tion with India, had been continued by Rome at the expense of the Arabs. The “small vessels” of § 19 from Muza to the Nabataean port are to be contrasted with the “large vessels” of § 10 that traded from Mosyllum to Egypt. The caravan trade could not be reached in the same way, and along the Red Sea the camel could always compete with the ship. This remained in Arabian hands for another half-century, when the Emperor Trajan reduced the Nabataeans to subjection to Rome.
19. Centurion.—Vincent assumes that this was a Roman officer, but the text does not indicate it. At this time the kingdom of the Nabataeans was independent, powerful and prosperous; as it might well have been, from the 25 per cent duty our author tells us it levied on the rich trade between Arabia and Rome.
20. Arabia.—Two meanings are attached to this word in the text; in this § 20 and in § 49 it refers to the entire peninsula; in every other instance it means Yemen, the Homerite–Sabaite kingdom as distinguished from the other kingdoms and political divisions of the peninsula.
20. Differing in their speech.—In the north the Nabataeans spoke a dialect of the Aramaic; along the coast the “Carnaites” spoke various Ishmaelite dialects, out of which has grown the modern Arabic; at the trading-posts of the true Minaeans, their own language, allied to Hadramitic, was spoken; on reaching Yemen, the speech was Himyaritic.
20. Similarly,— that is, to the opposite coast below Berenice, described at the beginning of the first voyage, in § 2.
20. Rascally men.—Compare the observations of other writers concerning these same Beduin robbers:
“The oxen were plowing, and the asses feeding beside them: and the Sabaeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword” (Job I, 14–15. These are not the Sabaeans of Yemen, but men of Saba in Central Arabia, the “nation tall and smooth” of Isaiah XVIII.)
“The Beduins have reduced robbery in all its branches to a complete and regular system, which offers many interesting details” (Burckhardt.)
“Before we lightly condemn the robber we must realize his sore need. According to Doughty and other travelers three-fourths of the Beduins of northwest Arabia suffer continual famine. In the long summer drought when pastures fail and the gaunt camel-herds give no milk they are in a very sorry plight; then it is that the housewife cooks her slender mess of rice secretly, lest some would-be guest
