index of prosperity, just as are the clean fallows and clipped hedges of an English farm. The soil of Arabia is a poor one, and the almost absolute want of rain makes cultivation impossible, except in the most favored situations. It is a mistake to suppose that in any part of the Interior, except possibly in Yemen, there is a considerable tract of agricultural land. The truth is, that the whole of Nejd is a desert, and that the few cultivated patches that it can boast, have been rescued painfully from their natural aridity by purely artificial means. There is no such thing as water above ground in any of the central plateaux, although these rise to the height of four thousand feet above the level of the sea. Even the granite range of Jebel Shammar boasts not a single stream. The towns and villages of Nejd are merely palm oases scattered over a vast upland of gravel, and separated from each other by huge, intervening wastes. Their raison d'être lies in their wells. Wherever water has been found at a few feet from the surface, there towns have been built and gardens planted. Their wealth is in their palm-groves, eked out by certain old-fashioned industries, and by trade with the Bedouins, who occupy the desert outside with their sheep and camels. The common home of the Bedouins, although they range over every part of Nejd, are the districts of red sand which are known as Nefuds. These, unlike the barren, gravelly upland, which is almost destitute of vegetation, provide them with perennial pasture in the shape of certain bushes and shrubs, and even grass. No peasantry, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, is found in Arabia, every one who is not a Bedouin being a townsman. has always been their care to maintain. Each city is like an independent state. As, however, the citizens of even Arabian towns are to a certain extent dependent on each other, and as, from the deficiency of the supply of food in many of them, compared with the wants of the inhabitants, they are obliged to send their caravans yearly to the seacoast or the Euphrates for corn, they have most of them come long ago to a modus vivendi while without their own walls, and in order to secure their communications have put themselves each under the protection of one of the principal Bedouin sheykhs of its district. He, on the consideration of a yearly tribute, has guaranteed them safety outside the city walls, and the citizens are thus able to travel perfectly unmolested as far as his jurisdiction extends. This vassalage to a common lord has, moreover, been a bond of union between them; and so the towns and villages of each group of oases have contracted ties of amity almost amounting to those of a common nationality. This in its simplest form has been the political condition of Arabia from the first dawn of history. A further development, however, has ensued which connects it more nearly with the conditions of government observable eles where. The Bedouin sheykh, grown rich with the tribute of a score of towns, builds for himself a castle close to one of them. There, with the prestige of his rank (for Bedouin blood is still accounted purest), and backed by his power in the desert, he speedily becomes the practical ruler of the town, and from protecter of the citizens becomes their sheykh. He now is dignified by them with the title of emir, and though still merely their sheykh, to the Bedouins becomes virtually sovereign of the oasis. Such were, no doubt, the "kings of Arabia" who came to visit Solomon, and such, it has been asserted, were the "shepherd Pharaohs " of Egypt, rulers from without, not from within the city. Such, too, at the present day are the Ibn Rashids and the Ibn Saouds of Nejd. It is to the physical features of their land thus understood that the Arabs of Nejd owe the peculiar political institutions under which, with some interludes of foreign and domestic tyranny, they have lived and thrived for several thousand years. These I will endeavor to explain. The position of the towns of Nejd relatively to each other may be Ádmirably adapted, then, to the physlikened to that of the islands of an archi-ical wants of the country, and sanctioned pelago, or rather to several groups of by immemorial usage, the "shepherd islands. The desert surrounds them like government" of Arabia is popular and the sea, and they have no point of contact effective. In a land where the Ottoman one with the other in the shape of inter- government, with all the power at its disvening fields or villages, or even interven-posal, has never been able to maintain ing pastures. They are isolated in the most literal sense, and from this fact has sprung the political individuality which it order outside the walls of its cities, or make the highways secure for life and