"معاملات الجمعية الجغرافية في بومباي. من يناير ١٨٦٣ حتى ديسمبر ١٨٦٤. (تحرير السكرتير.) المجلد XVII." [‎٧‎١] (٥٢٤/٢٣٦)

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AROUND THE SHORE LINE OF THE PERSIAN GULF. 71
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123. Meeting these Arabs, you readily comprehend how they once
stormed across the world ; and you leave them, persuaded that they still
possess qualities which may again render them renowned, should out
ward circumstances favour. I could well understand how the tragic
pastoral of Job was written by an Arab. The originals of the Patri
archs were before you : their life, their manners, and the results of these.
I thought to myself, these Pentateuch people carry out the principle of
simplicity in its integrity; yet I felt, also, that our present civilizations,
may have to return in part to natural sources, before humanity can
progress towards perfection.
124. I left the Arabs, impressed that their vices and their virtues,
their customs, their manners, and their government, have been in a great
degree formed by physical and accidental circumstances. A man who
finds himself doomed to live in the Bedouin desert, cannot render his life
similar to that of a man born of the same original stock, who finds
himself among the natural bounties of Arabia Felix. Perhaps the
names of Adnan and Khaitan, of the earliest recorded times, were only
impersonations of the tribes wiio wandered for pasturage in the open,
and of the tribes who had settled down to agriculture on some favoured
spot. Both would naturally trace their origin to some one head, and
this head would receive a name, as well as Adam. On the whole, the
Arabs, like most other people I have met, seem to cut their coat very
much according to their cloth. Ubi homines sunt, modi sun; and as
soil is, so the mind of man.
125. I beg pardon for this seeming digression ; but it is I think of
importance, from a commercial point of view, to bear the character and
country of these Arabs in mind. A tract whose people can suddenly
appear in force on the lines of the Bed Sea, Persian Gulf, and Euphra
tes, must be sufficiently numerous, and possess qualities to affect mar
kets along those lines for good or for ill. A country that possesses so
many articles of commerce, unequalled in their kind, may create an in
creased demand and supply in the general markets under European
management. The Arabian, and perhaps other portions of the Gulf
coast line, may be capable of supplying at a profit hides, horns, glue,
saltpetre, wool.*
* I observed both on the East Coast Africa, at Magadosha and Brava, and also to
some extent at Kurrachee, that when the trade came to be opened up by English or