Asiatic Breezes Part 33

"What on earth is that?" demanded the good lady.

"Keep cool, Sarah," said Mrs. Belgrave to her. "The captain will tell you all about it in due time."

"Jebel, or gebel, means a mountain in Arabic; Musa is sometimes spelled Moosa; and the whole name, I suppose, is 'Mountain of Moses,'" the commander explained as soon as he had enabled every one to see the peak that went by this name. "In other words, that is what nearly everybody who knows anything about the matter believes to be the true Mount Sinai."

"Mount Sinai!" almost screamed Mrs. Blossom, who had apparently determined not to be hara.s.sed by any more doubts, for what everybody believed to be true must be so. "I should like to die on that mountain," she declared, wringing her hands in a sort of rapture.

"Don't make yourself ridiculous, Sarah," interposed Mrs. Belgrave in a whisper.

"How can a body look on Mount Sinai without being stirred up?" demanded the good woman.

But whether it was Jebel Serbal or Jebel Musa, Mount Sinai was there; and doubtless most of the company were as much impressed by the fact as the excellent lady from Von Blonk Park, though they were less demonstrative about it. Mrs. Belgrave was silent for a time; and then she struck up one of Watts's familiar hymns, in which the others joined her:--

"Not to the terrors of the Lord, The tempest, fire, and smoke, Not to the thunder of that word Which G.o.d on Sinai spoke; But we are come to Zion's hill, The city of our G.o.d, Where milder words declare his will, And spread his love abroad."

As the gong sounded for lunch the ship was off Tur, but too far off to see the place, if there was anything there to see; and the commander mentioned it only as the port to which they would have sailed if they had gone to Mount Sinai. The "Big Four" were more interested in the Arabian craft they saw near the sh.o.r.e, for they always keep close to the land. Their captains are familiar with all the intricate reefs where large vessels never go. They are very cautious sailors, and on the least sign of foul weather they run into one of the creeks which indent the coast. They never sail at night; and if they have to cross the sea, they wait for settled weather.

At the hour appointed for the afternoon conference the pa.s.sengers were all in their places; and however the report of his lectures may read, the listeners were deeply interested, partly because they were inspired by a desire for knowledge, and partly on account of their proximity to the countries described. A map of the peninsula of Arabia had been unrolled on the frame, with enough of its surroundings to enable the audience to fix its location definitely in their minds. The professor came up smiling and pleasant as he always was, and the boys saluted him with a round of applause.

"My subject this time is Arabia, which the natives call Jezirat-al-Arab, and the Turks and Persians Arabistan. It is a peninsula, the isthmus of which reaches across from the south-eastern corner of the Mediterranean to the head of the Persian Gulf," the professor began, indicating on the map the localities mentioned with the pointer. "Asia abounds in peninsulas, and Arabia is the great south-western one. From north-west to south-east it extends 1800 miles, and is about 600 wide. It has an area of 1,230,000 square miles, which is a very indefinite statement to the mind, though given in figures, and I will adopt the commander's method of giving a better idea by comparison with some of the States of your own country.

"It is nearly five times as large as the State of Texas, the most extensive of the Union, and almost twenty-six times as large as the State of New York. They do not take a census here; and estimates from the best information that could be obtained make the population five millions, which is less than that of the State of New York. Mr. Gaskette has colored a strip of it along the Red Sea, about a hundred miles wide, in green, as he has Palestine and the other parts of Turkey in Asia shown before you. A large portion of Arabia consists of deserts, the princ.i.p.al of which is the Syrian in the north.

"Ptolemy, not the king but the geographer, divided Arabia into three sections,--Arabia Petraea, after the city of Petra; Arabia Deserta, the interior; and Arabia Felix (Arabie Heureuse in French), which does not mean 'the happy land,' as generally translated. Milton says, 'Sabean odors from the spicy sh.o.r.es of Araby the blest.' The words meant the land lying to the right, or south of Mecca, the Oriental princ.i.p.al point of the compa.s.s being the east and not the north.

"The proper divisions at the present time are the Sinai peninsula, Hedjaz, which is the northern part of the green strip; Yemen, the south part (formerly Arabia Felix); Hadramaut, which borders the Arabian Gulf, the ante-sea of the Red; and Oman, a mountainous region at the entrance of the Persian Gulf, an independent country, under the government of the sultan or imam of Muscat, as the territory is also called.

"We do not know much about the interior of Arabia, one-third of which is a desert, part of a zone reaching over all of Africa and Asia. El-Hasa, along the Persian Gulf in the east, for such a country, is level and fertile, and is really a Turkish province, like those on the west coast.

A short rainy season occurs on the west coast, which only fills up the low places; and there is hardly a river, if there is anything ent.i.tled to the name, which is strong enough to go alone to the sea from any distance inland. Fine fruits are raised, especially in Yemen, as well as coffee, grain, tobacco, cotton, spices, aloes, frankincense, and myrrh.

"Sheep, goats, oxen, camels, and horses are raised for domestic use.

Gazelles and ostriches live in some of the oases, where also the lion, panther, hyena, and jackal seek their prey. The magnificent Arabian horse has been raised here for a thousand years. The camel is one of the most useful animals of this country; and some suppose he is an original native, for his likeness is not found among Egyptian drawings and sculptures. There are plenty of fish and turtle along the coast.