property, the native system of rule has succeeded in establishing an absolute peace. In the whole district of Jebel Shammar, embracing, as it does, some of the wildest deserts inhabited by some of the wildest people in the world, a traveller may go unarmed and unescorted without more let or hindrance than if he were following the high-road from Westminster to Brighton. On every highway in Jebel Shammar, townsmen may be found jogging on donkey-back alone, or on foot, carrying neither gun nor lance, and with all their wealth with them. If you ask about the dangers of the road, they will return the question, "Are we not here in Ibn Rashid's country?" No system, however perfect, of patrols, and forts, and escorts, could produce a result like this. Ibn Rashid, having unbounded power at his command in the desert, has only to decree that suspicious characters shall be summarily treated, and no outlaw will venture to remain an hour. The Bedouins will not disobey him. mence gives an immediate answer. The citizens feel address him with O Emir! O Prince! the Bedouins with O Sheykh! or simply, l O Mohammed! As far as I could learn, disputes are settled rather by traditional usage than by any recognized code of law, though doubtless the Koran is sometimes appealed to. The criminal law is, according to all accounts, still simpler; a thief or robber taken red-handed for the first offence loses his hand, for the second his head. Thieving, however, even in the capital, is hardly known, and there had been no case of murder or homicide for many years. cer atin ide bef e of The taxation of Jebel Shammar is light, and is levied in coin not kind, Turkish money being the recognized medium of exchange. It is collected in Haïl by the emir's officers, in the other districts by the local sheykhs, the tax levied on each town or village being assessed according to the number of palm-trees it possesses. I believe fourpence a tree is about the amount, trees under seven years old being exempt. There is a small tax too for each sheep kept for the citizens by the Bedouins. This, with the tribute enforced from the subject tribes, and the tribute for protection paid by the towns, amounts to a yearly sum of perhaps £60,000, while the annual passage of the Persian pilgrimage through his dominions adds twenty or thirty thousand more to Ibn Rashid's exchequer. The princely family of Haïl, of whom Mohammed ibn Rashid, the present emir, is fifth in succession from its original founder, has always been distinguished for its intelligent management of finance. Without being parsimonious, for extreme liberality has been one of the principles of their statecraft, they have always looked closely to receipts and expenditure. No waste has been permitted, and each successive occupant of the throne (if such it can be called) has made it his business to amass treasure in gold and silver pieces. It is impossible to estimate the value of these savings made during a period of fifty years, but common report puts it at an immense sum. In any case, the State has no public debt, and its budget presents the spectacle of a large yearly surplus. In the town of Haïl the emir is equally respected, and there he exercises the traditional functions of an Arabian ruler in all their completeness. He resides in a castle, half within and half without the city, and maintains a body-guard of eight hundred men, dressed in the ordinary costume of Arabia, but armed with silverhilted swords. These soldiers are clothed at the emir's expense, but receive from him neither pay nor rations, only a kind of pension for their families when serving out of Hail. Their service is voluntary, the young men wishing to enlist inscribing themselves at the castle, and being called out as occasion requires. Their duties are light; no drill or discipline, more than for the daily parade at the Mejliss or public court of justice, and occasionally an act of police work. A few, however, are stationed in distant towns and forts to support the emir's authority, and these I believe receive pay. They are respectable, orderly men, and belong to the best class of citizens. Half-a-dozen of them are considered sufficient to keep order in all the Jôf oasis. The emir holds a court of justice daily in the courtyard of his palace, when he settles personally all disputes. The forms of justice are very summary, no case that I saw occupying more than a few minutes; but as all is public, and there is no suspicion of partiality or corruption, the disputants appear contented that it should be so. Any one having a petition then presents it, and says what he has to say to the emir himself, who The form of government, though a despotism, is one very closely restricted by public opinion. The citizens of Jebel Shammar have not what we should call