolerable garden produce and field crops. Storms of thunder and lightnino- are of rare _ occurrence, and the tornadoes that from time to time visit the Arabian coasts are here unknown. The prevailing, as also the most refreshing winds, are from the east and north-east ; the south and west winds are heated and unwelcome. Epidemic diseases are rare, and only one visitation, and that not a severe one, of cholera is on record within Nejd. Between Yemamah and Hareek runs the valley called Aftan, which appears in some maps as the Valley of bed of an imaginary river flowing nearly across Arabia Aftan - into the Persian Gulf. But the downward slope of the valley itself is not from west to east, but in the reverse direction, and at a distance of more than 100 miles from the sea it is absolutely closed in by the sand-heaped ridges of Akhaf. Did the mountains of central Arabia famish a water supply sufficient for a river, large or small, its course would of necessity be directed, not towards the Persian Gulf, but the Red Sea. The copious springs that break out at the foot of the Toweyk mountain range above Hasa, not far from the gulf, are all of subterranean origin; and though they are evidently the off-drainings of the rainfall of Nejd, they have no connection with the very scanty running or standing waters of the surface of the great plateau. Summing up, Arabia may roughly be divided, as to its Summary surface extent, into a third of coast-ring and mountains, of the e c - part barren, part either cultivated or susceptible of being ra P h y of so ; another third of central plateau, also tolerably f ertile; and a third of desert circle, intervening, with only one gap! that in the latitude of Mecca, between the first and the second. The central space, whether plateau or desert varying in height from 1000 to 3000 feet above the sca| possesses three important mountain ranges, two trans verse, namely, Jebel Shomer and Jebel Ared, and one vertical, that commences with Toweyk, and is continued by the Akhaf, these latter being the watershed of the peninsula, the general rise of which is from west to east. The highest mountain peaks those, namely, of Jebel Akh- dar in Oman do not apparently exceed 6000 feet. In a description of the animals of Arabia the first place Animals is undoubtedly due to the horse, which, though the opinion is unsupported by scientific evidence, has by some been Horse, supposed to be indigenous to the peninsula. As a fact, it is here that this animal attains its highest perfection : not, indeed, that of size ; for a true Nejdee of the best and purest breed seldom reaches and never perhaps exceeds fifteen hands in height; nor that of mere speed, for a trained European racer would easily distance a thorough bred Arab on any ordinary course ; but for perfectionof form, symmetry of limb, cleanness of muscle, beauty of appearance for endurance of fatigue, for docility, and for speed maintained to distances so long as to appear in-

credible, the Nejdee horse acknowledges no equal. Tho