"The original Arab is found here, and there is something about him to challenge our admiration. He is muscular, though of medium height, and is sharp and quick-witted by nature. He has some leading virtues, such as hospitality and good faith; he is courageous and temperate, perhaps because wine and spirits are forbidden in the Koran. But he is a sort of a natural robber, and seeks a terrible revenge for serious injuries. His wife, and there are often several of her, does the work, keeps house, and educates the children. Some Arabs are settled in towns or oases, and others lead a wandering life.

"'Blessed is the country that has no history,' for it is usually the record of wars. Arabia has nothing that can properly be called history; but it has been concerned in the wars of Turkey and Egypt. What there is relates to the birth and life of Mohammed, and his wars to promote the increase of his followers; and I shall tell you the story of the Prophet at another time."

The professor retired after the usual applause. Some walked the deck, watching whatever was to be seen, especially the Arabian dhows, and occasionally a large steamer pa.s.sed; and some went to sleep in their staterooms. The course of the Guardian-Mother had been varied as much as the soundings would permit as she approached the Jubal Strait, which is the entrance to the Gulf of Suez, in order to give the pa.s.sengers a view of some interesting scenery.

"There is the Jebel Zeyt," said the commander, as he pointed out a group of hills, called mountains by courtesy, of a reddish hue. "Those hills are 1,530 feet high, and this locality is famous in story. The material of the elevations is haemat.i.te, which Dr. Hawkes can explain better than I can."

"It is a native sesquioxide of a reddish color, with a blood-like streak," added the surgeon, laughing.

"Do you understand it, Mrs. Blossom?" asked the captain, turning to that worthy lady.

"I am sure I don't," protested she, blushing.

"The sesquipedality of that word is trying to all of us, I fancy, and I am in the same box as the lady; for I am as sure as she is that I don't know the meaning of the word," added the professor.

"Of course you don't, for it is a technical term," replied the doctor.

"It means an oxide in which two atoms of a metal combine with three atoms of oxygen. Please to remember it, Mrs. Blossom."

"I don't even know what an ox-hide is," returned the lady promptly; for the professor had vindicated her by not understanding a definition himself.

"We will settle that another time, if you please," interposed the commander. "These rocks are said to be so powerfully magnetic as to affect the compa.s.ses of ships pa.s.sing them. The water is sometimes marked about here with patches of oil. Large sums were expended in this vicinity in boring for petroleum; but none of any account was found.

Probably the red mountain has given its name to the sea, though that is not known."

"Possibly Sinbad the Sailor was in this strait when the loadstone drew out the bolts in his ship, though he does not give the lat.i.tude and longitude of the place in the story of his adventure," suggested Louis.

In the evening the pa.s.sengers looked at the lights, and retired at a seasonable hour.

CHAPTER x.x.x

SOME ACCOUNT OF MOHAMMED THE PROPHET

The pa.s.sengers of the Guardian-Mother fell back into their former sea habits when there was nothing particular to be seen, and only the young men appeared on deck before seven o'clock. Mrs. Belgrave and Louis were the first to meet the commander on the second morning. He had been to the pilot-house several times during the night; but he was an early riser, and had already looked over the log slate, and visited every part of the ship.

"Good-morning, Mrs. Belgrave; good-morning, Louis; I hope you have both slept well," said the captain, saluting them.

"I have slept like a rock all night long," replied the lady.

"I have fallen into sailors' ways, so that I go to sleep whenever I lie down," added Louis. "I could sleep my four hours on board of the Maud, and wake at the right time without being called. But where are we now, sir?"

"You see the lighthouse ahead; that is in lat.i.tude 25. We are now nearly as far south as the first cataract on the Nile, as far south as we went in Africa."

"I can understand that better than simple figures," said Mrs. Belgrave.

"But we went a little farther south than that off Cuba," suggested Louis.

"We shall cross the Tropic of Cancer while we are at luncheon," added the commander. "You learned at school that this boundary was at twenty-three and a half degrees north of the equator, and it is generally so stated, though it is not quite accurate."

"I wish you would explain this at the next conference, Captain Ringgold, for what you say is a surprise to me," said Louis.

"I will do it in a general way, though I am not an astronomer in the scientific sense of the word," answered the captain. "We are approaching the Daedalus lightship. I suppose you remember the name."

"I know that Daedalus was a very ingenious artist of Athens, who planned the Cretan labyrinth, invented carpentry and some of the tools used in the trade; but I don't know why his name was given to this lighthouse."

"I cannot inform you why it is so called, if there was any reason for doing so; very likely it was given to it for no reason at all, as some of the ships in the British navy are supplied with cla.s.sical names for the mere sound of the words, as Agamemnon, Achilles, though with some reference to the trade of the originals in war."

"Why is it placed here all alone in the middle of this sea?" asked Louis, who had looked about it for any signs of rocks.

"It is built on a dangerous reef which is never above water, though some small round black rocks are seen at low tide awash. They look like the kettles in which cooks get up a boiled dinner; and for this reason the Arabs call the reef Abu Kizan, which means the 'father of pots.' As you perceive, the ship is now out of sight of land; for the Red Sea is a hundred and twenty miles wide at this point. But there is the gong for breakfast, and we must attend to that."

The usual hour for the conference was nine o'clock when the ship was at sea. So far the weather was remarkably pleasant; the north-west wind was very gentle, and the ship hardly pitched at all. At the regular hour the pa.s.sengers had a.s.sembled on the promenade. The map of Arabia had been placed on the frame as before, and it was understood that Mohammed was to be the subject of the conference.