constitutional rights; there is no machinery among them for the assertion of their power; but there is probably no community in the old world where popu 2 lar feeling exercises a more powerful in-pathy of readers on the side of true fluence on government than it does at progress and true freedom in the struggle Haïl. The emir, irresponsible as he is in which may any day break out in Arabia, individual acts, knows well that he can- between the representatives of barbarism not transgress the traditional, unwritten clothed in European forms, and civilizalaw of Arabia with impunity. An unpop- tion, real and living, though strange to us 8 ular sheykh would cease, ipso facto, to be in its Semitic dress. All Europe knows sheykh, for though dethroned by no pub-the Turk, but who knows the Arab? lic ceremony, and subjected to no per- Not those who spend their winter at sonal ill-treatment, he would find himself Cairo, or their spring in Palestine, and abandoned in favor of a more acceptable who complain of the endless cry of member of his family. The citizen sol- bakshish, and the beggarly ways of the diers would not support a recognized ty- natives; not even those who have penerant in the town, nor would the Bedouins trated as far as Bagdad and mixed with outside. The princes of Arabia have the fellahin of the Tigris. The Arabictherefore always to consider public opin- speaking Copt of the Nile, and the ion before all else. It has been the prin- Canaanite of Syria, are Arab only in lanciple of the Ibn Rashids to secure popu- guage, and are without the political inlarity by a strict adherence to the ancient stincts inherent in the pure race; the usages of Arabia, by a firm but impartial bastard Iraki has been for centuries a administration of justice, and by a bound-slave. less hospitality, for hospitality, as is wellknown, is the first and greatest of all virtues in Arab estimation. From two to three hundred guests are fed daily at the emir's palace; the poor are clothed, and presents of camels and clothes made to strangers from a distance. In this way the name of Ibn Rashid has been carried on the wings of fame throughout the length and breadth of Arabia. Mohammed ibn Rashid, the present emir, has put himself at the head of what may be called the national party in Nejd, and is carrying all before him, to the discomfiture of the old rivals and suzerains of his house, the Ibn Saouds. These, representing the Wahhabi influence, are losing ground daily, and though there is no probability of a collision between the two emirs, divided as they are by a tract of Nefud, Ibn Rashid may yet find himself called upon to fill the throne of all central Arabia by a general proffer of allegiance from the tribes. The Shammar clan, long the strongest and most numerous tribe in Nejd, is now supplemented in its allegiance to Mohammed by the Daffiri, the Sherarat, and many others in the northern deserts, while more than one of the sheykhs of Kasim and Aared have already sent in their tribute to Haïl. It is conceivable that, gathering as it goes, this league of the tribes may one day embrace not merely Jebel Shammar, Kasim, and Aared, but even all Arabia. In the interest of those provinces now misgoverned by the Turks, this is a consummation devoutly to be wished. And now I trust that I may have succeeded in my endeavor to enlist the symVOL. XXX. 1543 LIVING AGE. These may never be worthy of their independence, or capable of a selfgovernment of which they have lost the traditions; but they are not real Arabians, and should not be confounded with them. The real Arabian is as proud and selfrespecting, and as fully entitled by his intellectual and moral powers to political freedom, as any free and independent citizen of any country in the world, far more so than either Bulgarian or Roumanian, on whose rights all Europe has been called to judge. It may not be the duty of England to free any race from bondage, but at least let this one have nothing further to reproach her with in the history of its enslavement. Fortunately the day of Ottoman tyranny in Asia is very near its close, and very near, too, if I may indulge a hope, is the complete and lasting freedom of Arabia. WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT. From Fraser's Magazine. THE "CROOKIT MEG:" A STORY OF THE YEAR ONE. XVIII. I AM a poor hand at chronology: the only dates I can readily assimilate are those which come from the Mediterranean: but you will please to remember that the harvest-home at Achnagatt was on the Wednesday; that the conversation recorded in the last chapter took place on the Thursday; and that the "Crookit Meg" is timed to reach Longhaven on Monday night. So much for the days of the week: I must refer you to the col 66 na, na umns of the Journal if you are anxious | sicht