ARABIA; Products and Industry : —This country is rich in vegetable productions use ful in the arts and in domestic economy. It has long been celebrated for the abundance of its odoriferous plants. The frankincense of Saba is alluded to by the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah. Herodotus mentions frankin cense, myrrh, cassia, cinnamon, and laudanum, as productions exclusively peculiar to Arabia; though his information on the products of Arabia is neither extensive nor exact. Among the Romans, also, Arabian odours seem to have been quite proverbial.
The coffee-shrub is cultivated chiefly on the western descent of the chain of hills which, in the province of Yemen, separates the level country from the high-land : that grown at Bulgosa, near Beit-el-Fakih, and exported from Mocha, still maintains its superiority over the coffee produced in the European colonies in all other parts of the globe. The farinaceous deposit called manna, familiar to all readers from the use made of it by the Israelites during their wanderings in the desert, is now, according to Niebuhr, chiefly, if not exclusively, found on the leaves of a species of oak called ball& or afs: accord ing to others, it is a pellucid substance ex uded by the leaves of different kinds of trees, chiefly the hedysarum alhagi of Linnceus. Grapes are cultivated in several parts of Arabia, though in the Koran wine is forbidden to the Mussulmans. In Yemen, where some pains are bestowed upon agriculture, Nie buhr saw excellent wheat, Turkey corn or maize, durra, barley, beans, lentils, tobacco, &c.; senna and the cotton tree are also culti vated here. Much indigo is grown about Zebid. Niebuhr says that he saw no oats in Arabia : the horses are fed on barley, and the asses on beans. The time of the harvest varies. At Muscat, wheat and barley are sown in December, and reaped in March; in the high-land, near San'a, the time of the harvest for barley is about the middle of July.
Arabia is rich in indigenous trees ; the aca cia vera, from which the gum-arabic is ob tained, the date-tree, and many varieties of the palm and fig-tree, deserve to be particu larly noticed. Forests appear to be rare. In
the barren tracts of the country, the Beduins sometimes supply the deficiency of fuel by the dried dung of the camel.
Among the ancients, Arabia was celebrated for its wealth in precious metals ; yet, accord ing to the accounts of modern travellers, Arabia possesses at present no mines either of gold or silver. Iron mines are noticed by Niebuhr as existing in the territory of Saade. The lead mines of 'Oman are, according to him, very productive, and large quantities of lead are exported from Muscat.
The pearl-fisheries of the Persian Gulf are universally celebrated. The bank on which pearl-shells are principally found extends from the Bahrein islands to very near the promontory of Julfar. The northern extremity, near the isles Karek and Bahrein, is distin guished as particularly rich in pearls.
The tents of the Beduins are made of a coarse kind of dark-coloured cloth, woven by their own women. There is but little furai tare in a Beduin tent : a mat of straw is used as table, chairs, and bedstead ; spare clothe; are kept in bags. The kitchen apparatus is very simple and portable. The pots are mad( of copper lined with tin ; the dishes of the same metals, or of wood. Their hearth is easily built ; they merely place their caldrons on loose stones, or over a pit dug in the ground. They have neither spoons, knives, nor forks. A round piece of leather serves them as table-cloth, in which the remains of the meal are preserved. Their butter, which the heat soon melts down, they keep in leather bottles. Water is kept in goats' skins ; a copper cup, carefully tinned over, serves as a drinking vessel. Wind-mills and water-mills are unknown : all grain being ground in a small hand-mill. There are no ovens in the desert : the dough is either kneaded into a flat cake, and baked on a round iron plate, or it is formed into large lumps, which are laid be tween glowing coals till they are sufficiently baked.