Page:Poems, Consisting Chiefly of Translations from the Asiatick Languages.djvu/186

fancies of a poet: the beauties of Yemen are proved by the concurrent teftimony of all travellers, by the descriptions of them in all the writings of Afia, and by the nature and fituation of the country itfelf, which lies between the eleventh and fifteenth degrees of northern latitude, under a ferene fky, and expofed to the most favourable influence of the fun; it is enclosed on one side by vast rocks and deserts, and defended on the other by a tempestuous sea, so that it seems to have been designed by providence for the most secure, as well as the most beautiful, region of the East. I am at a lofs to conceive, what induced the illustrious Prince Cantemir to contend that Yemen is properly a part of India; for, not to mention Ptolemy, and the other ancients, who considered it as a province of Arabia, nor to infift on the language of the country, which is pure Arabick, it is defcribed by the Afiaticks themfelves as a large divifion of that peninsula, which they call Jezeiratul Arab; and there is no more colour for annexing it to India, because the sea, which washes one side of it, is looked upon by some writers as belonging to the great Indian ocean, than there would be for annexing it to Persia, because it is bounded on another side by the Persian gulf. Its principal cities are Sanaa, usually considered as its metropolis; Zebid, a commercial town, that lies in a large plain near the sea of Omman; and Aden, surrounded with pleasant gardens and woods, which is situated eleven degrees from the Equator, and seventy-six from the Fortunate Islands, or Canaries, where the geographers of Afia fix their first