o' a sonsy lass like you is guid for to identify the days of the month. sair een. What wud you be pleased to Eppie was curiously restless during tak? Lucky will be here presently. Come these intervening days. She sat talking awa', Lucky, and attend to the young dreamily to her mother, who was ill in leddie. And so as I was sayin' when inbed, or wandered aimlessly about the terrupit by your lordship," he continued, farm and among the rocks. But no one and a wicked gleam came into the drunken There was the occa- eyes came near her. I gaed doun to Yokieshill to see sional white sail of a passing ship at sea. Joe Hacket, - I'm wrang-Joe A flock of golden plover wheeled over the was the auld laird, and the auld laird's house the melancholy wail of the curlew dead and damned. Preserve us a', that's was heard from the distant mosses. The actionable, and veritas convicii non exmen were at work in some outlying fields. cusat as they say in the coorts. Or as Mennie, her mother's old servant, flitted the doctor pits it verra pleasantly, letters uneasily about her pale mistress, who of cursing, says he, being the exclusive seemed to her experienced eye to be privelege o' the Kirk. Weel, you maun growing thinner and frailer each succes- understan' as the morning was fine for sive day, wasting away with the wasting the time o' year, I had the mear oot early year. And the weather was as still as and rode aff to veesit a client or twa. the house; the noisy, equinoctial gales And first I gaed to Mains o' Rora, for the had exhausted their passion, and the days new millart has a gude-gangin' plea rewere soft and moist and warm, though gardin' the sma' sequels o' the outsucken the sun was invisible through the dull, multures, bannock, knaveship, lock-andsteamy haze that rested on land and sea. gowpen, and sic like. And Rora himsel' It was that ghost of the Indian summer the doited body-winna lat the tackswhich visits Scotland in October. men at Clola cut their peats in his moss, for he manteens, you see, that the clause cum petariis et turbariis is no in the charter. Anither gill, Lucky, anither gill. But that, my dear, is a contestation that is not regarded wi' favor by the coort, for the servitude o' feal and divot may be constituted by custom, in like manner as the clause cum fabrilibus (whereof our gude freen Rob Ranter is an ensample) has fa'en into disuse. But these are kittle questions o' heritable richt, which maun be decided by the lords o' coonsel and session, the market-cross o' Edinbro' and the pier and shore o' Leith being communis patria. And sae, my lord,' as he became tipsier he turned more frequently to the court, which he fancied he was addressing, being arrived at Yokieshill, as aforesaid, I tauld Mr. Hairy Hacket that it wud be convenient if he wud sattle the sma' accoont for business undertaken by me on the instructions o' his late feyther. You maun understan', my lord, that the accoont was maist rediculously sma' nae aboon twa hundred poonds or thereby. Weel, he glowered at me like a hell-cat, and swore that not one doyt or bodle or plack o' his should gae into the pocket of a drucken scoonrel; drucken scoonrel, my lord, these were the verra words, for I made a note o' them at the time, and I wull tak' the oath de calumnia if your lordship pleases. 'Mr. Hairy Hacket,' says I, 'ye'll pay my taxed bill o' expenses by Mononday mornin', or by the Lord I'll see you oot o' Yokieshill.' At last Eppie could bear it no longer. She got Watty to saddle Bess, and she started by herself for a canter across the moors. The swift motion brought the blood into her cheeks. The little mare galloped gamely, and for an hour her mistress did not tighten the reins. Then of a sudden the pony came to a dead stop, -she had cast a shoe. It was well on in the Thursday afternoon. Fortunately the mischance had occurred on the Saddle-hill within a few hundred yards of the Ale-house tavern. There is, or was, a smithy on the other side of the road. Eppie dismounted and led the mare to the smithy, which was growing effulgent as the darkness gathered. Rob Ranter, the smith, was absent; but a little imp, who had been blowing the bellows to keep his hand in, undertook to fasten the shoe which Eppie had picked up when she dismounted. The people of that district have a curious liking for diminutives; and this little imp of the forge was familarly and affectionately known as "the deevilikie." Meantime Eppie, gathering up her skirt, sauntered across the road. On the bench in front of the hostelry a familiar figure was seated. It was our old acquaintance Corbie, the honest "liar." A pewter measure of spirits stood on the table before him: it was obvious that he had been drinking hard. Eppie eyed him curiously and coldly he greeted her with drunken gravity. Ay, ay, my bonnie young leddie, 66 as a 00 1 Then At this he jist gaed fairly gyte. Says he, | of a secret which made Harry Hacket coming up to me pale as death, and catch- what? Her heart stood still with sudden in' me by the back o' the neek, 'Oot you fright. Who, and what was the man with go in the first place, you leein' scamp,' whom she had established such perilously leein' scamp,' my lord; and whan he gat close relations? Was he the laird of me ootside the door, he whistled to an Yokieshill, or was he not? And the ugly savage tyke that was lyin' in the sun. whole story was to be found in these 'Nell,' says he to the bitch quite coolly, papers that lay scattered about the table. takin' oot his watch, if this infernal She saw the imp bringing her pony out of swindlin' scoonrel is not ootside the yard the smithy, and she rose to go. Then, afore I count ten, gae him a taste o' your with a sudden impulse, turning her back teeth.' Mercy on us, the beast looked up upon the boy, she swept the scattered in his face wi1 a low snarl. What's come papers together, and thrust them into her o' the mutchkin, Lucky? Ay, ay, Mr. pocket. Corbie stirred and muttered in Hairy Hacket,-infernal swindler lee- his sleep: but he did not waken. in' scamp drucken scoonrel, verra she mounted her steed and rode away. gude, a conjoined action for defamation and assault, — damages laid at twa thoosan' poonds, not a penny less. Is't you indeed, Miss Eppie? Dear me, so you've come a' this gait to see the lords o' session and justiciar'. Come awa' ben, my dear, come awa' ben,-auld Joe Hacket is in the dock for bigamy, and I'm ceeted to speak-ceeted as a wutness, - if I'm no owre fou" he added with a dazed look. "Yes, my lord, I was present, -John Hacket, bachelor, and Elspet Cheyne, spinster for life and for death, for better and for waur. But whar's the lines?" Here he pulled some papers out of his pocket, and flung them loose upon the table. 'They were illmatcht, my lord, ill-matcht. She culd na thole his black looks - I dinna wonner and she ran aff wi' a sodger within the year. It was noised at the time that the ship gaed down in mid-sea. But auld Lucky tells me — what did Lucky say? it was the day the 'Jan Mayen' cam hame -troth, my lord, I feel that a taste o' speerits, if the coort wudna objec' - Watty was waiting for her at the farm door, and took the pony. Eppie ran upstairs to her room. It was dark, the half-veiled moon was rising from the sea like a nymph half-submerged, shaking the water from her dripping locks. She got a light, and then she pulled out the papers which she had well appropriated. Even to Eppie the significance of the story they told was clear as day. The first paper was a certificate showing that an irregular marriage had been celebrated at Inverurie on the 14th of May, 1760, between John Hacket of Yokieshill and Elspeth Cheyne, spinster, lately residing with Joshua Cheyne in Clola. (Eppie knew that the late Mrs. Hacket Harry's mother had been a Kilgoun Jean Kilgoun of Logie.) Then there was a letter of somewhat later date with the Maryland post-mark, enclosing a draft in favor of Betsy Cheyne. The last letter was written from some place in Kentucky, and stated briefly that Elspeth Cheyne was dead. She had died about a week before the letter was written. The date and the signature were illegible; but Ep. pie found from the post-mark that it must have been posted during the year then current- the year one. That was all; but it was enough: Corbie had not exaggerated when he swore that he could turn Harry Hacket adrift. His father had left no disposition of his estate; and Yokieshill belonged, not to Harry the bastard, but to the legal heir-whoever he might be. Here his head fell forward on the table, at land in another minute he was fast asleep. Eppie had heard the first sentences of the lawyer's harangue without the least show of interest. She saw that the man ras tipsy, and she stared him straight in the face with her native, chilly indifferpence. She did not pity him, nor was she afraid of him: let any man, tipsy or sober, dare to lay a hand upon her! So she sat down at the other end of the bench without uttering a word, and began switching the dust out of her habit with her whip. But when "Yokieshill" caught her ear, I CANNOT tell exactly what passed the turned and listened with closer atten- through Eppie's soul during the next two tion. The legal and Latin phrases were, days. Her mind was in a whirl. The of course, quite unintelligible to her; but unfamiliar restlessness which had taken she contrived to follow the main current possession of her increased more and of the rambling narrative. This drunken, more. She was as unquiet as the flock of disreputable lawyer had become master | plover which continued to wheel round red! XIX. |